Page 63 of Fight for You

“Anything,” I whisper. "Tell me about you and your life in Seattle. Tell me what you do, where you go. Your dreams. Tell me anything.” I’m desperate to know the pieces of him I missed—the parts of his life that I didn't get to watch unfold. I had front row seats for so long. It feels wrong that there are entire volumes missing from his story now. I need to know what’s written in them, desperately.

“There isn't much to tell.” He shifts around, putting his back up against the wall across from the door. “I dropped out of college and enlisted. Didn't even make it a year before I got the boot. Guess I wasn't big on authority. From there, I started hauling criminals in off the street. They gave my ass a job instead of putting me in a cell. The rest is history.”

We both know that's a lie. The rest is why people around here talk about him like he's the boogeyman. It's the reason he's covered in scars he won't talk about. It's how he's punished himself.

“Why Seattle?”

“It's as far as I got after...” He clears his throat. “My bike broke down outside Nazario Leyva's mansion on my way out of town. I ended up saving his life. He put me on a plane to Seattle as thanks. Once I washed out, they sent me back. I couldn't come back here so…Seattle.”

“Why couldn't you come back here?”

“Doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago.”

It doesn’t matter? It was a long time ago?

I gape at him in disbelief.

“Let it ride, January,” he says, his voice dull, lifeless. “Please.”

“Are you serious right now, Michael?”

“January, please.”

“Let me go,” I say quietly.

“Baby girl.”

“Let me go.”

He growls a curse before reluctantly releasing me. I quickly scramble to my feet, gathering up my clothes. I scurry into them as quickly as I can, nearly falling over in the process. “I gotta go.”

“January, don't do this,” he says, pleading.

“I didn't do it. You did when you decided I only needed to know about the things you want to tell me, regardless of how the rest of it impacted my life. It might not matter to you why you couldn't come back, but it matters to me.” I stride toward the door. “And it may feel like a long time ago to you, but it certainly doesn't to me when I still wake up screaming most nights.”

“Fuck,” he mutters, moving to follow me. “I didn’t mean it l—”

I throw up a hand, silencing him. “Don't bother. This was a mistake.”

“Which part?”

“All of it, Cade. The whole damn thing.” I yank the door open. “Keep his patch. I don't need a reminder of what killed him. I have enough of those already.”

Chapter Twelve

Cade

Then - Age Twenty

"You open it!" January cries, thrusting the thick envelope out toward me. She clamps her hands over her eyes like she's afraid to look, but then she peeks out from between her fingers. Her face is a mixture of excitement and nerves. Her body practically vibrates where she's sitting on the edge of her bed in one of my hoodies and a pair of yoga pants. My hoodie swallows her small frame, making her appear younger than she is.

"You gotta do it," I tell her before I pry her hands away from her face. She's terrified she didn't get into UCLA with me, but she's crazy. Of course they snatched her up as soon as they had a chance. She's too damn smart not to get in.

"I'm nervous."

I drop to my knees in front of her and cup her face. "I know you got in, sweetheart," I tell her, trying to calm her down a little. "You trust me?"

She nods, her tongue swiping along her bottom lip as she stares down at me.