Page 111 of The Piece You Stole

Kade’s hand lashes out, grips my wrist, and tugs me back. “Angel.”

I train my focus—allmy focus—on his chin. “Those things aren’t important. I don’t see how it can help.”

He slides his free hand under my hair, curves it around my nape, and uses his grip to angle my head up so we’re eye to eye. “They’re important to me.”

I force my head aside.

He turns it back.

“Kade…?” There’s a warning in Aden’s voice. “Don’t.”

But it’s like Kade doesn’t hear Aden. “I see it.”

Shame. That’s what he means. Weakness.

I’m a girl who isn’t worth saving, and now he sees it.

When my eyes fill with tears, I drag my gaze from his.

He jerks my head back a bare second later. “Death. Pain.” He leans a little closer, peers a little deeper, and he smiles. “Rage. Tell me, angel.”

I feel the burn behind my eyes first, and then the prickle. Soon, I will spill out all my pain and my weakness, and he and Aden will see. I can’t let them.

As if he knows I’m getting ready to move again, Kade tightens his hand around my nape. “Tell me.”

I force myself to meet his eye as I fight back my tears. “No.”

He shakes me, causing my hair to sweep into my face, and brush against my cheeks. “Tell me.”

“Kade. Stop.” Aden is just behind me now. I feel him reaching toward me as if he’s getting ready to drag me away from Kade.

Kade leans close enough to kiss, but that isn’t what this is. This is something more intimate than that. “You say you want to help, then help. Tell us something we can use to hurt Rylan.”

“Tell you my pain, you mean?” Now my voice is hard. But it has to be if I have any chance of holding back this wave that will drown me if I let it out.

“You can channel pain into anger and anger can give you power.Ifyou let it.”

“And if you don’t?” I prompt.

His finger brushes my cheek as the shadows in his eyes darken. “Then pain can destroy you.”

I remember the rage and the utter certainty I would destroy myself if it meant I would take Nathan with me.

Kade looks at me like he already knows, already sees.

“He killed my dad.” The whisper slips from my lips as the first hot tear drips from my eye. “He sent Nathan to kill my dad. The police had a picture.”

A picture that feels like it’s been tattooed behind my eyelids, where it will stay for the rest of my life.

Kade’s expression doesn’t change as he lifts his free hand and uses the pad of his thumb to brush my tear away. I feel the callouses formed there, and it makes me want to smile because it’s another sign he’s nothing like Rylan. “And?”

A sob tries to force itself out of me, making my body jerk hard as I fight to contain it.

“Kade,stop.” Aden places a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. “Saige, you don’t have to say anything. Kade is just—”

Kade doesn’t blink. “Keep going, angel.”

I stop feeling Aden’s hand on my shoulder. The only thing I feel is the hard chair in interview room number five. The only thing I see is a photograph of a man who used to make magic, make me laugh, make Mom look at him with so much love in her eyes, dead on the floor, face contorted in agony.

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