Page 115 of Blackwood

“And Carlos? He laughed when he found out Zeke was dead.”

A beat passes.

“So yeah,” she bites out, “I got my revenge.” Her breath shakes, but her spine stays straight. Her eyes never leave his.

“And you want to know something, Cade?” she says, softer now, deadlier. “I fucking loved it.”

She leans in. “Do you even know what revenge looks like? It’s a girl with a gun in her hand, a body full of trauma, and not a single soul left to stop her.”

“You talk about revenge like it’s survival,” he says quietly. “And maybe for you it is. I get that. I do.”

He runs a hand through his hair, that old nervous tic. “But for me? It’s… it’s a darkness I don’t know how to live in. I don’t know how to love someone who doesn’t want to come back into the light.”

Her whole face crumples. Like he just proved her worst fear, that the second she handed him the truth, he’d flinch.

He’d flee.

He takes a breath like it hurts to speak. “I just… I need some time, Bella.”

And fuck me, I want to kill him for that.

Her phone rings.

“What Nate?” she literally screams in the phone. “Ok, yeah. I’m sorry… No, I’m fine… Yeah, I’m on my way out.”

She puts her phone back into her pocket. “I have to go.”

Cade steps up like he’s finally decided to grow a pair, “Now? Bella, we need to finish talking about all of this. We still haven’t even started talking about Luca.”

“No, Cade. We don’t.” Her voice is steady. “You said enough. You want time. I get that. Take it. Do what you need to do.”

She turns, grabbing her bag. “But what I need to do right now, is to go do my job.”

“Bella, please wait.”

“Look,” she says, stepping closer, fire trembling beneath every word. “There’s no version of this where I’m the girl you thought I was.”

I see it then, what he sees.

The girl who used to pass out on the couch next to him watching old movies with Ellie. The one who used to give him shit about his sketchbooks, but stay and watch him draw anyway. The one he never touched back then because she was young and hurting and off-limits.

“I’m the girl who grew up in hell,” she says. “Who clawed her way out with blood under her nails and no map to follow. I tried to give you the version of me that wasn’t soaked in all of it. The version who smiled easier, laughed louder. The version I used to be when I was fifteen and stupid enough to believe I could somehow be normal.”

Cade’s still not talking. Just staring at her like he’s watching her slip through his fingers.

“But she’s not all of me,” Bella continues, voice breaking and fierce all at once. “And the part you don’t want, the part you looked at like it might burn you alive? That’s the part that’s saving kids, Cade.”

She looks at him one last time. “So, take whatever time you need. But I have to go. Those kids need me more than you do right now.”

She looks at me, tears staining her steel eyes as she nears the exit. “I’m sorry I messed this up, Lex. I know you had your hopes up.” She turns and walks out.

“What the fuck, Cade?” My voice comes out low and dangerous, laced with disbelief. “You’re really just going to let the best thing that ever happened to us walk out of this fucking Pit?”

He turns, his jaw tight. “What do you want me to do, Lex? Just pretend none of this happened?”

“I want you to see her,” I snap, stepping into Cade’s space without even realizing it. “See her the way I do. The way you used to before she ripped herself open to give you the truthyoudemanded.”

His jaw clenches, but he doesn’t speak. So, I keep going.