16

16

STACEY

Idon’t stop until I reach the upstairs bathroom, vomiting up my guts. Chris’s blood is on my hands, now staining the toilet lid. I stabbed him. Multiple times. I stabbed him, and I liked it. I wanted to stab him again, to hurt him, but I couldn’t focus.

Am I a monster?

I can hear Tobias laughing. I’ve never noticed how evil his laugh sounds.

I blink through my tears, wiping my mouth and pulling away from the toilet to lean against the wall. Blood on my skin, the aftermath of my orgasm on my underwear, the feeling of Kade’s fingers inside me…

I gulp and close my eyes, trying to stay calm. There’s a knock at the door, but I ignore it. Another knock, and I croak, “Come in.”

Jason pokes his head in. “I heard you— What the fuck happened?” He rushes in and drops in front of me, inspecting the blood. “This isn’t yours.”

I shake my head. “No.”

“Is he dead?”

I shrug. “I don’t know.”

He grabs a towel and soaks it, cleaning my hand and arm. “Tobias told Aria to keep him alive. He wants him to suffer.”

“I want him dead,” I whisper. “I want all of this to be over with.”

“Me too,” he replies, rubbing blood from my cheek. “Barry thinks Bernadette is planning to attack here. We should leave – find somewhere else to hide.”

I nod, unfazed. “You don’t want to go down?”

“No.” Jason sighs, sitting against the bathtub in front of me. “Does it make me weak? Not being able to go down there?”

“No. Not everyone enjoys watching people suffer.”

“I want him to suffer,” he says. “But knowing it’s my brother that’s doing it makes me uneasy. He should be in university like he was supposed to be.”

I hum. “Yeah. All our lives would be a lot different if it wasn’t for Chris. I should have told Kade back when we were eighteen. Maybe we’d all be safe.”

“Bernadette didn’t target Kade because of Christopher. I hope you aren’t putting the blame on yourself for this mess.”

A tear slides down my cheek. “I don’t know how to feel differently. Chris only came for you because of me. I didn’t only ruin my own relationship; I ruined yours.”

Jason leans forward and grabs my hand. “Stop. Stop blaming yourself.”

“Promise me you’ll win her back.”

He nods. “I promise. I’ll stay clean and get my shit together. I need to— She was—” He stops. “I need to get better for them both. Getting my brother back is more important.”

“You’re a good person, Jason. I’m sorry life handed us such a horrible hand. You both need to sit down and talk. Preferably when you’re both in the right headspace. Kade loves you; he was always talking about you when we were together. He looked up to you.”

Jason gives me a tight smile. “I’ll try. I couldn’t before because… because I was a coward.”

“I was too.”

He helps me up and hands me the towel to try to get the blood from my hair, but I give up. He goes to bed, and I pull on a hoodie and trainers.

When I walk back into the kitchen, the room is in darkness, and the screams downstairs have stopped, but I can see a strip of light running along the bottom of the basement door. I tiptoe down to see Kyle sitting in front of Chris, Aria beside him, Tobias in the corner.

There’s blood everywhere. I don’t think there’s one part of Chris that’s not red. His skin is slit open all over. They all look up at me as I reach halfway down the steps.

“He’s upstairs,” Aria says, white as a ghost. “Please go and see him. He… he’s not in a good place.”

Her eyes drop to Chris’s mangled face, his fingerless hands, the slashes all over his body, as if Kade and Tobias had gone nuts and started throwing blades around blindly.

He has holes in his knees, and a foot is lying off to the side.

With this much blood loss, I don’t think Chris will survive. His chest is rising and falling rapidly. How is he still alive?

The table full of weapons is overturned, and Tobias sits in the corner, nursing his hand with a bloody cloth.

“What happened?” I ask him, nodding to his hand.

Tobias uncovers the small gash on his palm. “I tried to make him stop. He lost himself, and we needed to ground him.”

“He hurt you?”

