The Fall and Rise of Kade Hart: A Hart Brothers Novel

by A. M. Hargrove

  Nine

  Kade

  My annoyance is boundless. It’s not aimed solely at Juliette. I cannot abide lying. In any form. It was done to me ever since my father stole me and I grew up in a sticky web of it. Then I layered it upon myself, for years, telling myself I could stop the drugs at any time.

  At first they were a pitiful bandage, covering up a series of lacerations that mutilated my body and soul. Then they marched in a regimental formation, stripping everything from me, turning me into someone I no longer knew. I lied, cheated, and stole money to buy drugs. The few college friends I managed to make abandoned me when I stole from them, heisting their credit cards to withdraw cash.

  Reality was even worse when I was expelled and my father showed up to escort me home. That’s when my life went from terrible to horrific. He taunted, lied, came to my room when I was completely out of it and mentally fucked with me, sending me into a complete hell of darkness. One night, when I was in the deep throes of a heroin high, he dragged me down the stairs, threw me in the backseat of one of his limos, and drove me into the worst part of New York City. Then he instructed his chauffeur to leave me there. I remember it like yesterday. My brain was hazed to the max, but I clearly remember him telling me to live with the people I was most like. But before he left, he had his chauffeur rough me up a bit. That translated to beating the shit out of me. When I came to, I was in some alley, covered in piss and puke, and had no idea how long I’d been there. An entire block of time had vanished. I eventually called my oldest brother, Kolson, and he came and picked me up. When he brought me home, it was war.

  “He’s a fucking piece of shit, no better than the garbage I throw out every day. I put him where the rest of the garbage lives. Take him back there. He’s not staying here.”

  “You created that piece of garbage, as you call him. You should’ve thought about that before you locked him in the little cell you created for him.” Kolson screamed at my dad.

  “Shut up or I’ll put that miserable hunk of trash back in there.”

  “If you try, I’ll find a way to stop you. We’re adults now. We won’t keep our mouths shut,” Kolson said.

  “Oh, yes you will, if you know what’s good for you.”

  At the time, all I wanted was a shower and food. And more drugs. I was itching for a fix. Things wriggled on my skin everywhere. I rubbed my arms and shook.

  “Look at him. He’s pathetic. Get that trash out of my site.”

  “Kade?”

  Juliette’s soft voice pulls me away from that vile memory. She looks like a tiny waif, drowning in my oversized clothes.

  Her arms clutch each other in front of her stomach. She’s not quite afraid, but she’s timid. “I didn’t lie to you. The convent is my life right now. It’s all I know. I’ve built a life there and I can’t just walk away like that.” She snaps her fingers. “It’s too rash of a decision. But I’ll never lie. I promise.”

  My brain is knotted with dysfunctional images of my dark past and my cravings for the poison that can shatter them. “I’m sorry I was so hard on you. It’s just one more manifestation of my demons. Lying is a tough one for me.”

  “It is for me, too.”

  “For now, you return to St. John the Baptist. Back to normal?”

  “Kade, after today, life won’t ever return to normal. How could it after what we shared? I won’t be able to stop thinking about you. And I haven’t had normal in years.”

  “Can you promise me something?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Promise me that if you change your mind, I’ll be the first to know. I have room for you—until other arrangements can be made. You’d have a job with a salary. I’d see to it. I won’t suffocate you. I swear.”

  “I promise.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Juliette, what do you think my chances are?”

  She laughs. “Pretty good, if you don’t rush me.”

  “I won’t. I think you’re right about that part. It’s going to be very hard to act like there’s nothing going on between us when I see you.”

  The room charges between us. I want her. I want to be inside of her. But what I really want is to persuade her to my way of thinking. How can she possibly go back to that damn convent? Doesn’t she understand what that means? We won’t be able to touch or act like we even like each other. I won’t be able to grab and kiss her if I want. It will be fucking ridiculous. I want to smash my hand through the wall.

