Hurt me like you need me novel Chapter 30

My pulse spikes so hard I can see it in my wrist. The vein is jumping under the skin like something trying to escape. I stare at the four words on the screen, and my knee starts bouncing against the locker door and the metal rattles.

I slam my palm against it to make it stop and the sound echoes across the empty room and I stand there with my eyes closed and my whole body vibrating like a tuning fork someone struck too hard and forgot to mute.

I stare at the four words again and my body is already answering yes while my brain is still trying to assemble the word no.

Same field. Same dark. Same frozen grass under my knees and the same dick I can still taste under three layers of mouthwash.

He’s out there somewhere right now, walking around campus, sitting in a dorm, eating dinner, breathing the same air I’m breathing, and I don’t know his face.

You let him go, Sawyer. You chose his cock over his fucking name.

I open my eyes. The locker room is empty. The showers drip. The fluorescents hum their flat, institutional hum.

I’m done not knowing.

I delete the message. I don’t block the number. But the decision that’s forming in my chest has nothing to do with tomorrow night and everything to do with the fact that every man on this team just walked out that door and one of them — one of them — is the body I was straddling twelve hours ago.

I towel off slow. Fold my suit instead of stuffing it. Organize my bag like I’ve suddenly discovered a deep personal interest in zipper compartments and waterproof pouches.

Tyler leaves first, slapping the doorframe on his way out. Marsh follows. Then the distance guys, then Beck, then Davis — each set of footsteps echoing off tile and fading until the showers drip into silence.

Cade left ten minutes ago. I watched him go. Bag over his shoulder, hair still wet, not looking back.

I count to sixty. Then I move.

Tyler’s locker first. Unlocked, because Tyler’s the person who trusts the world not to take his shit. Deodorant, a spare pair of goggles, three protein bars, a textbook he’s definitely never opened. Nothing.

Marsh’s. Locked. Combination I don’t have. I move on.

Cade’s.

The combination lock is hanging loose, not fully clicked. He does this sometimes. I’ve seen it after practice, the dial spun but not seated, the shackle resting in the body without engaging.

Laziness or arrogance. With Cade, the line between the two is a hair and I’ve never been able to see it.

I pull the lock free and open the door.

Gym bag on the top shelf. Black, generic. I unzip it. Protein shake. Extra cap. A roll of athletic tape.

My hand closes around a phone.

Small. Cheap prepaid. Cracked screen with a spiderweb fracture running corner to corner. You buy it with cash at a gas station and don’t register under your name.

I turn it on. No passcode. No apps. No browser history. Just a contacts list with one entry — my name — and a photo gallery with one image.

I open the gallery.

My own hand. My own cock. The photo I took in my bedroom and sent to a girl named Kaylee before Halloween because I wanted to impress her.

She was never real.

Cade is Kaylee. Cade created the profile. Cade built the girl — the photos, the messages, the flirting, the escalation, the breadcrumbs that walked me through a Halloween party and up the stairs to a dark attic.

Cade is the stranger. The balaclava. The gloves. The hands that pinned me to the floor. The mouth. The voice that said be a good boy, try not to miss me.

The texts — you tasted better than I expected, six miles every morning, same time tomorrow. The running route. The attack on the field.

He was the one on the grass last night.

I had my mouth on Cade.

The mouth I can’t stop thinking about and the mouth that kissed me in the amber light and the mouth that said stay and I delete them are the same mouth and it belongs to my stepbrother who is also the person who drugged me and also the person who pinned me to a wall with his forearm across my throat two days ago and showed me a photo he took while I was asleep.

I’m going to destroy Cade Ellory.

I slam him into the floor the way he slammed me into the attic floor and I pin him the way he pinned me and I lean into his face the way he leaned into mine and I say ‘I know.’

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