Chapter 75 What happened?
The streets are starting to look familiar. I blink out of whatever trance I’ve been trapped in and look down slowly, turning the phone over in my hand. I stare at the screen for a long moment before exhaling quietly through my nose. Then, after way too much thought, I unlock my phone and go into my contacts.
Bastian....
I tap the message icon beneath his contact. My thumb hovers over the keyboard, but my mind blanks almost immediately. What the hell am I even supposed to say? I can barely think straight right now.
My thoughts feel tangled together so tightly they’re impossible to separate. And underneath all of it is this awful ache I don’t know what to do with. I hate this....whatever this is. I hate every fucking second of it. I hate how intensely I feel everything around him. How quickly he gets under my skin. How even now, after what just happened, part of me still wants to go back.
My head hurts. I slowly lower the phone into my lap and stare through the windshield instead. George drives in complete silence. Like tonight hasn’t shifted something permanently off its axis. I take a breath, the air feeling tight in my lungs, and lean forward slightly.
"Is he... is he going to be okay?" I ask, my voice a low, cautious rasp.
George’s head tilts a fraction of an inch, his eyes catching mine in the rearview mirror. He looks like he’s checking whether he heard me right, before his attention returns to the road.
“You’re worried about him?” he asks.
There’s genuine surprise in his voice. I frown. “Shouldn’t I be?”
No response. The silence stretches out, long and heavy. George turns back to the road, his jaw set.
"He’ll manage," he says finally.
Manage...
I don’t like the sound of that at all. What the hell does that mean? The word feels cold, like a bandage over a gaping wound. It sounds too lonely.
We make a turn, the familiar corner of my block appearing through the glass. We’re only minutes away. I open my mouth to ask how he'll manage, but George speaks first.
“Piece of advice?” I glance at him warily. He doesn't wait for my permission “Go back to your life, Kaden,” he says evenly. “Find someone else to mess around with.”
I stare at the side of his face.
"Why?"
All I get is silence again, deeper this time. Then George sighs quietly through his nose.
“Because it’s my job to look after him,” he says, and for the first time, he sounds tired. My stomach tightens. He keeps his eyes on the road. “And this thing between you two was a bad idea from the beginning. Trust me, kid...you’re better off getting out before he drags you someplace neither of you can come back from.”
The words settle heavy in my chest. Neither of us speaks after that. A few minutes later, the car pulls up outside my house. The second it stops, I reach for the handle. I need something familiar. I’m desperate for air that doesn't smell like Bastian’s leather seats or his expensive cologne. Something normal. I step outside and the cold hits me instantly. George doesn’t linger, doesn’t say goodbye. The car disappears down the street almost immediately, leaving me standing there alone in the dark.
I look up at the house. At my car still parked outside beside Josie’s. Everything looks exactly the same as it did yesterday. I start walking toward the front door slowly, each step feels weighted. As I pass my car, my eyes snag on the fixed tire. My mind flashes back through the night in sharp fragments.
The orange trees, the wine cellar. Bastian kneeling to put slippers on my feet. His hands on me. His mouth against my throat. That terrified look in his eyes after he woke up...
I don’t understand how any of this happened. How I got here. By the time I reach the front door, my hands are shaking hard enough that it takes me two tries to get the key in. The house is dark and quiet when I slip inside. I don’t bother turning on the lights, I know this place by memory.
Right now my brain’s focused on exactly one thing, my room. My bed. I wanna sleep, or at least hide under blankets until my thoughts stop clawing at me.
I move through the hallway as quietly as possible, shoulders tense, exhausted down to my bones. I’m already at my bedroom door when another one opens behind me. Light spills into the hallway. I freeze. Josie stands there in mismatched pajamas, confusion written all over her face.
"Kaden?" she whispers, her voice thick with sleep. She rubs her eyes, trying to make sense of me. Then those same eyes move over me slowly. Her expression shifts. “What time is it?”
I don’t answer, I can’t. I just stare at her, desperately wishing I could just disappear through the wood of my bedroom door. She lets out a sigh, shaking her head as she leans against her doorframe.
“I wasn’t gonna say anything,” she says tiredly, “because I get it. People have stuff they wanna keep private. Fine. Whatever.” Her eyes narrow slightly. “But there’s a difference between being private and just straight up lying to my face.”
I tighten my grip on the doorknob. I can’t look at her. I can’t look at anything.
“I asked you point blank if you ended things—”
She stops mid sentence. The shift is immediate, like the air getting sucked out of the room. I finally lift my gaze, and I’m not sure what she sees in the wreckage of my expression, but her anger evaporates so fast it almost feels violent. Concern takes its place instantly.
“Kaden?” she whispers.
The lump in my throat is back, so sudden and painful it almost steals my breath. I can’t swallow. A wave of sadness crashes over me and leaves me drowning under it. I suddenly want my room so badly it physically hurts. I want darkness. Silence. A locked door between me and the rest of the world.
Josie straightens immediately. “Kaden,” she says again, quieter this time. “What’s wrong?”
I can’t answer, I try to. My lips part, but my chest feels too tight, my thoughts too tangled.
“What happened?” she asks, stepping closer, her voice cautious. I search desperately for something to say, anything. But all that comes out is...
“Josie.”
My voice cracks around her name. I’ve been lying to her for days. Sneaking around behind her back. Pretending everything was fine while I got pulled deeper and deeper into something I didn’t even understand myself. She moves toward me instantly.
“Oh, Kaden.”
The sympathy in her voice destroys me. It sounds exactly the way it did after my last relationship imploded. Same look in her eyes too. Same gentleness. Like she already thinks she knows what happened. I don’t even realize I’m crying until the first hot tear tracks down my cheek. I’m confused and overwhelmed...I’m wondering why the fuck I’m even crying for a man who just threw me out at two in the fucking morning like trash. But the pain is there anyway, heavy and suffocating.
I'm still half trapped in that office with Bastian’s hands around my throat and panic all over his face.
Josie wraps her arms around me before I can stop her. I fold instantly. My arms lock around her tightly, holding on harder than I mean to. She smells like laundry detergent and vanilla lotion and safety. Her hand slides up and down my back slowly.
“What did that jerk do to you?” she asks softly.
I shake my head immediately against her shoulder. Because the worst part is...I don’t think he did anything. Not really. That wasn’t him back there. It was his body. His strength. His hands. But it didn’t feel like him. Not the man who fixed my hoodie strings because they bothered him. The man who looked at me with that smug, beautiful smile was nowhere near that study.
"I'm sorry," I choke out, the words muffled by her pajama top. "I'm sorry I lied to you. I didn't mean to hurt you."
Her grip tightens. "It’s okay," she says softly, rubbing a hand up and down my back in slow, steady strokes. Then she pulls back just enough to look at me, her hands staying on my shoulders.
I rub my cheek against the sleeve of the hoodie...his hoodie...to wipe the tears before more can come, but she reaches up anyway, thumb brushing beneath my eye carefully. Her eyes searching mine for the story I’m not telling.
“Kaden, what happened—”
Her gaze drops. I feel the exact moment she sees it. The way her hands stiffen on my shoulders, the way the air in her lungs hitches. She’s looking at my neck, at the marks that must be darkening into a vivid map of where his fingers were. I see her doing the math.
“Josie,” I say quickly, shaking my head. “It’s not—”
Her eyes snap back up to mine, and the fire in them is enough to burn the whole house down. "Oh, hell no," she says, her voice low as she shakes her head. "Hell no."