We all watch until Kaleo, Cody, and Dante disappear over the hill on the far side of the park and then Cade turns to look at me. His expression softens for a minute. He frowns and pulls his car keys out of his pocket, tossing them to my brother.
"Titan, take her home," he says and then shoves his feet into his shoes before walking away.
I spend most of the afternoon in my bedroom, crying. My heart hurts, but it's my own stupid fault. I never should have told Cade that I want to break up. I don't want that, but I think it's too late now. He left me with Titan and stormed off. I don't even know if he's okay. He seemed fine, but Dante kept kicking him. His ribs could be broken.
By the time Titan got me to the car, I was crying too hard to tell him what happened. He drove me home, carried me to my room, then left to go find Cade. That was hours ago. He hasn't been home since.
When mom gets home from work a little after dark, she knocks on my bedroom door. I pretend I'm asleep so I don't have to explain to her what happened. She'll just worry if I tell her about the fight, and I don't want her to worry about me and Titan. She works so much and she's always tired. She doesn't need anything else to stress about.
When she finally goes to bed an hour or so later, I drag myself out of my bed and put on one of the hoodies I stole from Cade. After donning it, I sneak outside to wait for Titan to come home. I gasp when I pull the door open to see Cade sitting on the front steps, his back against a post and his head in his hands.
He jerks upright and turns to face me when I pull the door closed.
We stare at each other for a long time, not saying anything. He climbs to his feet and then leans on the post, just gazing at me. His eyes are so blue, so full of sadness. He's moving a little slower than normal, but he doesn't act hurt otherwise.
I wrap my arms around myself. The temperature always drops when the sun goes down, leaving a chill in the air, but I think I'm mostly cold from what happened today. I've never seen Cade like that before. He was furious. I've never been so afraid for him. I hate how helpless I felt.
"Are you okay?" I ask him when I manage to find my voice.
"You really want to break up with me?" he asks at the same time.
I shake my head no as tears slip down my cheeks again.
"Things like today are why I don't want to go to college. Kaleo has it out for me. I'm worried he'll come after you as soon as I'm not here to protect you," he confesses and then runs his hand through his hair, messing it all up. "He knows how I feel about you, baby girl. It's not like it's a big secret. That's why Cody said what he did today. He knew I'd go after him for it. Kaleo wanted that shit to happen. If Titan and the boys hadn't shown up…."
I'm not sure how I feel about that. Until today, I guess I never realized things are as bad as they apparently are with Kaleo. I knew things weren't great, but Cade and Titan keep a lot from me. A lot more than I realized until today. But I don't want to talk about that yet.
"What's not a big secret?" I whisper instead, dashing away my tears.
Cade stares at me for a moment, as solemn and serious as ever. "That I'm crazy in love with you."
Hearing him say he loves me sends those butterflies into flight in my stomach. My heart stops beating for a second before it races away from me.
He pushes away from the post and steps toward me, still moving slow. He reaches out to wipe away my tears with gentle hands. "Everyone knows I'm in love with you. It'd break my fucking heart if Kaleo did something to hurt you to get at me, January."
"I don't want you to put your entire future on hold for me," I tell him, trying not to cave on this even though I really want to right now. But this is important. Real damn important.
He and Titan may protect me from a lot, but I know what kind of neighborhood we live in. Compton may not be the worst neighborhood in L.A. these days, but it's not anywhere close to the best either. It's hard to miss the sound of police sirens and gunshots at all hours of the night. I know how many kids never make it out of places like this. Instead, they end up just like Kaleo. That's not the kind of future I want for Cade. He's too smart to end up stuck here with no way out. He's too good to wind up like Kaleo.
"It's not much of a future without you," he says and then gives me a sad little smile. "If you want to see other people, I won't stand in your way. I'll always be waiting for you to come back, but I'll let you go if that's what you want."
