“Aunt Bliss, Grandpa said dessert.”
Bliss turned so quickly her smile looked painful. “Tell Grandpa if he burned brownies, I’m calling the police.”
Katie giggled. “Uncle Knox is already here.”
“Then I’m filing a formal complaint.”
The kid ran off, and Bliss followed before I could say another word. I stood in the kitchen for one second longer, staring at the door she had disappeared through.
I didn’t know what Luke Dempsey had done to her yet. Not all of it. But by the time Bliss stepped back into the yard with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes and a tiny moth Never tucked somewhere in her pocket, I knew one thing with absolute certainty.
The monster that taught her to flinch had been sitting at her father’s table all night.
8
Cade
By the time Bliss Bennett started showing up in my phone more than my own teammates, I had stopped pretending the project was the only reason I looked for her everywhere.
It happened gradually enough that I could have lied about it if I wanted to. A text after class turned into late-night calls she claimed were “strictly for academic follow-up,” even when she spent twenty minutes explaining why a man at The Sin Bin tried to fistfight a jukebox and another ten roasting Briggs for thinking mitochondria were “the battery ones.”
Coffee between classes became her stealing fries off my plate like they legally belonged to her while I pretended it annoyed me, even though I’d probably hand her my entire meal if she asked for it. She started appearing at practice with her notebook tucked against her chest, hair pulled back, eyes sharp in that way that made me feel less observed than chosen.
Which should have concerned me more than it did.
It didn’t.
Bliss had this infuriating way of working herself into places without making it look like she was trying. My schedule. My phone. My head. The passenger seat of conversations I had no business replaying at midnight. I knew she preferred strawberry protein shakes because chocolate before workouts was “defeating the purpose.” I knew she made tiny humming noises under her breath while she studied. I knew she checked weather forecasts obsessively before driving like somebody’s paranoid middle-aged father, and I knew she never took the Lord’s name in vain.
Goodness. Gosh. Holy shit.
Never God.
I teased her about it once, and she rolled her eyes before saying, “Be so for real, Cade. It’s rude. I would hate if people yelled Bliss damn it every time something bad happened.” Then she’d shrugged, weirdly sincere and completely herself. “I guess once I thought about it that way, I felt bad turning Him into a swear word. So, I don’t.”
That was Bliss though.
Sunshine with edges. Drop-dead gorgeous and somehow impossible to define normally. Not polished or curated like half the girls around campus tried to be. She was expressive. Warm. Constantly moving. Flipping her hair over one shoulder while she laughed. Biting her lip when she was trying not to smile. Making soft amused noises under her breath whenever she thought somebody was being ridiculous.
Sunshine disguised as a woman.
Which became a serious problem every time my brain wandered somewhere it had no right going.
Because sweetness like hers did something violent to my self-control. I’d catch myself thinking about her at the worst times. During drills. In the shower. Halfway through film when Coach Little was talking systems and my brain decided instead to replay the sound of her saying Cross Check in that teasing voice like she’d put her mouth on my name and left teeth marks behind.
I wanted things from her I had no business wanting.
Wanted the laugh. The mouth. The attitude. The softness she tried to hide behind sarcasm. Wanted to know what she sounded like when she stopped being polite and careful and let herself want something without immediately punishing herself for it.
That was the part that kept me in check.
Pip wasn’t some random hookup I could burn through and walk away from afterward. She mattered enough that the wanting came with consequence. She mattered enough that I noticed when her smile showed up late. When she checked exits. When a loud voice made her shoulders tighten before she forced them loose again. When her hand slipped into her pocket like she needed something there to hold her together.
So, I kept my hands to myself.
Mostly.
I shoved open the front door of Hockey House and immediately got hit with noise. Music pounded somewhere upstairs while half the team screamed at a basketball game playing across three mounted televisions in the living room. Girls crowded the marble kitchen counters holding red cups while somebody nearly died laughing near the massive island beneath neon Fury signs mounted against black shiplap walls.