“Not on purpose. Go see him,” he tells me. “He’s not armed.”

My brows knit together as I glance back at Aria. She looks pale.

“I didn’t want this for my son. I have no idea what to do,” she says, stitching the holes where Chris’s fingers once were.

“I’ll go and see him,” I tell her, glancing once more at Chris then walking up the creaky steps.

Barry and two of the guards are now standing around the dining table with an iPad, papers and a laptop, discussing Bernadette’s whereabouts and ways to get her here without her own team of suited-up bodyguards behind her.

They want to kill her and her husband.

Cassie’s body was discovered. We’ll hear from her mother soon. I’m certain of it.

Was all this blood on the floor when I came down? The lights were off, but they’re on now. My foot slips on it, and Barry’s head snaps up. “There’s a trail going all the way up to the rooms,” he says, as if it’s normal. “Watch your step.”

There’s a puddle of vomit at the bottom of the stairs and crimson stains on the banister, as if he’s grabbed it while heaving.

I step over it and stop when I see a crack in the plaster on the wall. An obvious punch hole, dots of blood surrounding it.

The ruby-red boot prints take me up the rest of the stairs; there’s the outline of a hand against the wall, as if he was trying to keep himself upright. Down the hallway to the right, across from my room, the door is closed, but I can hear him.

He’s not crying, but he sounds like he’s in pain, as if he’s gritting his teeth and trying to hold back a gut-wrenching sob that’s threatening to strangle him.

I push the door open slowly, quietly, to see Kade in the corner of the room, his head bowed and between his legs, rocking back and forth with blood soaking him. His hands fist at his hair, gripping it hard enough that I know it must hurt.

“Kade,” I say as I close the door behind me, stepping into the middle of the room. “Kade.”

He flinches but doesn’t stop rocking back and forth, tugging his dark, bloodstained strands harder.

I say his name again, as gently as I possibly can. I lower myself in front of him. My fingers curl around his wrists, and he freezes his rocking, but his eyes stay down.

“Thank you,” I say, settling between his parted legs, still holding his wrists to stop him from yanking at his hair. “Chris can never touch me again. He won’t even be able to look at me again.”

For minutes, maybe hours, we stay like this. Me in front of him, holding him carefully, letting him hear my soft voice as I praise him for sticking up for me. He doesn’t give me a response, or lift his eyes to me, but I know he’s listening.

His fingers spasm uncontrollably – his body tenses, and he braces himself.

I let go of his wrists and move closer, sitting on my haunches as I take his cheeks in my palms and caress under his eyes with my thumbs. Some of the blood on his face is still wet, some parts dried.

He trembles, twitching like he’s close to seizing, and he’s so, so cold. He shivers.

“Look at me, Kade,” I say softly. “Please look at me and tell me you’re okay.”

Nothing.

I keep speaking. “I’m going to turn on the shower. You don’t need to talk, but let me look after you. Please.”

Slowly, Kade drops his hands from his hair, his head still bowed. He slips the face covering up to cover his top lip with shaky fingers and closes his eyes. I think he might be oblivious to the fact he just ruined Chris without hiding his face.

I don’t want him to hide.

He stays sitting in the corner of the room while I walk into the adjoining bathroom and hunt for a towel, some soap and a scrubber, and turn on the shower. I wait for it to get hot, and when I turn around, Kade is back to rocking again, muttering under his breath.

He’s whispering in Russian, I think. I can’t understand a word he’s saying.

I drop the towel on the sink and inch closer, trying to hear his words. The shower drowns out most of the noise, belting against the glass panel, and there’s a clicking coming from the slightly ajar window.

Kade’s shoulders shake, and he glances at me like I’m a ghost haunting him, like I’m stalking him and ready to pounce with a knife in my hand. Terror. Fear. The look of someone who’s given up and is begging for mercy.

Then the words he’s whispering are English again, and they get more distorted with his spasming body.