"I don't want that," I whisper. "I don't want anyone else. But you have to go to college. You're the smartest person I know. You've wanted to do something important with your life for as long as I've known you. I love you too much to let you throw that away."
He freezes, his body going still even as his smile widens. Some of the sadness leeches from his expression, replaced by hope. "You love me, baby girl?"
"I've always loved you," I tell him. It's the truth. Maybe I am just a kid and I don't know what I'm talking about. But I know that seeing him happy makes me happy and seeing him sad makes me sad. I know my chest hurts when I think about never kissing him again. I know I've never looked at anyone else the way I do at him. I know my life is better because he's in it, and when I think about him not being here, I feel like I can't breathe. I know that I'd rather break my own heart than watch him throw his life away for me. If that's not love, then I don't know what is.
"UCLA isn't far from here," he says, still smiling. "I researched that shit today. It's a thirty minute drive from our block to campus. I could do that."
"You want to go to UCLA?"
He shrugs a shoulder. "They have a pretty good literature program. I could probably get a scholarship for my grades. They offer a lot of them."
"You looked into it?" I ask.
He nods. "Yeah, I went to the library today. Figured if you were going to break up with me for not going to school, then I needed to come up with a different plan." He runs his thumb over my bottom lip. "I really don't want you to break up with me, January."
"Promise you'll find a way to go to a real school? A good one," I clarify.
"I'll do whatever it takes to make you happy," he says, completely serious. "But I won't ever leave you here alone, baby girl. I can't do that."
Chapter Seven
January
Present Day
I think I'm dying. Actually, I think my best friend is dying because I'm going to kill her. My head pounds so hard as I lay in my bed that it feels like I'm being stabbed in the temple repeatedly. My mouth feels like I tried to eat sandpaper.
And that's not even the worst part.
My heart feels like someone tossed it into an industrial-grade shredder. Cade's mouthwatering scent fills my lung until it feels as if he's right here in the bed with me. It's been ten years, but he still smells exactly the same. Like home…some indescribably rich and masculine spice that makes me feel safe and whole, even though I'm definitely not whole and probably not even particularly safe.
Even worse?
I remember each excruciating and embarrassing second of what happened last night. I thought drunk people were supposed to forget whatever humiliating things they did while intoxicated, but no. Not me. I remember every word I said. I remember the way he looked at me like I was breaking his heart even though he crushed mine a long damn time ago. I remember how hard his body felt against mine when he pulled me into his arms. I remember falling apart right in front of him.
I said things to him I never would have said without a bottle and a half of wine pumping through my system. Things I never wanted him to know. I've been hung up on him for years. Now he knows it too.
"Wine is the devil," I mumble. Cracking my eyes open, I stare up at the ceiling in my bedroom, trying to find the willpower to get out of bed and get on with my life.
"Knock, knock," Mariah says as I lay there.
I roll my eyes toward the bedroom door to see her standing right over the threshold, watching me carefully. With her hair up in a bun, her clothes all neat and ironed, and her makeup subtly perfect, she
appears as well-coiffed as she does every other day of the week. Her brown eyes fill with worry as they flit across my face.
"How are you functioning?" I groan as my head continues to throb.
Her worried expression eases and she strolls into my room. "Here," she says, holding out a glass of water, crackers, and some Tylenol. "This will make you feel better."
I grunt wordlessly, not convinced there's enough Tylenol in the world to make me feel better this morning, but I sit up carefully and take it anyway. The water soothes the worst of the pain in my throat. My tongue doesn't feel like it's glued to the roof of my mouth anymore, either.
Mariah perches on the edge of the bed while I nibble on the crackers.
"I remember what happened," I mutter, putting her out of her misery. I know she wants to ask but is afraid to remind me that I lost it last night. Not that I blame her. I wouldn't want to have to deliver that blow if our roles were reversed. Sorry to tell you, but you had a meltdown in front of your ex and had to be carried to bed doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.
