"When he realized we'd saved him," I said. "You know what he said?"
Cade waited, silent, still not looking at me, but obviously listening.
"He said it didn't matter, because he was already dead."
"Jesus." Cade shook his head, a strangled noise in his throat. "Shit, June, if you wanted to deal with that kind of stuff, why didn't you just become a head wizard?"
"I haven't heard that used since I was with the Marines," I said, stifling a smile at his use of the term. "Seriously, can you picture me as a psychiatrist? I'm too fucked up for that shit. Plus, I'm a great surgeon. Or, well, I was. I wanted to do something good."
"Why did you quit?" he asked.
I wasn't sure if he was talking about the Navy or medicine. Either way, I didn't like being on the receiving end of all the questions. Cade was really good at avoiding talking about himself. "Why did you?" I asked.
"I didn't quit," he said.
"I can add, Cade," I said. "You joined out of high school, you've been out for a few years now. That's what, ten years, in the Marines? Why didn't you stay in?"
"Twelve years," he corrected.
"Why did you get out?" I asked the question, even though what I really wanted to ask was, why did you join the biker gang? I had a feeling that question was the one that was too personal to ask.
"It wasn't by choice," he said.
"What do you mean?"
"Leave it alone, June," he said.
"How long have I known you, Cade? I can't ask you questions?"
"You might not like the answers," he said. I had a feeling we weren't just talking about the Marines now.
"Tell me."
"Fine. You want to know? I got boarded out. I got twelve years in the Marines, made Gunnery Sergeant early, and got fucking boarded out."
"Oh," I said. He was medically retired from the Marines, so it wasn't by choice. I thought about his touchiness around the scars, the burns on his chest. He was physically okay, though, not permanently disabled, and that wasn't something that would get him medically boarded.
Which meant that the issue wasn't physical. "Oh."
"Yeah," he said. "Oh."
"Cade, I -" You can talk to me about it, I wanted to say. You can tell me what happened.
If there was one thing I knew about, it was about battling mental demons. But I stopped. Everything I could say would sound stupid, trite.
"Now you know," he said. "They wouldn't stay in because I'm too much of a fucking mental case." He looked at me, finally, and I could see the pain behind his eyes. "Are you happy? Now you know what a fuck up I am."
"You're not a screw up, Cade."
"Yeah," he said, his voice hard. "You're saying that now, because we fucked. Not because you believe that." He looked away, and I realized what it was, the look on his face. What I was always seeing flash across his face.
Shame.
And my heart broke for him.
"Oh, Cade," I said. No one thinks you're a fuck up, least of all me."
"Yeah?" he asked. "My father sure does."
"He's afraid of losing you."
Cade was silent for a moment, and I thought he might be considering what I was saying, thinking that maybe he wasn't the mess he thought he was. But then he spoke. "Do you know why I'm here, June?" he asked.
"I hope because you want to be here." My voice shook as I said it. Shit, maybe he really didn't want to be here. I picked at the stupid piece of thread on the bedspread, wanting to yank it out, unravel the whole thing.
"Not here with you," he said. "Here in West Bend."
"No." He was in some kind of trouble with his biker club, but I was afraid to ask what the specific brand of trouble was.
"The Marines were my whole life. I couldn't fucking deal with it when I got out. It was the only thing I knew, since high school. The discipline, the structure, the brotherhood - I was fucking lost without it. When I found the MC, it was someplace I fit, someplace with other vets. With people just as fucked up as I was. No one gave a shit that I'd spent the last twelve years being a killer."
I opened my mouth, started to say something, but Cade kept talking.
"In fact," he said. "I had certain skills that were useful in my new line of work. They gave me a family, a home, when the Marine Corps kicked me out of mine."
"So what happened?"
"The Inferno," he said. "My fucking club, the people I thought were my fucking family, they tried to kill me."
Shit. I had thought it was something big, but not that.
"They tried to kill me, kill Crunch," he said. "Would have fucking killed April and MacKenzie. After I did everything for those assholes."
"I'm so sorry, Cade," I said. What else could I say?
"Do you know what it's like to lose yourself, to lose everything you believe in?" Cade asked. "To lose who you are?"
I lost my family before I turned eighteen. "Yes," I said.