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Big fucking surprise there.
Instead, he stretched his legs out in front of him and adjusted the ice on his shoulder. Fucking asshole. Granted, I could’ve walked away, but it was my spot first. Fuck, I sounded like a goddamn toddler.
“She still loves you,” Cade said, breaking the tense silence between us.
“It’s none of your fucking business,” I growled. He’d be a dead man if he kept stepping where he didn’t fucking belong. My wife wasn’t a fucking topic up for discussion.
“Yeah, but someone has to stick up for her,” he continued. Oh, he was going there. “Feisty thing or not, submissives aren’t great at standing up for themselves when it comes down to it. Especially not when the authority over them has been abused.”
I fucking froze. My heart raged loudly in my ears as I replayed his words in my head. He had no fucking right to imply that. And I wasn’t even going to ask how the fuck he knew about that. Maybe Genevieve talked a lot more than she used to about that part of our relationship.
“Look, I may be deep in the fucking closet as far as the public is concerned, but I’ve spent a lot of time in sex clubs as a result,” he continued. “I know a collar when I see one.”
“I’d fucking watch the next words that come out of your goddamn mouth or you won’t be able to finish out the season when I’m done with you,” I warned.
“All bark and little bite.” He laughed. The fucking asshole laughed. “You grew up in a nice house with a nice fucking family, Byrne. You’ve never had to fight for shit in your life. Not really. You have no idea what a real fight is like. When you’ve spent every minute of your fucking life fighting for scraps of nothing, then we can talk about your goddamn threats. Until then, shut the fuck up.”
And there it was. The reason Cade had no issue taking over the Lochlan pack and wrecking a wolf or two if he needed to. I knew about his parents, but I didn’t have a damn clue where he was from or what the hell he’d been through.
“I’m not here to fight you anyway.”
“Then what the fuck do you want?”
“Look, I’m the only one out of this whole group who has picked a side—hers,” Cade snapped. “Everyone else is walking on eggshells to not piss you off or not upset her. Me? I don’t give a flying fuck if I piss you off. Hell, I’ll pay the few million in my reckless injury clause if you come at me. She’s worth it.”
“Teetering a fucking line, Locke,” I snarled. He wasn’t allowed to tell me what Genevieve’s value was.
“She still loves you,” he told me again. “And it doesn’t take a fucking genius to see you haven’t moved on either.”
“She moved on.”
“I’m not even going to ask how you know about tonsil-licking Gary,” he scoffed, shaking his head. “She never liked him. She felt like she had to. But that’s her business.”
I opened and closed my fists several times as I counted backwards from ten. Then fifty. Then one hundred. Because Jesus fucking Christ, I was either going to punch him or drive to fucking Olympia to hit Gary for sticking his tongue down my wife’s throat.
“Is there something you want besides trying to piss me the fuck off?” I demanded through grit teeth.
“Whatever you do, do right by her,” Cade said softly. There was no malice or anger in his voice. Just a simple request. I wasn’t expecting it. Something about it diffused a little of my building anger. “I can’t tell you what you two are supposed to do, but whatever it is that you do, do right by her. Maybe it’s you two fucking talking and figuring your shit out. Or maybe it really is the two of you sucking it up and divorcing each other. Whatever you fucking do, Byrne, do it right by her. Let her breathe again. That’s the least she deserves from you. Don’t you think?”
Fuck me. What did I even think anymore? My head dropped into my hands as I let out a heavy sigh. Fuck. Cade was the last fucking person on this planet I wanted to be having this fucking conversation with. And yet, he seemed real fucking determined to have it with me. A small part of me appreciated it. He was the only one not teetering some line of trying to be unbiased. Maybe I needed a little bit of unbiased thinking to reframe my own.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked. I knew better than to trust an olive branch when I saw one. “You don’t like me.”
“You’re right. I don’t like you. I think you’re a dick,” he said, and I growled in annoyance. He took his time finishing that thought, taking a long sip from his beer. “But… I’m the dick who didn’t try harder to protect my girl when she needed me most, so who the hell am I to judge? I let mine run away for a year and a half, you left yours for three years. We’re not all that different.”
I wanted to fucking argue. I didn’t like the idea of being in the same fucking boat as Cade Locke, but when he put it that way? Fuck.
“Whatever you do, Byrne, do it right by her,” Cade reiterated quietly. “She deserves the right thing.”
She deserved a hell of a lot more than that.
“Is that what you’re doing? The right thing by Raven?” I asked. “She has my brother, you know.”
“You don’t have to get it. I don’t fucking care.” He shrugged. “That woman saved my life. I can’t live without her. After all the bullshit and chaos and what everyone fucking thinks about your shit, can you live without Ginny? Do you want to?”
I didn’t have to say a fucking word for him to know the answer.
“Thought so,” he said with a little too much pride in his voice.
