Caden (Loving the Sykes Book 1)

by Elizabeth Stevens

  “Bah!” I sternly told myself as I threw the door open.

  I wasn’t going to be sad little Lucy anymore. She was an idiot.

  I was angry almost-succeeding-at-adulting Lucy. And I deserved better, especially from myself.

  23

  Caden

  “Lulu!” I yelled as she stormed into the house.

  All I got in response was an intelligible shout of annoyance.

  “Lucy!” I called, just catching the front door from slamming behind her.

  “What’s up her?” Carter asked.

  I shook my head, but Lucy rounded on me from halfway up the stairs.

  “Yeah, Caden,” she challenged. “Why don’t you tell him?”

  I looked at Carter and swallowed hard. “We do not have to do this here.”

  “Why not?” Lucy flailed her arms. “Is it not convenient for you? How many more secrets do you want to hide from us? Or do you just not think we’re worth letting in!”

  “What are you two freaks arguing about?” Carter yelled to be heard over us. “Did Caden hook up with Brit or something?”

  Lucy yelled at him, then stomped to her room.

  I looked at Carter once more.

  “You’re gonna have to give me an explanation, dude.”

  “Later?”

  Carter nodded. “Oh, by all means. Talk your way out of this one.”

  I leapt up the stairs and banged on Lucy’s door when it wouldn’t open. “Luce!” I called. “Lulu, come on. Talk to me.”

  “I have nothing to say to you!” she snapped through the door.

  “I don’t know what you think you saw. But I promise it wasn’t what you think.”

  “And how would you know what I think?”

  “Because why else are we arguing through your bedroom door?”

  There was silence. Then she opened the door I’d been leaning on and I had to catch myself from falling over.

  “What you get up to on your own time is really no concern of mine,” she spat, venom in her tone and her eyes.

  I had no idea where this was coming from. I had no idea the exact worries that were going through her head. I didn’t know what to say to assure her everything was okay. It wasn’t my fault if she got jealous over me hugging another woman.

  Wait. Jealous?

  Did that mean she’d finally forgotten that idiot in her heart?

  “What about the other guy, Luce?” I asked her and I saw by the guilty look on her face she knew exactly what I meant.

  “That’s a little bit irrelevant right now, don’t you think?”

  “It’s hardly irrelevant! I doubt he’d be happy to know you’d been with me, thinking of him or not.”

  “Well I guess we both have a habit of being with each other when our hearts belong to someone else!” she screamed at me and my heart crumpled.

  She was still in love with whoever that other idiot was. She was never going to love me. I’d been stupid and naïve to think the last few weeks had meant anything more to her than a convenient lay. She probably thought of me as practise for Mr Right. I felt sick.

  My heart breaking, I snapped. “Well, you can’t say it wasn’t an entertaining distraction.”

  “An entertaining…?” she fumed. “I should have known. I should have known this would happen. I told myself you wouldn’t do this.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t do this?”

  “I naively told myself it would be okay, but I should have known it was a mistake.”

  I scoffed. “You didn’t seem to think that when you were begging me for more.”

  “You’re not the only one who can put on an act, Carter,” she huffed.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “Are you seriously standing there and trying to tell me it was more than just sex?”

  “Fine!” I spat. “It was just sex. After all, I’d have to be mental to be in love with you, wouldn’t I?”

  “Mental!” she yelled. “I’ll show you–”

  “You fucking what?” Carter yelled and I winced.

  I should have kept my voice down. I should have pushed her into her room and actually talked to her, not had a shouting match so loud you could probably hear us down the street. We were both adults, for fuck’s sake, but my emotions were riled and I apparently couldn’t act like one. I was hurting and I wanted to hurt her. It was childish, but I didn’t care.

  Carter appeared at the bottom of the stairs. “You fucking tell me what the fuck this is about right now or I’mma start swinging.”

  Lucy crossed her arms. “This is about your best friend’s raging libido. Apparently at least once a day isn’t enough for him, he’s got to go and get it from some whore around the corner.”

  I was past caring that Carter was standing there. I was at DEFCON 1, ready to lash out and burn all bridges.

  “What do you care anyway?” I asked. “It was just sex.”

  “Was. Past tense.”

  “Did you fuck my sister?” Carter roared.

  I was, quite frankly, not that fussed by him just then. So, I ignored him.

  “Where it belongs,” I said to Lucy. “I should have known you’d be more fucking trouble than you were worth.”

  I’d hit a nerve. I watched her swallow hard.

  “You come into this house,” Carter said, his voice low. “You’re welcomed in as one of us. And you repay us by fucking our sister?”

  I flailed wildly, caring about very little and feeling like being beaten up would be far better than the battering my heart was taking. I was about to lose everything, but if I lost Lucy then what did it even matter?

  “You expect me to pass up a shot?” I said to Carted. “You know me, man. You should have known once she was legal, she was fair game.”

  “You piece of shit!” Lucy yelled as Carter took a step towards me.

  “I thought even you knew some things were sacred, Reece,” Carter said. “I thought we were your family. You don’t fuck with family!”

  I shrugged. “And how did that work out for me?”

