"Yes," I promised, my voice rough with emotion. "For as long as you need. We all will."
A fragile silence settled over the room, broken only by the steady beep of the monitors. Outside the window, snow had begun to fall again, soft flakes drifting past the glass in lazy spirals. The world continued to turn, indifferent to the suffering within these walls, to the broken girl in the hospital bed.
"Rest," I urged gently, seeing exhaustion pulling at Cade's features. "I’ll be right here when you wake up." She nodded, her eyelids already drooping despite her obvious fear of sleep. I continued to hold her hand, a silent promise that I wouldn't let go, wouldn't leave her alone with her nightmares. As she drifted off, I knew one thing for certain. Damien McIntyre was a dead man walking. He just didn't know it yet.
Ibarely made it to the bathroom before the contents of my stomach erupted. Gripping the edges of the sink, I heaved until nothing remained but bitter bile and the acrid taste of failure. My knuckles turned white as I clung to the porcelain, trying to ground myself in something solid while my mind splintered into a thousand jagged pieces. The fluorescent lightsbuzzed overhead, casting a sickly pallor over my already ashen face in the mirror. I hardly recognised the man staring back at me, hollow-eyed, jaw clenched so tight the muscle twitched visibly beneath my skin, a haunted expression that belonged to the frightened boy I thought I'd buried years ago.
Videos. He made fucking videos of her.
The words echoed in my skull, a hammer striking the same raw nerve over and over until I doubled over again, dry heaving into the sink. I knew exactly what those videos meant. I knew exactly what they were for. My own face had been captured in similar footage when I was just a child; my mismatched eyes were a "selling point" that Dominic Blake had exploited to market me to the highest bidder.
I turned on the tap with shaking hands, splashing cold water on my face as if I could wash away the memories along with the sweat and tears. But nothing could cleanse the images flooding my mind: my own childhood horrors superimposed over what I imagined had been done to Cade. Her face replacing mine in those dark rooms, her screams echoing mine, and her body violated the same way mine had been.
"Fucking useless," I snarled at my reflection, slamming my fist into the mirror. The glass cracked, spiderwebbing outward from the point of impact, fragmenting my reflection into a dozen broken pieces. Perfect. That was exactly how I felt, shattered beyond repair, unable to be whole for the woman who needed me to be strong.
I had promised her I'd protect her. I'd promised to be there for her. And where had I been when that psychopath had taken her? Where had I been during those six weeks of hell? Managing those two dumb fucks, chasing dead-end leads, pretending we were still a family, and trying to convince myself that wasenough while she endured unimaginable torture. The bathroom door banged open behind me, and Logan's reflection appeared in the fractured mirror. His face was a thundercloud, dark with barely contained fury and concern.
"What the fuck, Cole?" he demanded, his voice low and dangerous. "Cade needs us. She needs you. And you're in here having a fucking breakdown?" I turned to face him, water still dripping from my chin, my breathing ragged and uneven.
"I can't do it," I whispered, hating the weakness in my voice. "I can't look at her like that, Logan. I can't see her broken and know that I, that we, failed her so completely."
"You think I don't know that?" Logan's voice rose, echoing off the tiled walls. "You think I don't see her lying in that bed and hate myself for every fucking second she spent in that hellhole? But this isn't about us. It's about her."
Something inside me snapped. Six weeks of bottled rage, fear, and self-loathing erupted like a volcano. I lunged forward, grabbing Logan by the front of his shirt and slamming him against the wall.
"Don't you dare lecture me!" I shouted, my face inches from his. "You left her alone! You drove away and left her on that street! This is on you as much as it's on that psychopath!" Logan's eyes widened for a split second before darkening with his own storm of guilt and anger. He shoved me back, hard enough that I stumbled.
"DON'T YOU THINK I FUCKING KNOW THAT?" he roared, his voice breaking. "Every second of every day since she disappeared, I've known it was my fault! I left her there! I drove away because I was too fucking proud to go after her!" His words hit me like physical blows, but they didn't diminish my own rage. I swung at him, my fist connecting with his jaw. The impact sent a jolt of pain up my arm, but it was nothing compared tothe agony tearing through my chest. Logan staggered but didn't fall. Instead, he charged at me, tackling me against the bathroom stalls. We grappled, two broken men trying to punish ourselves through each other, neither of us holding back.
"I should have protected her!" I growled, landing another blow to his ribs. "I should have known something was wrong the second we found that fucking note."
"And I should have gone after her!" Logan shot back, his fist grazing my cheek. "I should have swallowed my fucking pride and made sure she got home safe!" We continued like that, trading blows and accusations, each hit a desperate attempt to feel something other than the suffocating guilt that threatened to drown us both. Blood from a split in my lip mingled with tears I hadn't realised I was shedding. Logan's eye was already swelling, a dark bruise forming beneath it.
Finally, exhausted and panting, we broke apart. I slid down the wall to the floor, my head in my hands as sobs tore from my throat. The sound was foreign to my own ears, raw, animal, the cry of a wounded beast.
"I can't save her," I choked out, the admission cutting deeper than any physical wound. "I couldn't save myself back then, and I can't save her now. I'm too fucking weak." The bathroom fell silent except for my ragged breathing and the steady drip of the tap I'd left running. Then, to my surprise, I felt Logan sink down beside me. His arm came around my shoulders, a gesture so unexpected that I nearly flinched.
"You don't have to save everyone, Cole," he said quietly, his voice rough with emotion. "You don't always have to be the strong one." I looked up at him, vision blurred through tears, and saw my own pain reflected in his eyes. For all our differences, for all the times we'd clashed, we were bound by thesame darkness, what had happened to us as kids, and what was happening to the woman lying broken in that hospital bed.
"We're brothers," Logan continued, his grip on my shoulder tightening. "The three of us, you, me, and Ryder. We're fucked up and damaged, but we're family. And we're going to protect Cadence together. We're going to hunt down every single person who touched her and make them pay."
The promise of violence, of retribution, settled something within me. My breathing began to steady, the tremors in my hands subsiding. I wiped my face with the back of my hand, wincing at the sting of salt in open cuts.
"I keep seeing myself in her place," I admitted, the words barely audible. "When she talked about the videos, about being passed around... I was right back there, in The Palace, with Blake standing over me, telling me to smile for the camera." Logan's jaw clenched, a muscle jumping beneath his skin.
"I know," he said simply. And he did know, he'd seen the evidence, the photos of me as a child in that hellish place. He was one of the few people on earth who understood the full extent of what had been done to me.
"That's why you're exactly what she needs right now," he continued. "Because you understand in a way the rest of us can't. You survived it. You came out the other side. You can show her it's possible." I shook my head, unconvinced.
"Look at me, Logan. I'm a fucking mess. I still wake up screaming some nights. I still can't stand to be touched by strangers. What kind of example is that?"
"An honest one," he replied. "She doesn't need us to pretend everything's going to be fine. She needs to know she's not alone in the darkness." His words penetrated the fog of self-loathing that had enveloped me. I thought of Cade, how even in hermost vulnerable moment, she'd insisted on telling her story, on speaking the horror aloud. Her courage shamed me.
"She's stronger than I ever was," I murmured. Logan nodded.
"She's stronger than any of us. But even the strongest people need something to lean on sometimes."
We sat in silence for a moment, the weight of our shared guilt and responsibility settling between us like a physical presence. Finally, I took a deep breath and pushed myself to my feet, extending a hand to help Logan up.
