Page 60 of The Redemption of Alex Cade
“Kel, please,” I begged, gathering him closer, rocking him in my arms. “Don’t leave me. Not like this.”
His body grew heavy, his breathing shallower with every irregular breath. “Everything I did,” he murmured, his voice a whisper, “was for you. Only you. Always you.”
The light in his eyes died as his body slackened in my arms.
He was gone.
A sound tore from my throat, primal and broken, as I held him. The boy who’d protected me, the man who’d built an empire around me, the shadow who’d followed me, kept me safe, suffocated me with his desperate, obsessive love. Gone. All of it gone.
I don’t know how long I knelt there, cradling his body, my tears falling onto his still face. Minutes or hours, time lost all meaning. The blood was drying on my hands, sticky and dark, when I reached, not for my smartphone, but the cheap burner.
It rang twice before it was answered.
“McNally,” I said, my voice hollow. “It’s Alex Cade. There’s been an… incident at Euphoria.”
A pause on the other end. “What kind of incident?”
I looked down at Kelvin’s still face. “Just get here.” I ended the call and pushed the phone back into my pocket. Then, I gathered Kelvin’s body closer, pressing my forehead against his.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, though I wasn’t sure what I was apologising for. For needing to leave behind the life he’d built for me? For everything we’d shared, had been together, and never would be again?
For not understanding sooner that his love, and obsession with keeping me safe, had become a prison for us both?
As I waited for McNally, I closed my eyes and held on to the only constant I’d known in my life.
The wall was crumbling, brick by brick, but the cost had been higher than I ever could have imagined.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
ALEX
It was past midnight when I finally made it back to Kit's. The porch light was on, the replacement bulb for the one Kelvin had smashed a warm beacon cutting through the darkness. My hands trembled as I turned the key in the lock, exhaustion settling into my bones like lead. I'd been at the police station for hours, going over the story again and again until it’d almost felt real.
Almost.
Kit was waiting in the living room, curled up on the sofa, his face pale with worry. The moment I stepped through the door, he was on his feet.
“Thank god you’re back.” Relief washed over his features before his eyes widened, taking in the mess I was.
I was in a navy suit, a spare I always kept at Euphoria, not the jeans and the grey jumper I’d been wearing when I’d goneto seek out Kelvin. Those had been covered in blood, both mine and Kelvin’s, and surrendered to the police.
“What the hell’s happened?”
I couldn't speak. The words were trapped somewhere in my chest, buried beneath layers of shock and guilt and a numbness that had settled over me since I'd watched Kelvin bleed out on the office floor. The reality of it—Kelvin was dead and that I was, maybe, possibly, probably responsible—still hadn't fully penetrated the icy fog in my head. Kit approached cautiously, as if I were a wounded animal that might bolt, lifting a tentative hand to the bruises and swelling on my face.
“I found him at Euphoria. We fought. It was brutal.” My voice cracked. My legs began to shake, and as I’d caught Kit the night before, now he caught me. Somehow he got me to the living room and onto the sofa.
A bottle of brandy appeared, a supermarket own brand I remembered from what felt like another lifetime ago. He poured a glass and held it to my lips, urging me to drink. The alcohol burnt all the way down to my stomach, calming me a little, enough to stop the worst of the shaking as I looked at him and held his gaze.
“Kelvin’s dead.”
“What?
“He pulled a knife on me. Stan. That fucking Stanley knife he carried. It was?—”
“Tell me. Tell me everything that happened. From the beginning.”
And I did. In stumbling sentences, between bouts of shaking, between more tots of brandy.
