Hurt me like you need me novel Chapter 17

Sawyer’s POV

The bourbon is Richard’s. Top shelf, barely touched. The bottle has probably sat in his cabinets for years because nobody in this house drinks except me and I usually have the decency to steal the cheap stuff.

Tonight I don’t care about decency.

Tonight my father turns forty-nine in a federal prison in Lompoc and my mother is at a couples’ conference in Santa Barbara with the man who replaced him.

The house is empty and I made the swim team today and I don’t know if I’m celebrating or grieving so I’m doing both with twelve-year Woodford Reserve and no glass.

I sit on my bed with my back against the wall and drink straight from the bottle and watch the ceiling fan turn.

By eleven the room has gone soft at the edges. By midnight the bottle is half gone and my phone is in my hand and I’m doing the thing I told myself I’d never do.

I open Kaylee’s thread.

The last message is still mine — Fuck you, I run where I want — sitting there unanswered for almost two weeks.

Above it, his: Six miles every morning. You should switch up the route. Above that, the one I’ve re-read forty times: You tasted better than I expected.

I type with thumbs that miss every third letter and autocorrect fixes them.

Me: Didn’t change my route. Where are you?

The bourbon makes sending easy.

Actually, it makes everything easy — sends the message, silences the voice that says you’re texting your stalker at midnight, and fills the hollow behind my ribs.

The typing indicator appears. Three dots are pulsing on the screen.

Kaylee: Patience.

I laugh. It comes out wet and wrong and I press the back of my hand against my mouth.

He wants me to be patient. He pins me to a fucking floor and swallows and says be a good boy and then ghosts me for two weeks and now he wants patience.

Me: I’m not patient.

Me: I’m drunk.

Me: I keep thinking about your mouth.

I stare at that last message. The screen glows in the dark room. I wait for the panic to hit, the shame, the scramble to delete.

It doesn’t come.

The bourbon has dissolved whatever wall I built between the thought and the words and now the words are out there, delivered, read, and I don’t feel horror.

I feel emptied. Like I’ve been carrying a suitcase up a hill for weeks and I just set it down on the side of the road and sat next to it.

No reply. The typing indicator doesn’t come back.

I put the phone facedown on the mattress and close my eyes and the room spins.

My father is forty-nine today. I haven’t called him in seven months. Last visit, he sat across the table in his khakis and told me I looked thin and I wanted to say ‘I’m exactly the thing you spent my childhood teaching me to hate’ but instead I said ‘Yeah, Mom’s cooking is good’ and watched the clock until the guard said time.

Happy birthday, Dale.

I stand up too fast. The room tilts. I grab the doorframe to the bathroom and fumble with my lock — twist it the wrong way, then the right way.

The door swings open and the first thing I see is light. A thin strip of it, warm and yellow, cutting across the bathroom floor from Cade’s side.

His door is open.

His door is never open. That door stays shut and locked from his side the same way mine stays shut and locked from mine.

My legs buckle — a slow giving out, knees unlocking, the wall sliding up my back as gravity pulls me down.

Cade’s hand on my chest becomes two hands under my arms and he catches me before I hit the floor. His grip is firm, and for a dizzying second I am pressed against his chest with my face in his warm neck.

He walks me to my bed.

My feet drag and my shoulder hits the doorframe and he adjusts without comment, steering me through the dark room and lowering me onto the mattress with a control that doesn’t match the boy who was about to break my face two minutes ago.

He kneels and takes my shoes off. One, then the other. Sets them at the foot of the bed. Goes to the bathroom, comes back with a glass of water, sets it on the nightstand next to my phone.

His movements are unhurried and he doesn’t look at me while he does it and I watch him through the bourbon fog.

This is the scariest version of Cade I’ve ever seen. Why is he kind?

He straightens and turns to leave.

My hand shoots out and grabs his wrist.

His pulse beats against my palm faster than his breathing suggests. His body is calm but his heart is not and I’m holding the proof.

He stops. Looks down at my hand on his wrist. Looks at my face.

I don’t say anything. The bourbon took my words and left me a hand on his wrist and a face I’m too drunk to mask and whatever he reads in it is enough because he doesn’t pull away.

He sits on the edge of my bed.