“A minute, maybe? He was fine! We were joking and then he just glitched out,” she stammers, "What the hell is going on, Seba?”
I don’t know how to answer her, so I don’t. Instead, I surrender to instinct and grasp Cade’s face in both hands. His unfocused eyes shutter, but he doesn’t stop whispering cryptic nonsense.
Not nonsense.
He’s speakingLatin.
I grind my teeth to stop them from chattering.Keep it together for them. I need to break this trance.
“It’s alright, baby, I’m right here,” I murmur.Andrea’s stare singes my skin. I fight the urge to rip away from my stepbrother and spew a billion excuses as to why I just called him that.Focus.I rest my forehead on his, breathing out, “Come back to me, darlin.”
Andrea leans in close, her fingertips brushing my bicep as she hugs Cade from behind. “Shh, we’ve got you, babe. We’re not going anywhere.”
That’s when I notice the wetness on his cheeks. Rage, unlike anything I’ve known, barrels through me. I’m shaking with it as more tears leak from the corners of his eyes. Whoever inflicted this damage on him deserves to burn for eternity.
Suddenly, he inhales sharply?—
The cry he releases will haunt me for the rest of my life.
His legs give out.
We catch him between us: Andrea’s arms around his waist and my hands in his hair, holding his head against my chest.
“We’ve got you,” I croak as violent sobs rip from his throat, further shredding me to pieces. I wish I could absorb a fraction of the pain pouring out of him. I’d take it all if I could. He says something, but he’s hyperventilating, making it impossible to understand.
“What’s that?”
Glistening eyes ooze agony. “I don’t want to remember.” His voice cracks. “I put her in a box, but she got out and I can’t get her back in— I don’twantto remember. I don’t want to remember her like that. She was sick. I loved her. So much.”
I’m thrown back into the dim kitchen with him sitting on the counter. A vice grip constricts my windpipe. All along, the voice has been?—
“Your mother.”
He. Shatters.
“I loved her. She didn’t mean it. I don’t want to remember.”
Heartbreak bleeds from his soul into ours. But somehow, huddled together in the shadow of a place of worship— a sacredplace for the weak, sick and broken— I don’t feel God here. There’s a distinct vacancy like a room empty of furniture.
If God isn’t here…
Has He ever been?
My identity is fracturing. Or maybe it has been for a while now and I’ve just been too scared to admit it.
Brown eyes find mine over Cade’s shoulder— a cracked mirror reflecting fear and pain. Something more powerful calls to me in her stare. Something dangerous and impossible to ignore.
Without dropping my gaze, Andrea presses a kiss to the side of Cade’s neck. He sighs, turning his head toward her. Their breath mingles. Lips graze. Then mold together.
I’m captivatedby the way their mouths move against each other. The soft whimpers escaping as their kiss deepens. The glimpse of tangled tongues.
When they break apart, flushed and dazed, they look up at me.
Cade’s fingers curl into my shirt right over my pounding heart, offering me his pink, kiss-swollen lips. They’re right there, wet with the taste of her. I’m lured down…
My tongue slips into his mouth, curling around his teeth, licking up any trace of her. Adrenaline and lust surge in my bloodstream. An animalistic need for more has me nipping his bottom lip, sucking his tongue, inhaling his gasps and moans.
Nails trail delicately down my forearm. My eyes crack open to meet Andrea’s heated stare again.
