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“But I was your first kiss too, so I was comfortable. You made those times I was in hell feel like heaven. I wanted to die so many times, wanted it all to end, but I had you, so it was worth it. Living was worth it. I trusted you with all my firsts, just like you trusted me.”
Ultimately, this is my fault.
Trauma made me a shell, but I’ve slowly cracked free from it, and Chris can no longer touch me or even look at me. But I lost Kade in the process.
“Despite our ending, we always had great trust. I’m sorry you got a distorted view of what happened that night, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner about Chris. I was scared that he’d do something to you, or whisk me far, far away. I didn’t want to lose you, so I kept the abuse to myself.”
“You feel alone,” I say, my voice breaking. “So do I.” When he doesn’t look away, I press further, sliding off the bed and onto the floor. “You feel broken.” A beat, and I add, “So do I.”
“I wish we could go back to the day we found out I was pregnant. Sometimes, I picture what she would look like. Blue eyes like yours, hair like mine, and an attitude and personality like your dad.” I snort at myself. “She’d have definitely been a heathen. A three-year-old heathen that we loved infinitely.”
“You hate me,” he manages to say, his throat dry and rough. “You’re always going to hate me.” “I could never hate you, Kade.”
“Forgive me? Please. Please forgive me.” His words are broken, but I understand each one, muffled as he pulls away from my shoulder and drops his head into my lap, hugging the back of my knees. “I’ll do anything. I know we can’t get back what we had, and I’ll never be that eighteen-year-old kid again, but please don’t hate me. Please forgive me. I didn’t want to be like this, Stacey. I didn’t want this. I didn’t… I… Stacey.”
When he falls back to sleep, I watch him. I watch the way his chest rises and falls, the tension on his face, his dreams obviously causing him stress, even though he’s passed out. Once I’m certain he’ll stay asleep, I lift his hand and kiss his knuckles. “I won’t leave you,” I promise. “And don’t you dare leave me.”
I want the real Kade back. This Kade Mitchell is a glitch in the universe. But he’s my glitch, not Bernadette’s, not Archie’s, not the men and women who paid for his forced services and punctured him with needles to dope him up. Under the skin of the devil they created, buried in the fucking void of the darkness he’s trapped in, I will find a glimmer of his humanity. Why? Because he’s mine.
Tobias leans down and picks up the severed foot. “Think fast,” he says as he throws it at Barry’s face.
He doesn’t believe he’s safe and with his family. I think that’s the scariest part. Watching the light vanish in his eyes as he dissociates and goes elsewhere in his mind.
I don’t want to lose him again. I’m so fed up of losing him.
“I don’t know why you’re here. Is it… Is it because you f-feel bad? Am I imagining you here? Does Stacey know you’re here? Did you pay me? Have I lost you?”
“Kade. I am Stacey.” I tighten my grip on his hand as the questions keep mindlessly falling from his lips. “I’m your forever, remember?”
“Because you’re with me? I can keep you safe?” “Yeah. He’ll never be able to hurt me again. I promise.”
“I… Stacey loves you.”
Do I think Stacey loves Kade? Infinity times yes. I asked myself on his private jet, minutes after he whisked me away to protect me from Bernadette, if I was in love with him. I said I wasn’t sure. But I’ve never not been in love with Kade.
“Yeah, she loves you so, so much. She thinks you’re strong and brave, and all she—” My voice breaks. “All she wants to do is cuddle you.”
The last thing I hear are whispered words in Russian. “Moya vechnost.”
“If you fart in my face, I’ll tell Kade.” I scoff as Tobias pushes me further up the tree with a camera strapped around my neck. “Kade has heard me fart plenty of times, thank you very much.” When I look down, he’s shaking his head then smiling. “Aria accidentally farted once, and she was mortified. It smelled terrible, and she walked out of the room with the reddest face. I found it cute.”
“I don’t think anyone has ever referred to my farts as cute.” Tobias snorts. “Well, you aren’t Aria.”
“Doing the same thing every single day wasn’t a life I wanted to live.
“I would do anything to protect my people, little one.”