  But there’s something else I want to do more. My hand grabs a hunk of that stupid sweatshirt she has on. I decide to throw all caution to the wind. If she has to leave in the morning, this may be our last chance to spend like this. And I refuse to let it pass us by. The shirt is fisted in my hand and I jerk her body against mine. With my other hand, I palm her ass and press her tightly to me. I’m sure she can feel my dick against her stomach. Maybe not, because that sweatshirt is pretty thick. But I’m going to take care of that in a second.

  My fingers scrabble around for the hem and after finding it, I don’t ask for permission, I only pull it over her head. She’s bared from the waist up and shy about it. I don’t know why, because I’ve seen her like this before.

  Taking my hands, I push hers away. “Don’t cover your beauty. Let me see you, Juliette.” I place her hands on my shoulders and bend my head to tease her pert nipples.

  “Kade.”

  The tone of her voice sends a warning signal shooting through me. No. She can’t not want this. How can this be?

  “You have to stop.”

  The most dreaded words I can imagine flay my soul, leaving it in tatters. She doesn’t want me. My hands release her and my arms now feel like useless appendages.

  “I need to think this through. If I’m to leave tomorrow, this will make it worse.”

  My cock whimpers at her words. I refuse to give up. This may be my only chance to persuade her.

  “You’re wrong, Juliette. This is our last night to be together. I want you next to me, close. If it only means holding you, then fine. But what I truly want is to fuck you properly.” She sucks in air between her teeth and I know that maybe I’ve offended her. I don’t care. In this moment, the only thing I care about is convincing her of our need to be together.

  “Don’t you see? We may not have another chance like this. When you walk out this door, Sister Helena will rule your life and I’m sure our opportunities to be alone will be greatly diminished. We’ll be reduced to sneaking in kisses in the janitor’s closet at the school, or something absurd like that.”

  She’s jiggled back into the sweatshirt as I talk. Her petite hands cup my face. “I know,” she says. “It destroys me when I think about it. But I don’t know what else to do.”

  Her hand latches onto mine and she tugs it until I follow her down the steps. Ethel is in her crate and I shake my head. Juliette heads for the crate and takes the puppy out of it.

  “We need to pay her some attention. She’s been a bit neglected.”

  What the fuck! Is that all she cares about is the damn dog? If that’s the case I’ll build the dog a fucking townhouse of her own and hire a horde of servants to shower her with love and attention. Okay, that’s ludicrous. What the hell is wrong with me? I need to pull my shit together.

  “Juliette, would you excuse me for a bit. I need to call my counselor. I, um, need someone to talk to right now.”

  “Kade! Are you all right?”

  “No, I’m not. I’m … I’ll be back.”

  I stomp to my office. Anger infuses me. I’m annoyed at myself, for being jealous of a helpless puppy of all things. What does that say about me as a man? That I’m selfish for one. That I’m totally out of control, for another. I dig out my phone from my pocket and speed dial Mack.

  “What up dude?”

  “Not good.”

  “Talk. And I want it all.”

  And I dump it all on him, holding nothing back. When I’m finished
, he advises. Damn, he’s good.

  “Dude, slow down. And I mean S-L-O-W down. You’re on fast-forward with her. You can’t possibly have established any hard-core feelings yet. This is all a sexual thing right now. This storm has thrown you two together and circumstances have put you in a place you hadn’t prepared for. I’m glad the sexual part of you has kicked in, because for a while there, I was wondering if your dick was permanently dead. But now that we’ve established it isn’t, man handle it for a while and then let things take their natural course.”

  What he says makes perfect sense but in my fucked up head, I couldn’t reason that out.

  “I want to use.” My admission crucifies me.

  “Hell yeah, you do. It’s your way to a calm. You’re agitated over this. Why wouldn’t you want to use?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But, why won’t you? And I want you to answer this.”

  “Because of the hell it would throw me back into.”