  “You had us!” Carter snapped. “We chose you. And you – what? Throw it all away to get your dick wet?”

  “Well I guess we all know now where my prioritise lie. Don’t we?”

  “What’s going on?” I heard Oscar call from downstairs.

  I wasn’t the only person exasperated by yet another person involved in this fight. And I didn’t even know what had started it.

  “Caden fucked Lucy,” Carter told him.

  “Ah…” Oscar said as he slowly walked up the stairs towards us. “Okay. So… Let’s all be rational and talk it out. It’s really not the end of the world.”

  I glared at Lucy. “There’s nothing to talk about. It was just sex.”

  “You what?” Oscar spluttered.

  “It was just sex. Meaningless sex.” I looked at him.

  Oscar was giving me one of those looks like he was incredibly disappointed in me for some reason. “Just sex?” he clarified.

  “What else would it be?” I sneered.

  “Get your shit and get out of our house!” Lucy yelled, pointing down the hall.

  “With pleasure,” I told her. “PT gave me the all clear to get back to training anyway.”

  “You were with your PT?” she asked, her voice suddenly small.

  I nodded, too pissed and hurt to care what brought the change on. “The boss set me up with some facilities around the corner. So, they’d be close.”

  “Around the–”

  “But I can see I’ve outstayed my welcome. It’s time I moved on anyway.”

  I stormed to my room and started gathering up my things.

  “Caden…” Lucy started, but Carter stopped her.

  “He’s not even fucking worth it,” he said. “Hope he fucking dies.”

  “No, you don’t,” Oscar said. “Lulu, wait!”

  I heard a door close and assumed it
was Lucy’s bedroom door.

  I zipped up my bag and hauled it over my shoulder. I didn’t even bother saying goodbye to my room. There were no good memories in that house for me anymore. I’d made sure of that when I’d let my feelings for Lucy get in the way of my common sense. It just went to show that emotions were nothing but trouble.

  “Cade…” Oscar said, trying to stop me as I walked to the stairs. “Just wait. Let’s talk–”

  “There’s nothing left to talk about, Oz. Okay?”

  He wouldn’t be dissuaded and followed me to the front door. “I’m sure it’s all just a misunderstanding–”

  I stopped, my hand on the door handle. The only way I was walking out of here remotely sane was to completely sever all ties. “I fucked your sister, Sykes. Okay? A lot. I took her innocence and I ruined it. I made her mine more ways than a man has a right to do. But it was just sex. At least she’ll have some good tricks for that fucker if he ever wakes up and realises she’s been waiting for him.”

  I didn’t wait for him to say anything, I wasn’t sure if he’d been able to process all that to the point he was able to reply. I yanked the door open and walked out of there for what I knew would be the last time. Luther would have Carter’s version of events the minute he walked in the door and I couldn’t bear to even think about the hurt and disappointment on his face when he heard.

  I was going to tell myself I was better off anyway, that they were better off without me in their lives. It couldn’t be easy on them getting the call that I was in the hospital at least once a year. But they’d been my family,

  I walked around to the house Morrison had set up for me, barely paying attention to my surrounds as I was livid.

  “Did you forget something?” Sheila asked as I barrelled in the door.

  “No,” I snapped.

  “Everything okay?”

  “No.”

  She knew better than to ask me anything else and I stormed into one of the spare rooms, slamming the door behind me.

  24

  Lucy

  Everything was messed up and it was all my fault.

  Carter hated being around me. He couldn’t even look at me. Every time he almost seemed to be acting normal, he’d see me in the room then frown, mumble awkwardly, and hurry back out. He was gone for longer and longer hours each day. Getting dinner at the gym, he really only came home to sleep.

  I started hanging out with Brit more often. Not that I didn’t see her pretty regularly before. But I stayed at her parents’ more often. Like, most nights. I figured it would make it easier on Carter and, if it was easier for him, then it would hopefully be easier on the other boys as well.

  “I have royally messed everything up,” I said to Brit as I lay upside down on her floor, my legs up on her bed.

  “Unless He Who Shall Not Be Named is a secret prince, you’re not royally anything,” she pointed out.

  I sighed. “I s’pose. You know what I mean.”

  “It’s normal to miss the love of your life after he walks out of it so horribly and rudely, Luce. I get it.”

  Brit’s brand of sympathy was far more callous than other people’s might have been. But honestly, I got it. She was like the Carter and Caden that way – she didn’t like emotions. She thought they were messy and ruined all the fun. I personally thought that she was just scared of getting hurt which, now I was currently nursing the mother of all heartaches, I didn’t really blame her for.

  “I shouldn’t have done it in the first place. I told myself I could let him go when the time came, but I was wrong.”

  “Well, no,” Brit corrected me. “You did let him go. You flew off the handle because you thought he was screwing that other chick, then blurted a whole bunch of crap until Carter butted in and then you let him walk out your door forever. You literally let him go.”

  Weirdly, her anti-pep talk was working.

  “Why didn’t I just tell him then?” I grumbled for the hundredth time that month. “It wasn’t like us sleeping together was a secret anymore. It couldn’t have made anything worse, surely.”