I stop moving when what he’s saying becomes as clear as a summer’s day.

“She’s not there. She’s not there. She’s not fucking there.” They’re uneven, his face red as he forces each one out. “Stop looking. She’s not there. She’s never there. Not there. No. She’s not there.”

This is a massive flip from the way he was while I was in that room with him, while he whispered in my ear, fingers deep inside me. Until it all got too much and I had to leave. He was in control of himself, semi-sane, but now it’s like his bubble has burst and the entire world is on his shoulders.

I sit on the bed, keeping my distance. “Kade…”

He flinches and curls in on himself, hiding in the corner some more. As if a dark shadow is pulling over him, he does everything he can to put distance between us, and I chew my lip, not sure what to do.

I’m not going to force him to look at me, but I need him to know he’s safe. I’m not Bernadette. I’m not Archie. Nor am I any of the clients who took from him when he didn’t want to give. I’m not asking him to kill anyone or to take drugs, or injecting him with substances that made him this way. I just want him to know he’s safe.

He looks like a scared little boy, and I refuse to leave him like this.

“I’m here. It’s me, Stacey. I’m not going to hurt you.”

He slaps the side of his head, his mutters growing louder, and my eyes burn while I watch my first and only love try not to destroy himself. The eighteen-year-old who was nervous to kiss me during a game of dares – who shook nervously when he pressed me into the couch and kissed me – who shared all my firsts and treated me like a princess.

My voice cracks. “I’m your Freckles, remember?”

The hand beating against the side of his head stops, and his fingers curl into his palm as he drops it so he can hold his knees with both arms.

“We have two dogs. Milo and Hopper.” They’re with the manor staff, waiting patiently for their master to return. “Do you remember when we used to walk them on the grounds, and they’d get us all muddy when they dragged us through the woods? You always held the leads because I let them go when they ran, and you’d need to chase them through the manor.”

He doesn’t need to give me a response, but I know he’s listening.

So I continue, kicking off my shoes and crossing my legs on his bed. I smile as I think of the times we’ve had.

“You always loved my singing voice, even though you said you didn’t. It made you laugh. We laughed a lot. When we were drunk and singing karaoke in Greece, or even when we were just lying in bed and talking. We always had that, you know? We kept each other smiling. You gave me a reason to live when I felt like I was already dead inside.”

I gulp, fresh tears already sliding down my cheeks.

“You still make me smile. When I think of you, I feel alive. I think of our first date a lot. London. Dinner. Hotel rooms and more firsts. They’re ours. All of those memories are ours. Kade and Stacey. Stacey and Kade. What we had was special.”

Kade stops shaking like a leaf, his head still lowered.

I study him. “I haven’t been able to watch The Greatest Showman without crying. I don’t even sing during ‘From Now On’ – can you believe that?”

The shower is still running, steam building in the room and causing the window to mist up. I stare at the blood on the floor, a slide mark showing that he slipped and stayed where he landed.

“I’m glad you designed some tattoos for me. I still have them,” I say, standing up slightly, but the movement still makes him flinch like I’ve hit him. I step back to give him space and pull my hoodie down at the back, showing him our initials warped together with the design he made. “I’ll never cover this one. It’s my favourite.”

Still not giving me his eyes, he flexes his fingers and tilts his head, so he’s looking at the wall. “She’s not there. Don’t talk to her. She’s not there. You aren’t crazy. We aren’t crazy. Because she’s not there.”

I chew the inside of my cheek.

“The first time we met, we shared a cigarette. I told you my name, and you just stared at me. I was looking for you and gave up when I reached the pool house. Jason dropped Luciella off at the studio when I first got there, and you were in the truck.”

I smile at myself, remember how I aimlessly wandered the manor during Luciella’s birthday party, hunting for her twin brother.

“Lu talked about you in class a lot. It was good to hear what it was supposed to be like having a brother – it made me like you before I even knew you, knowing you were good to your sister. I wanted to meet you.” I glance at him. “And then I did.”

