Cadence didn’t bother to try to hide her bike this time when Elliott pulled into the parking garage that adjoined Cale’s office building. Now that Aaron couldn’t try to stop her, it didn’t matter that everyone would see her—and Elliott. They would have a lot of explaining to do, and she realized that others might want to try to open the portal for various reasons if rumor got out how this was accomplished. She thought it best to tell everyone that Elliott was back but there would be no explanation of how it was accomplished and leave it at that.
Walking through th
“So what happened after that?” Elliott asked, finally having processed all that she’d already told him.“Well,” Cadence began, taking the lid off of a bottle of water, “I beat the shit out of Laura, and we chased Camille down with the help of Cale’s choppers. Aaron shot her with one of the titanium bullets they’d used on us.”“Reall
“I have a son?” Elliott repeated for about the twentieth time in the last two minutes. Once again, Cadence confirmed for him that, yes, he had a son. And no, Brandon had not meant for Cassidy to get hurt.“He’s a good kid,” Cale assured the new-found father who sat staring at the ceiling, his large hands intertwined behind his head.“Anyway,” Cadence
The next morning, she awoke confused. She wasn’t sure where she was or how she’d gotten there at first, but within a few seconds, everything came rushing back to her, and without stopping to put on anything other than the long T-shirt and panties she threw on after her shower, she went flying out of the bedroom in a blur, afraid she’d dreamt the whole thing.Cadence heard his voice before she saw his face, but as soon as she came around the corner, the entire room froze, looking up at her, eyes wide. Elliott and Cale were not alone, and several other members of the Reno team
“Well, you know it wasn’t me,” Elliott assured her as they sat next to each other about an hour later on the plane Aaron had sent. “Until Christian can hook me up with another IAC, I’m completely cut off from the world.”She just nodded. At the end of the day, it didn’t really matter who had told Aaron about her faux pas, but when she’d exited the guest room to try to determine who the snitch was, everyone was gone except for Elliott and Cale, and the doctor insisted that he hadn’t even noticed, though Cadence didn’t believe him. He w
Cadence had lost more people in the last year or so than ever before in her entire life. Through it all, it had been her grandmother’s comforting voice who had helped her keep it together. She had explained the Ternion to her. It had been in her upstairs bedroom where Cadence had Transformed, where she’d had her first meaningful conversation with Aaron. Over her Thanksgiving dinner, she’d joked with Elliott about how awful the Green Bay Packers were. As a child, she’d spent countless holidays with her family in her grandma’s living room, huddled around the fireplace, running through the back orchard chasing fireflies. The thought that all of that could be over was almost more than she could take. If it hadn’t been for Elliott’s hand in hers, reminding he
Staring into the familiar eyes of her fiancé, Cadence could hardly believe what she was hearing. “What?” she asked, clutching both of his arms. “What do you mean she went through the portal?”“She left a letter,” he explained, his voice just as calm and serene as always. He slid his hands down her arms, and taking her hands in his, he continued. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
“How is she?” Elliott asked as Aaron stepped through the back door, joining him on a large wraparound porch that consumed most of the outside of the house.“Not good,” Aaron admitted, shaking his head. “She’ll be all right in a few days, though.” While he would like to say this was just optimism, unfortunately, he’d seen his fiancée go through enough deaths to know about how long it would take her to begin to recover. “How are you?” he asked, turning to face his friend.
As they approached Cadence’s neighborhood, Aaron turned to Elliott and said, “I don’t think you can just walk in there. That’ll be a little too much all at once.”“Right,” Elliott nodded. “Why don’t you let me out here, and I’ll disappear for a while. You can just let me know when you’re ready for me to make my grand entrance.”