Faking It (Losing It, #2)(28)

Watching his chest rise and fall was soothing enough that my anger just kind of drifted away. His eyes were closed and his face relaxed when he said, “I let people go.”

I sat up on my elbow and looked at him, but his eyes remained closed.

“Um . . . if you’re referencing the Bible and that whole let-my-people-go thing . . . I’m not getting the connection.”

One side of his mouth quirked up, and he sighed.

“Last night you asked why I didn’t fight for the girl from the song. It’s because I let people go.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but I approved, as long as we didn’t have to talk about me.

“Always?”

“These days, yeah. When I was younger, I fought and lost too many times.”

I wanted him to open his eyes and look at me. This somber, closed-off Cade was disconcerting. I was in a dark enough place by myself, and seeing him like this pushed me even deeper. I never knew what to do in situations like this, so I decided to take his lead and stay silent.

I wasn’t thinking about the attraction between us. I was only thinking about comforting him when I slid closer and laid my head on his chest.

Maybe I was thinking of comfort for myself, too.

After a few seconds, the arm he’d had beneath his head came down around me. His fingertips rested on my hip, and I released a breath I’d been holding captive.

Just when I’d settled into the silence and the comfort of our closeness, he said, “My first memory of my dad is of him leaving. I was five and I asked him not to go. I begged him actually.” He breathed out in something that was almost a laugh . . . a sad one anyway. “He was gone by morning. My mom died less than a year later.” He closed his eyes, and I could tell he was somewhere else. He wasn’t with me anymore. “She had cancer, and it was like she just . . . stopped fighting. I wasn’t enough to make her want to stay.”

The grief came out of nowhere and knocked me sideways. Tears pressed at my eyes, and my throat burned with the effort of fighting down the emotions. I hadn’t cried in a long time, but the thought of Cade as a child, probably just as good and perfect as he is now, facing those things . . . it hurt. I was used to turning a blind eye to my own@Go drink emotions. I was so practiced in the art that it came easily. But I’d never had to worry about anyone else’s. I’d never been close enough to someone for it to matter. It took all of my self-control to push the emotions back behind my walls.

There were so many things to say that sat just on the edge of my tongue. But all of them seemed like too little and too much at the same time. So, I just held him tighter, and kept my eyes closed until the tears passed.

He laughed, but it wasn’t the laugh that I was used to hearing, the one that turned all eyes toward him. This laugh was bitter and broken.

“When my dad came home for the funeral, I assumed he would take me with him. I imagined what my room would be like in his new house. I stressed about whether or not his new girlfriend would like me. I was so determined to make it work that time. But he left then, too, and I went to live with my grandma.”

I listened to his heartbeat beneath my ear, and all I could think was—how much of a dick do you have to be to leave your kid even after he loses his mother? I’d never been any good at holding my tongue, and now was no exception.

I said, “At least we know douchebaggery isn’t hereditary.”

I was seconds away from suggesting a road trip to find his father and put the bastard in his place. His hand smoothed up and down my spine like he was comforting me, instead of the other way around.

Then I realized . . . he was.

A lot of things pissed me off about my parents and about Alex’s death, but nothing upset me more than the fact that I felt alone in my pain. I mean, I knew my parents missed her. I knew they thought about her constantly, but it was with this happy kind of sadness that was completely foreign to me. When I thought about Alex, it was pure, undiluted pain. It felt like my insides had been rearranged, like I still had internal trauma from the wreck. All these years later, just the image behind my closed eyes of her was enough to make me feel like I was bleeding out. I couldn’t understand why everyone else didn’t feel this way, and it made me furious.

But I could tell from the way the muscles of Cade’s chest and stomach flexed below me . . . he felt it, too. I did the same thing—flexed the muscles of my body like armor. Tendons and tissue were the only things keeping the mess inside me at bay. The only thing worse than feeling this way was putting all those emotions on display for the world to see.

For the first time in a long time, maybe since Alex, I didn’t feel so alone.

I took a deep breath and said, “My sister died.”

The hand on my back slid up into my hair. Any other time that would have sent my hormones into a rave, but now it was just soft and sweet, and it flipped a switch in the back of my mind that I spent most of my days trying to turn off.

The vision of that day in my mind never wavered or faded. It was as vivid today as it was then. When I let the memories get the best of me, I could almost imagine the blinding headlights, the sound of glass shattering, and the pressure of the seat belt cutting into my neck. I squeezed my eyes shut.

I couldn’t hold back the images, but I could hold back the tears.

Cade didn’t try to make me talk. He didn’t ask questions. His touch remained firm and constant, keeping me tethered here in the present. We lay there, wound together so tightly that I didn’t have to keep my muscles tense. I didn’t need the armor@Go drink because he was holding me together.