I may have gone home that night, locked myself in the bathroom, and giggled as if he’d flirted with me and called me pretty. Maybe the fact he was rude had made me like him more.

“And when we got dared to kiss, I got butterflies. I fancied you, and I really didn’t want to embarrass myself during my first kiss.” I sit on the edge of the bed again, our feet close to touching. “But I was your first kiss too, so I was comfortable. You made those times I was in hell feel like heaven. I wanted to die so many times, wanted it all to end, but I had you, so it was worth it. Living was worth it. I trusted you with all my firsts, just like you trusted me.”

I swallow a lump and look to the side, hiding my tears.

I’m trying to erase the way our last night together panned out. The footage he was sent on his phone; neglecting to tell him about Chris our entire relationship and how abused I was in that house.

If I’d told him, we might not be in this position.

If I’d told him, we might have our daughter with us.

Ultimately, this is my fault.

But I was scared. Chris had instilled absolute terror into me and made me feel like I was alone, even though I had Kade. He made me feel like I was small, useless and his.

I once tried to tell my dad, but it ruined my relationship with him. He chose Chris – I was a liar.

That night, he shared my bed for the first time, and I cried until the morning while Chris wrapped himself around me, his disgusting cock hard against me. But I couldn’t tell Dad. He wouldn’t believe me. I couldn’t tell anyone if the one person who was supposed to protect me said I was a liar.

Trauma made me a shell, but I’ve slowly cracked free from it, and Chris can no longer touch me or even look at me.

But I lost Kade in the process.

I fight the wave of sadness and twist my fingers together nervously. “Despite our ending, we always had great trust. I’m sorry you got a distorted view of what happened that night, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner about Chris. I was scared that he’d do something to you, or whisk me far, far away. I didn’t want to lose you, so I kept the abuse to myself.”

I glance at him, and the breath leaving my lips stutters when I see he’s looking up at me through his messy, wavy hair, his blue eyes burning into me. As if he’s trying to merge my fractured soul with his own.

“You feel alone,” I say, my voice breaking. “So do I.” When he doesn’t look away, I press further, sliding off the bed and onto the floor. “You feel broken.” A beat, and I add, “So do I.”

I drag myself closer and settle against the wall beside him, making sure we don’t touch. He smells like copper and death and all things Kade, but I focus on the powerful presence of being near him.

“I wish we could go back to the day we found out I was pregnant. Sometimes, I picture what she would look like. Blue eyes like yours, hair like mine, and an attitude and personality like your dad.” I snort at myself. “She’d have definitely been a heathen. A three-year-old heathen that we loved infinitely.”

Slowly, shakily, he drops his hand between us, fingers spasming, his skin pale beneath the blood, tattoos and scars, most of his nails bruised. There is no way to describe how I feel right now. I stare at that hand like it’s the present I wanted for Christmas at age six.

I lower my own hand, sitting it close to his on the carpet between us, our pinkies slightly grazing. I’m thrown back to a time four years ago, a blanket over our laps while we watched a movie with his family, our touch electric. But now it’s like a trillion bolts of lightning straight to my heart.

“Can I hold your hand?” I ask him just as his pinkie spasms next to mine. His body is still curled away from me, his arms still hugging his knees, his head down and angling away. “If you want to, you can take my hand.”

The door opens, and my eyes lift to see Tobias. He glances at his son then at me and slips back away again. Hopefully he tells everyone else to stay away. Kade needs space – he’d hate it if everyone saw him this vulnerable. I shouldn’t even be here. But I don’t want him to be alone either.

For minutes – ten, I think – we stay silent, the shower still running, steam billowing from the bathroom, water droplets sliding down the window.

Kade’s entire body tenses with a spasm, and he grabs my hand in an iron grip, squeezing until my fingertips are tight and tingling, his own turning white with how hard he’s holding me.

