Page 105 of Fractured Devotion
His shoulder brushes mine, barely, a whisper of heat under layers of clothes that shouldn’t mean anything, but do. I turn to look at him at the exact moment he turns to look at me. The space between us feels impossibly charged, held together by silence and all the things we’ve refused to say.
He lifts his handwith the focus of someone savoring the moment, and he brushes a strand of hair from my face. My skin tingles where his fingers pass, and instead of recoiling, I lean into his touch like a moth tilting toward flame.
He watches me. His gaze flicks to my mouth, lingering and questioning, and then he leans in. Our lips meet softly at first, tentative, but then deepen with an urgency neither of us admits to. I don’t pull away. I kiss him back, and in that moment, it’s not about guilt or grief. It’s about gravity.
But something clenches inside me. A flicker of memory, a bruised edge of restraint. I break the kiss, my breath hitching, my forehead resting gently against his.
Kade doesn’t speak. He only looks at me, steady and unreadable, as if bracing for a rejection I can’t yet give.
“Do you think she jumped?” I ask in a calm tone.
“No,” he says.
It’s not hesitation. It’s certainty.
“Then why didn’t you say anything this morning?” I ask.
His mouth twitches. “Because I needed to confirm it before putting more weight on your shoulders.”
I exhale shakily. “You think Harper was silenced.”
“I think she was unstable,” he says. “And someone took advantage of that. Maybe more than one person.”
My hand drifts toward the edge of the couch, my fingers tangling loosely into the hem of my sleeve. I should feel relieved that someone’s looking into this. Instead, it just feels like the weight shifted direction.
Kade turns to me then. “But I won’t let them get to you.”
His words land hard, and they’re too direct.
I let the silence stretch before saying, “You can’t promise that.”
He leans slightly closer and replies, “I can. And I do.”
And for the first time since this day began, I don’t pull away.
We sit there like that until exhaustion drags my body toward stillness. Until I’m no longer hyper-aware of the surveillance, or the blood-stained memory of Harper’s last steps.
There’s just heat, air, and a presence I don’t want to admit I trust.
Not yet.
But maybe soon.
I blink slowly, realizing how heavy my limbs have become. My body’s betraying me, aching for rest even if my mind’s still tangled in a thousand knots. Kade shifts beside me, just slightly, enough to read the exhaustion in my posture.
“You should sleep,” he says, his voice gentle and laced with that disarming calm that always makes me uneasy.
“I don’t want to be alone,” I say before I can censor it. It doesn’t come out as an invitation, just truth, naked and fragile.
He nods without hesitation. “I’ll stay on the couch.”
I start to protest, but stop. He’s already settled deeper into the cushions like he belongs there, like this has happened before and will again.
I leave him there, turning off the hallway light as I disappear into the bedroom. But I don’t close the door, not all the way. Just enough to let a sliver of shared night remain between us.
From the still living room, I hear the faint rustle of him removing his jacket. Then nothing. There’s a stillness we share from different rooms. A detente of grief and need and something more dangerous beneath it all.
Tomorrow, everything might feel wrong again.
