Journey
“There is an alarm system now.Will you please take a breath?” I wrapped my hands around Cade’s face, trying to pretend that I was totally relaxed and not at all on edge, even though I was. Cade was tense, which meant I was tense.
“She’ll be fine. The girls are going to stay with her, and Tobias is glued to Gemma’s side. Shiner is here, too.”
Cade pulled his attention away from Isaiah without saying a word. He stayed propped against the library bookshelf, waiting for Cade to tear himself away from me.
“We gotta go if we want to make it before visiting hours are over.”
There was still nothing coming from Cade, but I could see everything racing behind his eyes. His cut jaw was tight underneath my palms, and I wanted to massage the little muscles kicking back and forth along his temples.
“What’s going on?” I asked, bringing his attention to me. Isaiah sighed heavily and walked away, giving us some privacy.
“What do you mean?” he finally asked, trying his hardest to close off the nerves that may not have been evident to anyone else, but they were to me.
I bet if I were to move my hand to his chest, his heart would be thumping so hard it would hurt my palm. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“No,” he was quick to answer, and it made me pause. “I promise.”
I stared at him for one long second, and deep down, I didn’t think he was lying. He and I were past the untrusting phase. I read the text messages from Jacobi, who I had briefly met after leaving the psych hospital months ago, and I knew that Cade, along with Brantley and Isaiah, were going to the prison that their fathers were at, awaiting trial, to ask them about this Slave person. I knew that the police had absolutely zero leads on Sister Mary—at least that was what they’d been telling Headmaster Ellison every day since they’d ‘pulled me out of bed’ to talk.
“You’re not telling me something.” I paused, feeling my eyes soften at the tormented look on his face. The easygoing version of Cade that was in my room every night, where we were tucked away from everything and everyone, wasn’t the same Cade I was looking at. He was troubled, a storm brewing in the depths of those dark eyes that typically reminded me of honey. The realization hit me a second later. “It’s because you're going to see your father, isn’t it?”
Only someone who didn’t have parents could let something like that slip by until it smacked them square in the face. He’s seeing his father. His father who is in prison. His father who scared his mother so much that she left without even saying goodbye to her son.
“No.” The word ran out of his mouth so quickly I barely caught it. When I peered up at him, he was staring blankly at a book above my head.
My hands left his tense cheeks when he ran his fingers through his hair, breathing in short, quick breaths. My heart flinched as I saw this perfect guy standing in front me, fighting back and forth with something on the inside. I stayed quiet as he worked through it, his jaw clenching and unclenching, his eyes narrowing and un-narrowing.
“Fine,” he whispered, breaking through the wall like I knew he would. “You’re right. I fucking hate him, and I’ll hate him until I take my last breath.”
There was a simple solution to this. “Then, don’t go.”
He looked like I had slapped him, so I quickly added, “It’s just… It’s not worth it. It’s not worth making you feel this way.”
His sarcastic laugh hit my face just as his hand wrapped around my chin, tilting my head so those storm-brewing eyes could pin me to the bookshelf. “Oh, I’m fucking going. Anything that can bring us closer to figuring out who the fuck is trying to take you is worth it to me. And I will not let Tommy Walker stand in the way of that.”
The edge in his voice when he said his father’s name struck something inside of me. There was pain there, and resentment, and those were two things that I could understand. I’d felt them a million times over when I’d let myself run with the idea that my parents had given me up because they didn’t want me, or that there was something worth more than having me as a daughter. The resentment went down to my bones, and I latched onto exactly what Cade was feeling. Anger started to coil in my belly that someone—his father, of all people—could make Cade, who was selfless beyond belief, feel so much bitter resentment and animosity. That anger drove me straight down the back of the library with Cade’s wrist locked in my hand, passing by several aisles of books, until we got to the ancient history section.
“What are you doing? You’re not stopping me from going no matter how guilty or bad you feel that I’m doing it for you.”
“Then you better be quick,” I said, reaching up on my tiptoes and planting a kiss on his lips. Something delicious whirled around my stomach that replaced the pungent taste of indignation when I landed on level feet again. Cade’s formally stormy eyes were hooded with something else entirely.
“What are you doing?”
“Something to calm you down for the road?” I asked, placing my hands on the button of his dark jeans.
His hand dove into my hair, cupping the side of my face. “Journey Smith, what am I going to do with you?”
I shrugged, looking away for a second. “I hate knowing that your father hurt you.”
“Tommy Walker didn’t hurt me,” he was quick to say. “But even the thought of him makes me fucking angry.”
I licked my lips as I pushed his pants down and pressed up against his boxer briefs that were already sporting something hard. “Fine. I hate seeing you angry, then.” My fingers were inside his boxers, and his hand tightened in my hair. “And when you get back and you get the information you’re determined to find, you can work out the rest of your anger…on me.”
“Hmm,” he hummed, licking his lips.
“Deal?” I asked, ready to drop down to make Cade focus on me instead of this demented father that he was about to come face to face with after getting him thrown in jail. There was something deep in my stomach that pulled my heart lower, feeling guilty that Cade was going through something that dealt with me, but I also knew that Cade was as determined as they came, and no matter what I said to him, he would be going, and he’d be having words with likely the only person he feared.