Corrupted Chaos: Chapter 19

We were twelve days in with just two days left of glamping, and I was surprised to admit that things were going well. We tested new breaches on JUNIPER daily and brainstormed different scenarios. We worked on our day-to-day tasks and did some zip-lining, campfires, and swimming in between.

Cade was on a first-name basis with everyone, and he and Rodney were practically pals—except when Rodney stared too long at me in my bikini and Cade whacked him over the head.

Lucas didn’t ask me questions, but I knew they were flying around in his mind. He’d pried about my gold bracelet that I now twisted more than I should on my wrist all the time. I didn’t disclose anything. I couldn’t. We were in a safe little bubble for now with Cade staying too close, hovering too much, and staring too long.

I told him so that night, and he laughed, not giving a shit.

“It’s not funny. We have to go back to work after this where you’re the boss.”

“I’m your boss right now,” he murmured, typing away on his computer at our table while I watered the fifth bouquet of roses that’d been brought in the days since Cade had hacked my phone. He’d murmured they were sent to match my red spray paint.

And I couldn’t stop myself from bringing out a tiny linen-wrapped canvas I’d packed in my suitcase. While he worked, I set it down on the table, folded up a piece of paper to use for edging, and started to spray paint. It took some time to move the paper and get the angles perfect before I went to grab a brush and my paints. All I needed was black and white, and I shaded it quicker than I normally would because the art flowed freely through me now.

Everything was freer. I didn’t hesitate to show what I was feeling as much. I was more comfortable in my own skin. I even embraced the emotions I’d long since bottled up. My heart and my soul were liberated because they were toppling head over heels in love with Cade.

This rose turned out jagged, but with a bright white background, it appeared as though it was growing in the sun, in the light, and not succumbing to any darkness. Would I grow in our love too? Or would there be darkness?

“You hone your talents in things outside the digital world, I see,” Cade murmured as he stared at my picture, my hands, and then my face. “You’re truly a beautiful specimen, Izzy Hardy.”

It would have been a precious moment, one in which we could have talked about what this relationship was starting to look like, had my sister not called.

Lilah’s name popped up on my phone, and when I swiped to pick up the video chat, her frown made me immediately ask, “What’s wrong, Lilah?”

“Well, I thought Bug got out, but she’s fine.” She followed up with that right away, knowing panic raced through me immediately. “But I was looking for her everywhere . . .” Her face fell and she glanced down.

“Okay, well, what? What’s wrong?”

She held up a crinkled note. The writing was almost illegible. But it didn’t have to be well-written for me to know every word. Every curve of the ’s, every period and punctuation mark.

“What is this, Izzy?” Her question came out scratchy, like she’d been crying. “This isn’t your handwriting.”

My heart dropped; the blood drained from my body.

“Whose is it?” she whispered.

Everyone had a secret, right? Everyone wants to keep one thing hidden in their life. Maybe more. People thought the skeleton in my closet was that I was an addict. They didn’t know the whole truth.

They wouldn’t want to. Life was ugly. It was unkind. It was unforgiving at times too. To keep living, though, a person has to take the ugly and find the beautiful, take the wretched and search for the blessed.

Maybe I hadn’t done that. Maybe I’d just buried it all deep down and tried to hide it instead.

Vincent was ugly. He was the ugly sort of love that shaped me, that molded me, that made me the person I was today.

sixteen “Izzy.” She shook the paper in front of the phone again, but this time there were tears in her eyes. “Tell me who wrote this to you right now.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I whispered. My therapist told me over and over that I should talk with someone whom I trusted about what I’d been through. The secret was between my therapist and me alone. I didn’t want to get anyone in trouble, even if Vincent was gone, even if I didn’t talk to any of those people anymore.

Now, I struggled with the embarrassment that I’d been taken advantage of, that I’d fallen for so much when I should have been smarter.

My therapist said I needed to share this with my family. But why? For them to worry even more, to be even more disappointed? My therapist had told me over and over that I’d been young, drugs were involved, I shouldn’t blame myself.

I still did.

“It does matter!” she screamed, and Cade took that moment to stop staring at his laptop.

When I hustled out of the room and down the hall to our bedroom, the man followed. His stupid sharp eyes behind his stupid hot eyeglasses read my every move as he leaned on the doorframe, watching us both like he was ready for the destruction.

The man loved to see people uncomfortable—I knew that about him now. “Get out.” I motioned for him to leave.

He shook his head no, but the look of concern on his face caught me off guard. He should have been smiling, should have relished my sister unearthing my secret.

“Izzy, I’ll make Dante call Cade and have him send you home right now if you don’t tell me. This is . . . this is a suicide note from someone! Izzy, who wrote this?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I whispered, but I remembered the words and, although I hadn’t read it in maybe a year, they flashed before me now. The hand that held my phone shook as I thought of her rummaging through my things. “You shouldn’t have been looking through my stuff. Put it back now.”

“I was looking for your damn cat, and I came across the box.”

“You didn’t have to look in it.” I raised my voice and then took a breath before I tried to rush past Cade into the living room.

He stopped me with a hand on my arm and took the phone from me.

Lilah gasped and stuttered, “Are you two working?”

“Something like that. Put her stuff away, and she’ll call you back.”

“Cade, this is serious.”

“Do as you’re told.” He hung up and stared at me.

Curling up and crying in the bathroom was what I wanted to do, but instead I stood there with my chin raised. “You already know part of the story from the campfire. The rest is I was involved with a guy before juvie. I loved him, and he was too old for me.”

I waited for his recoil, for him to frown upon my actions, but there was none whatsoever from him. He waited, like he wanted the whole story.

I took a deep breath, turning the bracelet that I wondered if he would want me to keep after I admitted this. “It was wrong and stupid and reckless. But he was my first love. He’d have been charged with statutory rape had anyone found out about us. I was sixteen and now I know he’d probably preyed upon me, groomed me, and changed me.” I shrugged, trying to shake away the heat of embarrassment I felt rising to my cheeks. “Therapy taught me all that. Yet, even still, a heart can break quickly and soundly. Mine shattered when I realized he chose to leave me, that he didn’t love me like I thought I loved him. I was embarrassed and in pain. It broke me, was big enough to destroy me.”

Cade tsked. “You haven’t been destroyed yet, baby doll.”

I let out a small laugh that held no joy. “Cade, I’ve hidden this for a long time. It’s embarrassing and wrong and . . . heartbreak and embarrassment hurt. That pain wrenches at your soul. Shakes you awake with the weight of the reminders and the pain. I couldn’t handle it at first and used drugs as a crutch. It’s how I know that love broke me, that I’m wrecked for all others.”

“Why would it wreck you for others?”

“I try to find . . .” I hesitated, looking for the right words. Cade was messy, my boss, and my weakness. Falling for him was like jumping out of a damn airplane, not knowing if the parachute would open. “I try to find love that won’t hurt, that’s safe and comfortable at best. That way, if I lose someone like I did him, I won’t go back to what I did then.”

He studied me for a moment before asking, “What did his letter say?”

Would he look at me differently if I told him?