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“You have a thing for decapitating people, it seems.” He chuckles. “I had no idea, but I guess I do.”
“I missed you.” Tobias stops and turns to me. “What?” “When we thought you were dead. You’re like a dad to me. And… and you were the first person to believe me. I told my own dad when Chris started abusing me, and he said I was just a hormonal teenager seeking attention. But you didn’t even hesitate to offer me support. It took me so long to find my voice, and it was you who got that voice to work. Thank you. Truly. You saved a little bit of my sanity that day.” His cheeks go red, and he busies himself with the eggs again.
“Your dad has a decapitated head in the freezer.” He laughs. “Sometimes I forget how psychotic he can be. Come on. Let’s go back to bed, Freckles. It’s cold without you.”
“Bernadette is in the kitchen,” I say to him. “Come watch her eat Archie.”
“He asked you a motherfucking question, bitch. How did your husband taste?” Her brows pull together in a confused frown, her bones shaking. “W-What?” Base grins. “I think you ate a part of his leg.” “Yep,” Dad says. “But we can’t be sure since Kade blew him up with a grenade in his mouth.” She vomits all over the table and passes out.
For two days, Bernadette is forced to eat her husband until we decide what’s next on our let’s-torture-Bernadette-until-we’re-bored plan.
“He belongs to me,” she whispers to Base, her eyes going in all directions. “He w-was mine all those n-n-nights we spent together. You were n-never enough for him, Sebastian.” He scoffs. “Are you for real? Who the fuck was the one getting him off when you failed to?” I roll my eyes, but he’s not wrong.
My friend grabs Stacey’s hand and places it right over my cock. “I think we should prove just how wrong she is,” he says, and despite it being both their hands on me, my dick reacts. “We should prove that we’re both enough for him.”
I look over his shoulder as he goes back to kissing and biting my throat to see Base using a small blowtorch on Bernadette’s face.
“Your brain is being starved of oxygen and nutrients. Isn’t it, Bernadette? Your skin is changing colour. Feel how we rob you of breath, of life.” He lets go of her hair and holds her nape, pushing her into Base’s hold. “Fucking die.”
A tear slips down Base’s cheek as he grits his teeth, his arms locked, shoving forward, and when he lets go, Kade snaps her neck with a rapid crack to the left. Her body drops to his feet, and he stares at her lifeless form.
“Fuck, we killed her.” Kade nods. “Yep.” “She’s dead.” “Uh-huh.” “Gone.” “She’s fucking dead, Base.”
Bernadette Sawyer, the woman who destroyed a part of him that Kade will never get back, is dead. But no weight lifts from my shoulders.
Base grabs Kade and pulls him into him, and I try not to get involved as Base starts sobbing into his chest. Kade is emotionless, but he’s comforting his friend.
“We survived.” “We did.” “Then why do I still feel dead inside?” he asks. “Why is it still hurting?” Kade grabs him by the nape and pulls him back in for a hug, slapping his back a few times. “We’ll be dead together. You die, I die, remember?” “You die, I die,”
“It doesn’t feel over.” “I don’t think it ever will,” he says, pulling me into his chest and kissing me. “Now, about that home. White picket fence or brown?”
“You make me feel alive, Stacey. I’ve been dead for such a long fucking time.”
I don’t sleep yet though – I stay with her against me, studying her face, playing with her hair while I silently go through every scenario in my head. Every scenario I’ve thought of that could ruin this moment. None of them happen. Instead of the house blowing up or Bernadette rising from the pits of hell to take this away from me, I slip into a deep, peaceful slumber.
“Your little girl will be proud of you,” she says, and it stabs me right in the heart. “Both of you.” Kade’s chin dimples as he holds in his emotions. His eyes go red, and he fights against the sound threatening to leave his throat before nodding and going through the rest of the box.
“Giana is pregnant.”
Rage overtakes me as I hear tyres screeching outside, and I fist my hands, turning and running out the room and down the steps, throwing the front door open. I don’t falter at the number of officers surrounding the house. All of them have guns – they’re pointing them right at me as my footsteps carry me to the middle of the garden. I throw my arms out to the sides. “How can you all do this?” I yell. “How dare you all stand there with your guns knowing what he’s been through?” “Hands behind your head!” one shouts at me. “He’s innocent! He was forced to do everything, and you all know it!”
“I love you,” he says, breathless from running after me. “I’ll love you for the rest of my life. I love you more than fucking anything, but I need you to walk to the porch.”
“Let go and walk to my mother, Stacey,” he demands, his throat cracking. “Please.” “I can’t let go.” The dogs are barking inside, and more cars are speeding towards the house. “I’m yours, and you’re mine.” My jaw trembles. “Forever,” I say shakily. “I love you.”
More tears fall down my cheeks, and I can’t stop them. It’s the strong connection between us. The love. The possessiveness of what we have. We’ve belonged to each other since we were fifteen, in a way. I’ve always wanted him, and now I’m about to lose him – the boy who sat at the pool, whose cigarette I stole; the innocence of him as he used to watch me, as I’d watched him throughout the years. Until that first kiss, and the second, and every kiss after. We fell harder than I thought possible. We lost. We fought. But after so many hurdles, we were so close.
