Page 52 of Trapped With You

“Can I get your exact measurements?” Ella asked sheepishly.

“Yes, that’s no problem.”

“Take your shirt off, Cade.”

A wave of ice washed over me when I really processed her request.

Take your shirt off, Cade.

Fuck.

I couldn’t do that.

Sensing the tension coiling in my muscles, Ella searched my eyes. “What’s wrong?”

You’re together now, Cade. There should be no secrets between you two. Ella deserves to know the truth. Despite it being fucking ugly.

I decided to show her instead of saying it.

Holding my breath, I grabbed the hemline of my sweater and lifted it off my torso in one swoop.

Ella didn’t see it right away.

But three seconds later, when she did, her gasp was loud. “Oh my God. What…What happened to you, Cade?”

Shame pelted me like rocks from every angle.

“Now’s your chance to call me a freak.” I glanced away, not wanting to see disgust—or worse, pity—in her eyes.

The raised angry pink lines started at the left side of my collarbone and criss-crossed over to my shoulder in a disarray pattern before travelling down my arm until they reached my wrist. It was everything horrendous, grotesque, and then some more.

I never felt embarrassed about the damage hiding beneath my skin. But the scars visible to the naked eye were the ones that made me wish, for a small moment in time, that I wasn’t alive.

I avoided looking at them every day when I got dressed. The mirror was not my friend. I hated seeing whatheturned me into. A beast of sorts.

Ella grabbed my face, urging me to meet her eyes. “How did this…I don’t understand…” Horror laced her trembling voice. “Please, tell me.”

My gut instinct always told me that I could trust this girl, be vulnerable with her, and eventually, when the time came, divulge all my secrets.

Now was that time.

“My uncle did this to me.”

Her ashen face flared with anger. “Vance—”

“No,” I swiftly corrected. “Not Uncle Vance. This was my dad’s brother. The one I lived with after my parents passed away. Julius…Olivia’s father.”

“Start at the beginning,” Ella pleaded. “I want to know everything.”

When I pondered over how to best explain my story, she grabbed my left wrist and squeezed gently. “I’ll never repeat a single word of what you say tonight to another person. All your secrets are safe with me, Cade. I promise you.”

The fierce protectiveness in her tone did it for me.

I started talking and Ella listened intently and patiently, hanging on every sentence with a dedicated intensity that filled me with even more affection for her.

I told her about my parents—how Vera and Ronan said fuck-you to every rule in Montardor’s high society when they fell in love and eloped. My mom was the only daughter of the Remingtons. By falling in love with a man not up to par with my grandfather’s standards, she brought shame to their name and was disowned.

Then one night, when I was fifteen years old, I slept over at a friend’s house, unassuming of how my life would change in the span of mere hours.