Page 144 of Blackwood

She scowls.

The crowd behind us explodes. The dance is over and the whole Row’s screaming. Drinks fly, phones flash, people chanting,“TRI-FEC-TA”.

“You’re not taking this party,” I say. “Because your surprise entrance just got fucking busted.”

I set my drink down on the chair handle beside me, not bothering to look at her again. “Maybe try a new strategy next time, Maddie.” I smirk, stepping past her like she’s nothing. “This one’s already dead.”

Chapter 45

CADE

Carrington Row – Wexley University

659 Days Since Zeke’s Death

I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be up on the balcony of The Row, standing in the shadows, staring down and hiding like a damn coward.

Lex is talking to someone, Madison Rae, I think. And Bella? Bella’s in a fucking chair. Grinding on my goddamn brother. I feel sick. Like something sharp is lodged under my ribs, slicing deeper every time she moves. Every time she laughs. Every time her hands touch him like they used to touch me.

I shouldn’t have come. I told them I needed time. Space. But the space is suffocating and the time feels endless. A blank canvas with no shape, no light, no color. Just aching white.

I thought maybe I could handle this. That I could be the one to walk away just for a little while. That it would help. But it hasn’t. It’s made everything worse.

Because distance doesn’t soften anything, it only makes the sharp edges harder to ignore.

I should have stayed home tonight. Painted. Sketched. Poured all this ache into a canvas. Something safe and quiet. But instead, I’m here, watching the girl I love light the world on fire while the guy I love dances in the flames with her.

The crowd is chanting her name like she’s a goddess. And maybe she is. Braid swinging, hips rolling, power carved into every motion like it was born in her bones. She’s sex and starlight and danger, wrapped in a cherry red bikini and denim so short it should be illegal.

And Lex?

God. Lex is fury incarnate. Muscles tense, jaw locked, rage simmering behind those ice-blue eyes. When he moves through the crowd, they part for him like he’s a fucking god descending. They should. He’s the Hollow King.

And she’s his queen now. Bella turns, sees him and smiles like the whole universe just spun into place. That smile, it used to be mine.

My chest fractures.

Lex reaches her, says nothing. Just lifts her up, her legs wrap around his waist like she was made to fit there. She melts into him without hesitation. The way he kisses her like he’d go to war for her, like she’s oxygen and he’s drowning.

It wrecks me.

Lex was right to be mad. He was. I got over his darkness. Chose him in spite of all of it. The blood on his knuckles, the fire in his veins, and the ghosts he never talks about. I stood by him even when it meant patching up bruises I didn’t cause.

So why couldn’t I do the same with her? Why did I run the second she cracked open that door and let me see the part of her she’s been hiding since we were teens?

I remember the first time she fell asleep on my shoulder in the back of my dad’s car. I remember the nights she texted me from Ellie’s room, just asking if I was awake.

I always was.

And now? Now I can’t stop thinking about the way she moans when I’ve got her pinned. The way she comes undone for mewith nothing but my mouth. The way her legs shake when she lets go of all that control, just for me.

God, I miss her. I miss him too. The way Lex holds me after he spills deep inside me. The way he fills me up until I don’t know where I end and he begins. The way he says my name when he’s falling apart.

What the fuck have I done?

Lex breaks away from Bella, eyes dark with something only she seems to calm. He mutters something against her lips—too soft to hear, too painful to imagine—then heads toward the DJ booth.

Bella doesn’t follow him. She and the girls collapse onto the poolside loungers laughing and talking. Taking a well deserved break from the first dance of the night.