“I would rather die than hurt you.” I swallowed as he pulled me to my feet, wrapping his hands around my face. “I need you to know that. Tell me you hear me.”
I didn’t know desperation could look so good on a guy like him. The hollow part of his cheeks were reddened from our loss of time, and his eyes were wild and untamed, trapping me there with a fierce need to prove something to me.
“Please,” he urged, rubbing the pads of his thumbs over my cheekbones. “No matter what happened in this place or while we were apart, I need you to know that my heart still beat for you.” His head dropped with this admission, and he blew out a breath.
There was a slight prickle in the back of my throat as my hands came up and wrapped around his large wrists. “I hear you. I just thought you had abandoned me that night, like everyone else.”
“I now know how that feels, and I’m sorry. If I could go back, I never would have left you alone. I never would have written that note to meet up.” A harsh chuckle left his throat. “I never should have let you fall for me.”
“Falling for you had nothing to do with what happened to me. You read what Sister Mary had said. There’s been a threat on my life since I was born.” I glanced up at him, seeing the trouble brewing. “Wait, what do you mean you know how it feels to be abandoned?”
He shrugged, dropping his hands from my face. I watched in confusion as he went over to grab my underwear and jeans. I felt a strange tenseness to him that felt too familiar to my own when he bent below me to slip my underwear back up my legs. It was a sweet gesture, and if I weren’t so wrapped up in the way his nostrils flared with silent anger, I would have said thank you, but instead, I placed my hands on his, resting right over my hips with him bent below. “You don’t get to shut down. Not after what just happened.”
We stared at each other like we were opponents in a game. He was on offense, and I was on defense. My eyebrow raised, and he glanced away. His warm breath floated over my bare legs. “I just meant that I can understand, on a certain level, how you feel.” Cade began putting my jeans on, slipping my foot inside each rightful hole and sliding them up my legs. “My father is a piece of shit. I get it. I know the things he’s done, and my mom is better off without him. But she left me without saying goodbye or leaving a forwarding address. So, I get the feeling of abandonment to an extent.”
Ouch. I had always made up some fruitless story in my head that my mom had left me with good intentions. I conjured up some fake fairy tale that she was going to come back for me and save me from my life of poverty, abandonment, and loneliness. It was comforting to think the best of her. I wasn’t sure how it would feel to know the truth and for that truth to be nothing good.
“Cade,” I whispered, wrapping my arms around his waist. My head went to his chest, and I winced at the hard pounding of his slightly broken heart. “I’m sorry.”
For a second, he just let me hug him. His chest didn’t rise with breath, and I knew he was holding it. He was holding his emotions in so I couldn’t see his pain, but I felt it, and I understood it. “Breathe,” I whispered.
He took a hefty gulp of air, and that was when he wrapped his arms around me. I nodded against him, and we stayed like that for what seemed like hours.