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teeth. “It’s Bernadette. She’s in my head all the fucking time. Every single thing I do, I hear her voice, smell her fucking perfume and feel her nails clawing into my skin. I’m trying so damn hard to push it all aside and be good enough for you.” He eats up the distance between us, making my pulse race. “I. Don’t. Know. How.”
“I need you too,” I add. “Even if I’m a bag full of trauma?” I smile. “I have my own bag. We can swap when they get too heavy and we need a balance.”
Nothing about Kade scares me. Even if he did chase me down a highway on a motorbike and point a gun in my face, shoot at me, finger me while covered in blood, along with all the other messed-up things he’s done. He doesn’t scare me. That side – the scary, vicious and extremely dangerous side – is the one everyone sees, but I get to see a different Kade. The real Kade.
“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.”
“You once told me not to be afraid of you. That sometimes people need to change to survive.”
The sound cracks my chest open and painfully squeezes my heart, knowing that I’ll never see Tobias again or hear him call me little one.
The images in his file keep flashing behind my eyes. He’s been so abused, so brutalised by these people, I kind of want him to let loose his demons and destroy everyone.
The glaze in her eyes tells a thousand stories, all of them ending in heartbreak. We all know there won’t be any breakfast in the morning.
“You’re stronger than I am. To go through what you did and still put others before you… I envy your strength. I want a normal life with you, but that’s not on the cards for me. If I could run and guarantee your safety, I’d run.”
“I want to sleep with my girl in my arms one last time.”
“Even when he was here, I wasn’t lost. I was scared of him, put up with his violence, but I never let him break me.” I gulp down the water. “You’d think with everything he put me through, I’d be fragile and a shell, but I guess I got used to it.”
“I’ll try. I don’t think I’ve ever put myself first, because I had no future that looked pretty. Chris robbed me of everything, and I’ve been zoned in on Kade to try to make sure he’s okay.”
“Before anyone else, love yourself, Miss Rhodes. You cannot give your all to someone if you aren’t doing the same for yourself.”
I’m awake and I’m here, I want to tell them. I can hear you all, but I can’t talk. I want to tell them that we’re going to be safe. I want to tell my dad we’ll all be okay. My dad loved us.
“Fuck. I can’t. I can’t keep running from this. I was thinking about it the other day. If this bit me on the ass, I wouldn’t drag you down with me.”
“Having a normal life with you was all I ever wanted, but I don’t have that luxury. I don’t have time. All I have are the memories with you, and they’ll keep me fucking going. But you need to let me do this. You need to.”
“I’m yours, and you’re mine.” My jaw trembles. “Forever,” I say shakily. “I love you.”
Kade Mitchell and Stacey Rhodes – the fifteen-year-olds who met by the pool twenty years ago – finally get to have their forever.