I gasp, biting my lip and ignoring the pain of his grip.

Trembling once more, Kade tries to slap the side of his head, but I stop it by covering the targeted area with my free hand. He hits my hand instead, but when he realises, he freezes, and his head snaps up. He’s still gripping my other hand.

Red, swollen eyes stare at me in horror, like I’m a demon haunting his dreams, the monster under his bed that whispers to him about nightmares and torture.

“I’m here,” I say, gulping as I brush my fingers through his hair. I’m still holding his hand tightly with the other, our fingers interlaced. “Do what you need to do, but I’m here. We don’t need to talk or do anything.”

The material hangs off his chin, but I don’t make it obvious or look at the deep purple line from the corner of his mouth. I just keep stroking his hair, my fingers getting caught in the dry blood.

Kade breaks my heart as he slowly lowers his head to my shoulder. His hair tickles my nose. It’s sticky and tangled in places from Chris’s blood – some of it dried in completely, some still wet from mixing with his sweat – and I run my fingers down and back up, separating the hard clumps while his breathing turns less heavy.

“You hate me,” he manages to say, his throat dry and rough. “You’re always going to hate me.”

“I could never hate you, Kade.”

The dam explodes, and he grips my wrist to stop me from removing the dried blood from his hair, his shoulders tensing as he lets out a deep sob that will be ingrained in my mind forever.

The last time I heard him like this was when we saw the blood on the bed sheets – the moment we knew we’d lost our daughter. And even then, he controlled himself. He isn’t strong enough anymore.

“Forgive me? Please. Please forgive me.” His words are broken, but I understand each one, muffled as he pulls away from my shoulder and drops his head into my lap, hugging the back of my knees. “I’ll do anything. I know we can’t get back what we had, and I’ll never be that eighteen-year-old kid again, but please don’t hate me. Please forgive me. I didn’t want to be like this, Stacey. I didn’t want this. I didn’t… I… Stacey.”

He drops his head again, unable to speak as he sobs and sobs and sobs until he’s barely able to take a breath without it shattering like glass.

I can’t speak. I’m struggling to keep it together as I hug him back, holding him.

Finally, he falls asleep, but I wake him enough to get him into the shower and stand outside the cubicle while he washes, giving him his space. Then I help him onto the bed, where we lie on our backs, side by side, hand in hand, listening to the silent night.

We don’t cuddle, don’t get close, nor do we kiss each other goodnight. I understand why. We aren’t ready for that, despite him claiming me in front of Chris. Kade’s mind, body and soul have gone through a lot over the past three years. Even holding his hand is making him flinch.

When he falls back to sleep, I watch him. I watch the way his chest rises and falls, the tension on his face, his dreams obviously causing him stress, even though he’s passed out.

Once I’m certain he’ll stay asleep, I lift his hand and kiss his knuckles. “I won’t leave you,” I promise. “And don’t you dare leave me.”

Barry reckons his PTSD will be severe, and he’s abruptly stopped drugs after being on them for years, so it’ll be a messy road ahead. He fears Kade may have dissociated a few times during his abuse, but he hasn’t shown any signs of it until tonight.

That version of him was terrifying, in all honesty.

And I knew he hated seeing me afraid of him. Not from the fake threats or the gun to my head. I saw the version of him that was created through extreme manipulation.

I only last a couple of hours beside him before he wakes thinking I’m a client.

When he shouts at me to get out in a terrified voice, I do. I sit outside the room with Tobias, leaning against the door, both of us waiting for him to calm down.

In the space of an hour, he wakes up four times yelling.

I want the real Kade back.

This Kade Mitchell is a glitch in the universe. But he’s my glitch, not Bernadette’s, not Archie’s, not the men and women who paid for his forced services and punctured him with needles to dope him up.

Under the skin of the devil they created, buried in the fucking void of the darkness he’s trapped in, I will find a glimmer of his humanity.

Why?

Because he’s mine.