Page 20 of Finding a Melody

The boys poured out of the house, panic clear on their faces.

I didn’t care. I drove away.

I didn’t even think about going to my house. I didn’t want them finding me. I needed space and my house would be too easy. I knew them enough to know they’d be there pounding on my door minutes after I walked through the door and locked myself inside.

That was who they were.

I put navigation up on my phone to lead me to a nearby hotel.

My body was shaking and I gripped the steering wheel hard. But I held on. I stayed together long enough to park my car, check in, open my hotel door, close it, and lock it.

And then I allowed myself to break.

Chapter Seven

~Justin’s POV~

“We done fucked up,” Toby said as we all stared after Cadence’s car as she disappeared down the road. Not to her house. To some place we didn’t know. Her expression flashed through my mind once again. The disbelief and hurt as she looked at me. I lost all of her trust in me. I got her to open up and then told everyone else when I shouldn’t have. The little bit of trust I was able to build with her, I shattered.

I looked down at my shaking hands. I had never hated myself so much like I did right then. I knew hatred. It lived deeply inside me thanks to my father. But I never had it turned on myself. It was sharp, painful, and jagged. It tore into me as I tried to breathe. Yet, it was like Cadence had shoved her hand into my chest and held my heart in her hands, and she wasn’t being gentle about it.

“Fuck!” Bryan yelled, his dark brown eyes wide with panic.

“Get in the house. Now.” Seth’s voice was hard with anger.

I winced at his tone. It was his dangerous tone. He was furious, but it wasn’t at us. It was at himself. He had slipped up and now he was blaming himself.

That was wrong though. Clearly, it was my fault. I shouldn’t have talked with them about it. She was right. She told me in confidence. And I destroyed it. I’d be lucky if she ever told me anything ever again.

We all shuffled inside, worried about Cadence. If she wasn’t going to go home, then where? It was late evening already, the sun setting.

Where had she run off to? Was she safe?

Everyone sat down in the living room. I took a chair and leaned back, covering my eyes, feeling a headache coming.

I should have known better. She was right, I knew how to keep my mouth shut. She trusted me with something private, and I should have kept it to myself. My concern for her overwhelmed my judgment, and I’d made a bad decision. I just wanted her safe and to make sure that her mother could never get access to her again. She thought it was over, her mother locked up in a hospital, but that wasn’t enough. What if her mother got out of it? People cheated the system all the time to get the results they wanted.

“I’m sorry.” Seth’s voice reached my ears, saving me from my dangerous inner thoughts. I lowered my arm to look at him. He stood before me, his gray-ish blue eyes filled with regret.

“Not your fault,” I replied.

He shook his head. “I made you tell us. I should have respected the fact that she at least opened up to you, but instead I bugged you until you told us.”

I looked away, unable to handle his expression. Eventually, he moved to sit down on the couch, placing his head in his hands, his eyes closing.

Bryan cleaned his glasses furiously as he mumbled under his breath. Paxon was lost in his own head as he sat on the floor against the wall. Toby sat on the couch next to Seth, shaking his leg, eyes flickering all around the room, unable to focus on anything. We were all barely holding it together.

“It doesn’t matter whose fault this is. We all messed up,” I said, closing my eyes. Again, her broken face flashed through my mind. “Seth shouldn’t have asked about a private moment. I shouldn’t have opened my mouth. And we should have trusted her to come to you guys when she was ready to talk about it. She was right in that aspect. We all screwed up.”

I kept seeing it. The horror in her eyes when she realized we all knew what her mother put her through. The embarrassment. Shame. All the emotions I felt whenever someone found out I had been abused. Like there was something wrong with me for getting beaten and them knowing gave them insight into all my faults.

“How do we fix this?” Toby asked.

“We need to find her,” Paxon finally said, standing up and pacing. “It isn’t safe for her right now. Not with some creep breaking into her house.”

“Chasing after her now will only make things worse. She needs space,” Seth said.

“What if she kicks us to the curb?” Bryan asked. “When I fucked up, she was ready to just drop us all and forget we even existed, and that was a small argument. What if it’s over now?”