  “Because emotions are shit. They make your brain all muddled and you can’t think straight and you get all jittery and flustered and say absolute nonsense, most of which is the opposite of what you mean.”

  Had I been less wrapped up in my own shit, I might have stopped to wonder if she was speaking from experience. But I didn’t.

  “Do you think it would have made a difference?” was also something I’d said about a hundred times in the last month.

  “My answer’s not going to change, no matter how many times you ask me.”

  I huffed and nodded. “We’ll never know now,” was what she’d given up telling me.

  “The only difference I could imagine it making would be that at least you’d know you put your heart out there and did the brave thing.”

  “As opposed to the cowardly thing and just shouting nonsense,” I clarified.

  “That.”

  I breathed out loudly. “At least I had him for a little while. There were definitely times he wasn’t thinking about her.”

  Brit came and lay down next to me. “If he didn’t know it was him in your heart, then he’s an idiot and you’re well shot of him.”

  “I still love him, though.”

  “And I still love Bowie, but alas that ship has sailed to otherworldly seas.”

  I felt myself smile. “I don’t know what I’d do if you ever actually just consoled me like a normal person.”

  “We’re all mad here,” she quipped.

  I nodded. “Damn straight.”

  “What’s normal anyway?” she scoffed. “Normal’s just code for boring. There is nothing more devastating than conforming, Luce.”

  “Tell that to my broken heart.”

  She leant over and pressed her lips to my sternum. “There is nothing more devastating than conforming,” she said, her voice muffled against me.

  I laughed and pushed her companionably. “Oh, good. I’m magically healed now.”

  She grinned before she lay back down, putting her head on my shoulder. “I know it sucks. It sucks he didn’t see how amazing you were and it sucks that you forgot to tell him–”

  “Oh, thank God. I was worried there you were going mushy on me.”

  “Ew. No. The only thing that should ever be mushy are the peas in a Pie Floater.”

  I grimaced as we burst into laughter.

  “What?” I spluttered.

  She nodded. “You heard.”

  “That is so random.”

  I felt her shrug as we both stared up at the glow-in-the-dark stars she still had on her ceiling. “It’s my nugget of wisdom for the day.”

  “The day? I think that’s done you for a whole year.”

  We looked at each other and burst out laughing again. Our hands entwined where we lay, it was a nice reprieve from the sour mood that had been hanging over me. It was like old times, when Brit and I were thirteen and gushing over the boys in the Dolly magazine. A simpler time when heartbreak wasn’t even on our radar, not really.

  It gave me hope that, one day, Caden might be less a heartbreak and more just a dull ache I barely even noticed.

  ****

  “One drink is all I’m making you have,” Brit reminded me as she held the door to the pub open for me. “It doesn’t even have to be alcohol.”

  “What would I do without the best friend who bullies me into being in public?” I asked wryly.

  “You need to get out. You’re so not going to get over him–”

  “Oh, no,” I breathed out heavily.

  “What?” Brit asked, turning around.

  “Tommy’s here.”

  “Well, of course he’s here. It’s Saturday.”

  I glared at her.

  I hadn’t seen Tommy since we’d broken up. Since he’d dumped me. I’d been too wrapped up in being at home and hoping to sneak away with C
aden to go to the pub and he would have been working any time I was out or at work.

  He looked good. But he always looked good. He’d always been obsessed with outward appearances. It was probably why we’d stagnated for so long. We’d put on the happy façade of the perfect couple despite being far from it. It was probably also the reason he had a girl on his arm as he made a beeline for me.

  He was trying very hard to make his approach casual and coincidental, but I knew him far too well to buy the act.

  “Where’s your new boyfriend?” Tommy asked me.

  I plastered on my most pleasant face. “What new boyfriend?”

  “You know who I’m talking about.”

  I shrugged. “I really don’t.”

  “I’m not saying his name.”

  “You afraid he’ll magically appear and whisk her away?” Brit challenged and he turned a withering scowl on her. Brit was anything but withered. “He’s not Bloody Mary.”

  I looked at the girl glaring defiantly at me over his shoulder. I wondered if I’d looked like her once; superior and possessive. I couldn’t imagine I had, but I’d tried to be a good girlfriend and done all the right thing so maybe I had. Although, in hindsight, the right thing would have been to break it off after six months and I’d known I was still hung up on Caden.

  The whole looking within and finding myself lacking thing made me a little more passive-aggressive than I’d usually be.

  “You seem to be the only who’s moved on, Tommy,” I said as politely as I could.

  “You haven’t moved on?” Tommy asked.

  He looked me up and down as though that was going to give him some big neon sign announcing my mental state. It was lucky then that, just at that moment, I was looking more suited to a night in front of the tellie, which is what I’d wanted to do.

  “I certainly didn’t run out and start dating the first person I could.”

  It wasn’t a lie. Whatever I’d thought I had with Caden, it wasn’t dating. That was for sure. Dating implied people knew. Dating implied you had nothing to hide. Dating implied having dinner with your family while they grilled him on his intentions, as opposed to grilling him for taking the lid off the salt shaker and ruining Carter’s dinner.