Kade was supposed to get six life sentences, though the officers told him if he took the fall and told them what happened to Chris and Bernadette, they’d free me, Barry and Base, and reduce his sentence to ten years. They lied. He was given two life sentences with no hope of ever being a free man again. But I refused to let that happen, so Aria and I got to work right away on his appeal. After five appeals and a worldwide debate on his sentencing, we managed to reduce it from two life sentences to fifty years. Then Aria got a new lawyer in, but the next appeal fell through, and then another,
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and the next appeal blew up the internet. Ultimately, when his sentence was reduced one last time, we accepted it was time to stop fighting. Kade was ready to stop fighting as soon as he was told he’d never be free again, but the world refused to let him die in prison. It rallied for Kade, and now I get to stand outside the prison next week and run into his arms.
He slides his hand up my chest and grabs my throat, using his hold to control me as he cuts off my air. “I want to feel your pussy strangling my cock while your eyes roll to the back of your pretty little head.” “I think I’ll die if I come again,” I gasp.
“Then I guess we’re both dying. Because there isn’t a life for me without you.”
What if I don’t adjust? I’ve done all my therapy in here. I’ve worked on everything in here. What if I get out and the seizures and blackouts start again?” Shaking my head, I wrap my arms around him and press my forehead to his. “Then we’ll work on them like we have in here. Together.” He blinks at me, curling a strand of hair behind my ear. “Always fighting for me.
The Prince twins have been told not to try to speak to their daddy while in public – it’s a sad necessity to keep them safe. Luciella doesn’t let her eyes slip to the father of her girls as he stands with all his bodyguards. His wife is on his right, her main bodyguard behind her, and she keeps looking at me.
Anastasia is the well-behaved one. She stands with a stone-cold expression like she always does. Even when Base does manage to sneak away from his duties in the mafia, she doesn’t pay much attention to her absent father. It’s not his fault. If the Russians find out the twins are his, they’ll kill them and Luciella.
It’s not hard to tell that he’s Jason’s son. Jason Junior. He’s his father’s double.
The gate slides open, and everyone stays put as I run. I don’t even need to think about it – my feet carry me straight to Kade, and he catches me in his arms as everyone cheers. My legs hook around him as he keeps walking, further and further away from his cage, my head buried into his shoulder. I sob into him, and he doesn’t let me go, his hand at the back of my head, his chest shaking. “You waited for me,” he says against my ear, kissing my temple. “I hope you’re ready for the rest of our lives, Freckles.”
“I told you – you need to stop letting Roman near Barry’s kids.” “He’s one and has you wrapped around his finger.”
Stacey has nearly fifty picture frames of my sketches to hang up – as soon as I was in the right state of mind, I bought a new sketchbook and didn’t stop until my hand hurt. My therapist is proud of me.
Hopper, sadly, passed away six months ago. His heart just gave up in his sleep, and Milo hasn’t been the same since. Fuck, I don’t think me and Stacey have been the same since. If it wasn’t for Roman, I think Milo would’ve died of a broken heart the same day. He’s old – I don’t think he has very long left, so we make the most of the time we do have with him. He’s my son’s best friend.
a week after my release that Stacey was pregnant – she was sick a lot, slept a lot and needed my cock a lot, and me being the doting partner I am, I gave her every inch. We got married a year ago.
He was nervous, and I didn’t want him nervous, so we set up a video call with them a few days later. And since then, he’s always calling me. And what makes it even better is that he’s just like his dad. The missing part of me that was stolen in a smaller form. I’ll do everything to protect that kid, even if the visits will stay virtual until his mother feels comfortable enough for him to be fully in my life.
He’s got Stacey’s eyes. These big green forests staring back at me every night while I read him his bedtime story and he falls asleep on my chest. His hair is as black as mine, and he loves my motorbike, even if he does startle when I start it up.
He’s still dead to the world – though I honestly think since he barely hides, they know and just leave him to it. He and Mum found their common ground when the twins were born. He still flirts with her, and she still rolls her eyes at him, but they’re friends more than anything else now.
Another daughter. Our guardian angel is watching over us, protecting her siblings. Roman, and now a girl with dark hair who’s wrapping her little fingers around my pinkie, and I melt into a puddle
We’re in our mid-thirties now, with two kids, living in a house I promised to build, and Junior even comes to stay from time to time.
My sketches are all over the walls. The dogs we had, Milo and Hopper, have a portrait above our fireplace. There’s a family portrait I did right next to it.
It all feels normal. We are normal. We’ve never been normal before. But now, since there’s no Bernadette and no Chris forcing us to the edge of darkness, and we don’t feel like we’re in forbidden territory being together, Stacey and I can just… be. Everyone knows she’s mine. And everyone knows I’m hers. Everything has fallen into place for us, and now we have it all.
Kade Mitchell and Stacey Rhodes – the fifteen-year-olds who met by the pool twenty years ago – finally get to have their forever.