  “Truth, man. Kade, you know if you use again, you’re a dead man, right? There’ll be no bringing you back. You get that, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. I get it.” The hell of withdrawing makes me shudder. The feeling of those gnawing creatures makes me scratch my arms. I stop myself. I find my eyes drawn to the ink that covers my arm. The scars were so atrocious I got fed up with people staring at them, hence the sleeve.

  “They barely got you back from it the last time. It was a fucking miracle. You need to check into Living Free? That’s always an option.”

  My neck is fucking on fire. Muscles are alive with knives gouging into them and I can feel the beginnings of a migraine. Wheels are spinning in my vision. I need to take my rescue meds fast.

  “I’m getting a damn migraine.”

  “Take your rescue,” Mack advises.

  “Hang on.”

  I keep the shit everywhere, so I open a desk drawer and pull one out. They’re the melt-on-your-tongue kind and I pop one into my mouth. They taste like shit, but they work within thirty minutes.

  “I’m back.”

  “So. Living Free? You never answered.”

  “Mack, I need to figure this shit out.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Seriously man, I just don’t get why she doesn’t want one last night with me.”

  He blows an infuriating sigh into the phone. “You’re an idiot where women are concerned. When’s the last time you dated?”

  “I’ve never dated.”

  “No damn wonder,” he mutters. “Listen to what I’m telling you. Women want to be wooed. They don’t want wham, bam, fuck you ma’am. They don’t to be banged to death and then—see ya.”

  “I wanted to make it up to her … the fiasco fuck we had.”

  “Maybe she didn’t see it like that. In any case, back the fuck off and let her take the lead, dude, or you’re gonna lose out.”

  “Okay, okay, I hear you.”

  “Getting back to your avoidance—do you need to check into Living Free? And if you don’t answer me I’m coming over and kicking your slack ass.”

  “No! If I do, I’ll speak it out.”

  “Got ya. Call me back if you need me.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  “Peace.”

  This is a shit-tastrophe. What the hell have I done? The first woman to enter my life that my dick responds to, I go all fuzzy-fucked on and act like some horny teenager. Now she’s probably out there, thinking I’m some creepy ex-drug addict that’s perving to get into her pussy for the fun of it. She knows I’m like short fused TNT around her. What the hell was I thinking?

  “That was the problem, you filthy piece of trash. You weren’t thinking. You never think. Except when you want your veins filled with that shit you’re so in love with.”

  The Dragon’s voice fills my gray matter and my skull is crushed with a sledgehammer. Get out of my head, you bastard!

  My hands rub my forehead, in an attempt to stem the splitting pain. It will subside soon. But the next few minutes will be brutal. Leaning back in the chair, I close my eyes, shutting out the world.

  Gentle wings flutter across my hands, pushing them out of the way. They move onto my temples, rubbing perfect circles, as soothing relief inches into me. When they land above my eyes, I moan, as the tension siphons out of those muscles. Her fingers know how to make the crushing pain become bearable. She does this thing on my scalp, moving from forehead to the back of my head that is miraculous. Now she works on the back of my neck, where it all began. Knowing fingers slide up and down at the source of the evil, dispelling it, casting it out, and I want to cry out in joy. How does she do this?

  Her hands slow down and I capture them, as I would precious birds. Raising them to my lips, I kiss each one and then I raise my head so I can see this wondrous being that has pulled me out of such pain.

  “Thank you.” My voice is raw, hoarse with I’m not sure what.

  “Migraine?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  Giving my head a slight shake, I say, “It only came on when I was talking to Mack.”

  “Mack?”

  “My NA counselor.”

  She kneels, fucking kneels, between my knees. “Are you okay?”

  “Get up.”

  A questioning look alters her expression.

  “Don’t ever kneel before me. You are a far better person than I and don’t argue with me over that. Now stand, please.”

  She opens her mouth to argue, I imagine, but then shuts it and stands. Her tongue pokes into her cheek, making a bulge on the outside. I reach out my hand and brush my thumb over it.

  “You’re irritated with me, aren’t you?” I ask.