Tobias and I tried to track how many victims fell to his violence, and we stopped when the numbers neared five hundred.
“Kade’s gone! He ran out the back door five minutes ago!”
He shrugs away from them and turns to Aria, who’s sobbing and begging him to stay, to find another way, but all he does is smile at her, take her face and kiss her on the lips. It’s more than just a kiss. It’s everything he wants. Everything he had. And everything he’ll lose. It’s a goodbye. A see you later. An eternity of wondering what if.
He’s going to raze her empire from the inside, and he’s going to take himself out in the process. Because he loves his family, and he’d do anything to save them. Kade is free, but Tobias never was. He’s been a prisoner for over twenty years.
“I love you. Every broken part of me has loved you from the moment I met you.” “I love you too,” she sobs. “I need you to come back to me. Please. Please, Tobias.” “It was never going to be an easy road. At least now I can do something good for my family. Live your life the way you were supposed to without me, Doctor.”
“I’ll make it worth it, little one,” he whispers against my hair. “Just you watch. Heaven and hell will see the flames of their downfall.”
“One last thing…” She raises the gun, aiming it straight at me. “You’ve been a pain in my ass from the start.” My eyes screw shut as she pulls the trigger, and there’s a harrowing scream, a loud bang that hurts my ears, and warm liquid hitting my face and arms. I open my eyes to see Kade’s brother standing in front of me. He drops to his knees as Aria reaches him, but it’s too late. The bullet is lodged in Jason’s skull.
I never felt complete until I was dared to kiss Kade, then he cornered me in the kitchen and kissed me again and again and again. Everything went uphill from there.
Jason McElroy is a hero. My hero. Everyone’s.
In the end, I survived because I kept holding on for her, even when I didn’t realise it – promising myself I’d get back to Stacey as the same eighteen-year-old kid who fell in love with her.
She tucks a strand of dark hair behind her ear. I wish I could feel how soft it is between my fingers. I used to always play with her hair. She was my anchor. I think she still is.
“My heart’s been pounding in my chest since you asked me to come here with you.”
My lungs give up as I swing the door open to the girl I’ve been obsessed with since I was fifteen.
“Because I love you. Because I’ve always loved you. Regardless of what you’ve gone through and the changes we’ve both had to make to our lives, my feelings remain the same, Kade. I won’t stop loving you.”
“You have a beautiful soul,” she says. “You’re worth more than death.”
She’s the only person I’ve ever willingly wanted. The only person to turn me on. The only person I’ve pictured spending the rest of my life with.
“Kiss me,” she whispers against my mouth, knowing how desperately I want to do just that. “It’s just me and you. It’s always been me and you. Against the world.”
She carefully takes my face between her hands, her pupils dilating more with every second. “I love you. I’ve loved you since we were eighteen. And I’ll love you until we’re old and grey and we’ve lived our whole lives together.”
“I’m too busy to rest.” Correction: he needs to continue torturing Archie in the freezer.
“I want to try and kiss you again. Can I?”
Everything he’s done in his life – kill, fuck, torture – he did to protect those he loved. Including me. I almost smile, elated deep within as butterflies bloom, as I look into the eyes of the only person I want to be with. He’s the only person I’ve ever wanted to be with. Kade Mitchell loves me. I’m his. And he’s mine.
“And what is it you want?” “You. I want to be the person you think of when you wake up, when you go to sleep, when you slide your hand between your legs and find pleasure.”
“Your body. I want to be the only person to touch, kiss and fuck you. I want to claim all your emotions. Fear. Anger. Misery. Happiness. Love.”
“I want your heart, every single fucking fragment that I’ve broken over the years. I have your past and your present, and I want to be a selfish asshole and have your future.”
“The monster in me wants you to be terrified. I want you to run to the other side of the world again and stay there.” He pulls his thumb away, leaving me panting with need. “I want you to be scared of me.”
“You should be scared of me. I might worship the ground you walk on, but you don’t have the faintest idea what I’m capable of. I could snap your neck without blinking, mistaking you for a client. I could fuck you so hard you pass out. I could really hurt you, Stacey.”