"You do?" Relief flashes across her face and then she gives me a sympathetic frown. "I think you should talk to him."
"I think I talked enough last night," I mumble around a mouthful of cracker. There's no way I want to repeat that scene, thank you very much.
She eyes me for a minute, running her teeth back and forth over her bottom lip like she does when she's trying to make a difficult decision. She's done the same thing for as long as I've known her. It's a dead giveaway that I'm not going to like whatever she has to say.
"Just tell me," I sigh, ready to get it over with.
"I don't think he's over you," she blurts out.
"Yeah, right." I drop the rest of the crackers into the trashcan beside the bed, my stomach churning. Like I haven't been down that same rabbit hole before. I've had elaborate fantasies of him coming back to profess his undying love so many times over the years, it's honestly pathetic. And it always ends the same way…with me crashing back down into painful reality with all the force of a meteor. It hurts every damn time.
"I'm serious, January," she says, pushing her glasses up on her nose before turning her body to face me. "You didn't see the look on his face last night."
"What look?" I ask, curious if she saw the same thing I did or if I just imagined it. I probably just imagined it, but part of me wants to be wrong. That's the same idiotic part that still dreams about him coming back for me.
"He looked like you did for months after he left," she whispers. "And I'm pretty sure he was crying when he ran out of here."
That pulls me up short. In all the years I knew Cade, I never once saw him cry. Not even when…I jerk my mind away, refusing to think about that right now. If I go there, I'll lose it all over again. The point is, I've never seen him cry, so I doubt he was crying over me yelling at him. Mariah probably just imagined it. She was pretty drunk too.
"I'm not saying you have to forgive him," she says, squeezing my hand in a silent show of support or sympathy or whatever this particular situation calls for. "But I've known you forever, January, and you never got over him. He broke your heart and you're still hurting over it. At the very least, maybe talking to him will give you the closure you never got so you can move on. You deserve to be happy, but you never will be until you make peace with your past."
She's right, damn her. But she's wrong too, because there is no getting over Cade, not for me. Not now. Maybe not ever. I accepted a long time ago that the biggest piece of my heart would always belong to him. He claimed it before I was even old enough to comprehend that the sweet boy who always picked me up when I fell would become the man who made me fall the hardest.
"I told him I hated him."
She blinks at me.
"The day he left, I told him I hated him," I whisper, tears burning at the back of my eyes even though they don't fall. "I was so angry with everyone and everything. I told him I hated him and that I'd never forgive him. I told him that I never wanted to see him again."
I didn't mean it, but I was hurting and I lashed out at him. Back then, it seemed like the logical thing to do, to make him hurt like I was hurting. I thought he couldn't possibly understand how I felt and I didn't want to feel it alone. I was drowning and I just wanted it to stop.
Instead, I pushed him out the door. Mariah blames him because I was a coward and I let her believe he just left me. Because that was easier than facing the truth. I let him walk away. The last ten years have been my punishment, but I'm still mad at him for it.
How selfish is that? I pushed him out the door…and I'm still mad at him for letting me do it.
"Oh, January," Mariah whispers, pulling me in for a tight hug. "You were going through the worst thing imaginable and you said something you didn't mean. You're both still hurting over it. That much is obvious."
I cling to her for a minute, borrowing a little of her strength since I've never had very much of my own. Cade and Titan were always strong for me so I didn't have to be. Even after all these years, I still haven't found my own strength. It takes all I have to keep moving forward, to get up and go about each day without crashing to the ground.
I'm still in love with Cade, but I don't know how to fix what I broke. I don't even know if he wants to fix it. What if Mariah's wrong and he's moved on?
What if she's right and he hasn't? a little voice counters.
"I'll talk to him," I sigh, too scared to hope, but hopeful as hell anyway.
I spend all day waiting around the house for Cade to return to Ma Rose's, ready to get this over with as quickly and painlessly as possible. Every time a car passes by, my heart races. I find myself peeking out the window incessantly, but it's never him. I'm not even sure if he plans to return at all. For all I know, when he left last night, it was for good.