  “Yeah, I am. You have no confidence in yourself. I was kneeling so we could be on eye level. Not because I was bowing before you or anything ridiculous like that. It was more comfortable for me. You’re a strange man, Kade.”

  “I know. And if you could see a tenth of what’s in my head, you would run away from here, screaming, like you’ve never screamed before.”

  “Oh, are you ever wrong. You see, I’ve seen my worst nightmare in living color. And I ran from that. Trust me, nothing can ever compare again. Nothing. So stuff whatever’s in your head away, and maybe someday, you’ll trust me enough, or believe in me enough to tell me about it. I’m not fragile and I’m not afraid of what’s in there. I’m afraid of what’s in your backyard.”

  She sure knows how to shut me up and put me in my place. But she’s right. I walk around, thinking I have it so terrible. That my life is the worst thing imaginable. But not once do I ever think of what others have lived through, such as Juliette. She’s seen her family massacred. She devised and implemented a plan to survive. And here she stands, proud and brave enough to confront me. I need to man up and be the person she needs me to be. If I don’t, this budding relationship will run out of gas, fast.

  “You’re right. You’re stronger than I give you credit for. I apologize. And let me say this. I respect your decision to go back to the convent. That’s not to say I like it. But I understand.”

  “You do?”

  “I do. It was selfish of me to try to persuade you to do otherwise. And it would be too risky for you. Again, I’m sorry. Seems I’m built on a foundation of sorrys.” I give her a pitiful look. That gets a giggle out of her.

  “Is your headache better?”

  “Yeah, I think your massage and my rescue med kicked in. You have magic hands, my little mouse.”

  “Mouse, huh?”

  “Yeah. Most people don’t like them, but when I was a kid, they were the only pets I could keep hidden that my father wouldn’t find. So I have a great love for the little buggers. I would actually catch them and keep them for pets.”

  “You didn’t. You mean the outside kind?”

  “Yep. I would feed and coax them into a little box. They were my only friends. We weren’t allowed to have friends. Not that anyone would’ve wanted
to be our friends. All the kids at school were afraid of Langston, our father. Their parents wouldn’t let them befriend us. I don’t blame them, but we were all ostracized. It wasn’t a great upbringing, by any account. Kestrel and I were bullied a lot. But we didn’t dare tell Langston. That would’ve made it worse for us in school. Kolson rode horses, so he spent a ton of time at the stables and then at competitions so he was away a lot.”

  “That makes me so sad for you.”

  My hand slashes the air. “Don’t be. It’s over now. I’m done with it. I don’t want you spending one second on this shit, because if you do, he wins and I refuse to give him that.”

  I’m in for the biggest surprise when her tiny body clambers into my lap and curls around me like a contented kitten. “I hope you don’t mind, but I felt the need to hold you.”

  “I don’t mind at all. You can hold me, touch me, do anything you want to me, whenever you wish. And I wanted to say I’m sorry for being a bad puppy dad. I’m usually much better than this.”

  Her lips taste my neck and then she answers, “I know.”

  I’m not sure how much of me she can feel, but her lips on my neck send my dick into overdrive. But I refuse to act. I’m letting her take the lead, unless she insists. I want to be the man she admires and wants. Not the boy that’s been chasing after her with his tongue hanging out, waving his dick in his hand.

  She unfolds herself from my lap and holds out her hand. Though questions pop in my mind, I’m not going to pose any of them. I follow her, much like Ethel does. Up the steps we go, but I don’t give in to my hopes, my dreams. It’s only when we reach my bedroom and she slips out of those stupid clothes that hide her naked glory do I allow myself to cheer. Not wanting to appear too eager or like some moronic hormone overloaded ass (which, of course, I am) I take my time peeling off my own clothes.

  But when I’m as naked as she is, she turns to me and says, “Took you long enough.” Then a giggle gurgles out of her.

  I hold her away from me and say, “Is it okay if I just look at you for a minute? You’re quite amazing, you know. Don’t take this the wrong way, but your clothes don’t do much for you.”