Refusing to dwell on the way that thought grinds in my chest, making my entire soul ache, I start cleaning. There isn't much to do since I live by myself, but I make my way through each room anyway, scrubbing down everything in my path. By the time dark falls, my hangover is a distant memory and the house is spotless. I've also baked enough cookies to feed a small army…and I'm still obsessing.
There are so many things I want to say to Cade. So many questions I want to ask him. He left me and never looked back. Did that hurt him at all? Did he think about me or miss me at all? It's hard to believe he hurt like I did, because he stayed away. For ten damn years. If he loved me like I loved him, how the hell did he survive?
Because I certainly haven't been surviving without him. I've been so miserable, I stopped living. I go to work and I come home. Sometimes, Mariah drags me out with her. She makes me go to dinner or to get drinks or to the movies. I go through the motions, but I'm in limbo…stuck in the past because it's not over for me. It's still haunting me. He's still haunting me.
I pour myself a cup of tea and head outside, tired of being cooped up. I curl up in a rocking chair on the front porch and listen to the crickets and frogs.
My neighborhood is falling apart, but it's still home to me. I've lived in the same house since the father I don't even remember left my mom when I was a baby. We never had much growing up, but my mom worked hard to provide for us and our house was full of love.
"You shouldn't be out here by yourself," Cade says.
I cry out, alarmed as he pops up on the other side of the porch railing. I never even heard him coming. My hand flies to my chest, trying to calm the way my pulse pounds with fear.
"You scared me," I mutter and then I get a good glimpse at him.
He looks like shit. Even with all those tattoos and that hardness—the dangerous vibe that radiates from him despite the fact that he's standing completely still—he's too handsome for words. But his eyes are troubled and rimmed with dark shadows. His jaw is scruffy where he hasn't shaved. His hair is a mess and his jeans and black t-shirt are wrinkled. The gauges in his ears and the piercing in his nose make him look dangerous in a way I find far too ap
pealing. The bandage on his arm is gone, revealing a cut about four inches long. There are still a couple of stitches holding the edges of his puffy skin together.
"I'm not the monster in the dark you should be afraid of, ba–January," he says, crossing his tattooed arms over his broad chest. His gaze roves across my face, but he never meets my eyes. Even then, I feel exposed in a way I never have before, vulnerable…like he can see all the ugly scars and jagged wounds inside me.
"I'm not afraid of Kaleo," I tell him, pulling my legs up into the chair and wrapping my arms around my knees as if that will keep him from seeing the painful, ugly things inside that still hurt.
"You should be." He climbs up the steps, his footfalls heavy on the old wood. His boots and the bottoms of his jeans are splattered with mud. He stops at the top and props his shoulder up on the post, still watching me. "He's after the park. He won't stop until he gets it or someone stops him."
"He can't have it. It's mine."
Cade eyes me for a minute and then sighs.
"I didn't think you were still here," I say when he doesn't speak. "Your car is gone."
"I left it with a friend," he says.
"Oh."
An awkward silence stretches between us. I hate it. Things have never been awkward or tense between us before. They weren't always easy, but they were always natural. Being with him was like breathing. It was effortless. I didn't have to think about it or worry about it. He never made me feel out of place or like I didn't fit. He made me feel like I mattered. Like I had a place and a purpose.
My entire life, I felt like an outsider. I've always been significantly smaller than my peers and a little bit timid because of it. Standing up for myself isn't something I've ever been particularly good at doing. Mean girls like Mandy Wright went out of their way to make me feel like I wasn't good enough. She hated that Cade didn't want her and made my life miserable because of it. But Cade always took care of me and made sure I wasn't excluded. People accepted me because of him and Titan. All these years later, people still accept me because of them.
Fight for You: A Second Chance Romance (A Warrior for Her Book 1) Page 8