Sophia...

With a spring in each step that I take up to Cade's apartment, the more I smile. Seeing Paul has confirmed to me what I already knew—I'm in love with Cade. I honestly can't wait to see him. Some nice food, some nice cuddles, all before I tell him about the two very unexpected visitors I had to my shop this evening. I am still so utterly furious with Margaret Lapley. I know I shall have to choose my words very wisely when I tell Cade all about her little 'friendly' visit to me. Regarding Paul, his visit was merely a long overdue goodbye. With many thoughts tinkering about inside of my head and a lightness to my feet, I become aware of someone just coming out of Cade's place. Our eyes simultaneously lock onto one another's. She's blonde, bronzed and beautiful; with legs that go on forever in her tight little black dress. She looks just like the beautifully boring type, but why, is this beautifully boring type just coming out of Cade's?

Her blue eyes suddenly narrow on me with a sideways smirk upon her heavily glossed lips. "If you're expecting him to be able to get it up, you're going to be bitterly disappointed, sweetie." She casually quips, brushing past me on the stairwell, in a real hurry it would seem.

Dread quickly reaches every single part of me. I think anger and distrust are not too far behind, either. Cautiously footed, I peep into the darkened apartment. "Cade?" No answer, so more of myself I take into the room. With each step I take, the more apprehensive I feel. The stench of alcohol is all around me. I have no idea what has happened, but know that something has. "Cade?" Calling out again, the dread inside of me is now alarmingly pervasive. The deeper I walk into the room, the more the dread takes hold. "Cade? Where are you?" Sounding desperate yet annoyed, I stand still and carefully listen.

"Get out." A weak, groggy voice orders me to leave from a shadowed corner somewhere in the room.

Stepping closer and closer to where the gravelly voice came from, I soon find Cade in a crumpled heap against the darkest wall in his living area. With one knee bent up and his chin tucked tight into his chest, he looks a complete mess. "What's happened, Cade?" Kneeling down beside him, I reach out to touch his leg.

"You...you fucking happened." Depressingly drunk, he doesn't even lift his head.

Staring at Cade, the hopelessly drunk disaster in front of me, I make him more aware of my hand upon his bent knee. "What have I done to upset you?" I ask softly, in a calm and non confrontational way. If I didn't know all that I do know about Cade, I would just leave him in an intoxicated heap against the wall. But because I do know his past, I am staying right here. I know he is pushing many of my boundaries, yet still, I choose to stay. "Talk to me? Please tell me what I have done to make you get yourself in this state?" I look at him cuddling his bottle of rum against his bare chest, his ripped and straggly shirt hanging off his lowly hung shoulders. "Cade?" I shake his knee now, desperate for him to answer me.

Ever so slowly, his eyes move upwards. Ever so slowly, they darkly meet mine. "I told you to get out." His reply carries so much restraint and so much bitterness. He isn't even able to look at me for a moment longer. It's like I now disgust him. "Just get out." Lifting the bottle of rum to his downturned mouth, he takes a drunken sip, most of the liquid not even getting inside of his twisted mouth. "You're nobody to me." His face contorts into more of a miserable grimace. "You're nobody." What his inebriated self is saying, is said with such vengeful anger. And what he is saying, hurts—hurts like knives, cutting painfully deep and will no doubt leave a scar on my soul.

Every single one of his words are slurred with such revulsion, I begin to doubt my reasons for staying. I actually start picking apart all the reasons why I am doing this. Doubt by doubt, all of my reasons are now starting to hurtfully unravel within me.

The man I love is pitifully drunk. Pitifully now disgusted with me. But why? Everything was going just great. So why is he now looking and speaking to me in this awfully cold and venomous way?

Everything was absolutely fine between us.

Actually, more than fine.

Things were wonderful.

Wonderful until....well, until his mother.

Cade was absolutely fine until her surprise visit to me this evening.

This is what this is all about. I triumphantly tell myself. I just know that she is the reason why her son is now falling apart. She is behind all of this. The acrid stench of her cruelty can be smelt all over this painful mess. Paul came in literally moments after she had left. This, is really what this is all about. She has somehow used Paul and I, to hurt her own son. Feeling a little more determined to get through to Cade, I shake his knee again. "Has your mother told you something? Something about me and my ex?" As drunk as he is, I need to try and get him to listen to me. "Cade? Look at me?" With determined anger, I wrench the bottle from between his crossed arms.

"Just go." He mumbles, trying to push me away with his uncoordinated and flailing arms.

Cade is in no fit state for anything. He just seems to be quietly drowning in his own misery. Sinking faster and faster in his own crippling and alcoholic despair. With the glass culprit now held firmly in my hand, I carefully put the rum down, somewhere that's out of reach to Cade, before I try to talk to him again. "I know your mother has said something to you. Whatever she has told you, Cade, just isn't true. She came to see me this evening. She tried to tell me to stay away from you. She was warning me that no good would come from being with you. But I didn't want to listen to her crap, which disappointed her no end. After your mother left, Paul then showed up." I pause, waiting for some kind of reaction from him. His glazed and half-shut eyes are now blankly staring back at me, like he's trying to grasp some understanding of what I am telling him. That alone, spurs me on to continue. "Paul came to see me because he wanted to apologise. He asked me to take him back, but I said no. I told him that he was too late. That I am with somebody else now. He accepted that, then left."

Blinking, heavy and jaded, Cade croaks out something. "You, kissed him." The way he slurs that out, it's as though his words are coated in the most disgusting of bile.

"What?" I clearly heard what he just so groggily said—my response is just a stunned one. "How do you know that?" I ask, wondering how in the hell did he know that Paul had kissed me?

Cade sneers, barely able to keep his hostile eyes still open. "I saw the pictures. Very fucking cosy." His slurring words, intoxicatingly run into each other.

That's when I realise just how cruel and unconscionable his mother actually is. She has despicably sent Cade some incriminating pictures that have obliterated all that he feels for me, without even giving me a chance to explain first. That's when my deepest panic hits. This is badder than bad. I now fully understand the drunken chaos that Cade has immersed himself in. I now fully understand why he has morphed into someone I no longer recognise. He feels betrayed. By his mother. Now, by me. He more than likely feels like he has traded one pain for another. No wonder he is so lost and defeated. I now feel too panicked to actually breathe, knowing that this is where Cade could totally reject me. My heart is punching me from the inside, with each rhythmic and panicked beat that it now makes. I need to try and get inside those drunk thoughts of his. I need to get inside of them, before it's too late. "Cade, please listen to me?" Kneeling in closer, I try to keep my shaky voice under control. "I know those pictures must look bad to you, but that kiss was Paul just saying goodbye. It meant nothing. Absolutely nothing." My imploring stare holds his glazed one. "I only want to be with you. I would never do anything to jeopardise that." Once again, I try to touch him, but Cade pushes me away. I know he has heard what I just said. I just don't know whether he has listened. With my face now wearing an obvious mask of hurt, I can't help but feel like I have already lost him. "Please don't do this. Don't push me away. Your mother wants to destroy us, and you're letting her."

A pained expression stretches across all of Cade's tortured features. "Just go back to your ex, Sophia." His frown is deep and burdened. "This is who I am. It actually hurts to give a shit about you. So I'm not doing it anymore. It hurts a lot less to not give a shit. So this is me, not giving a shit." He tries to stand up, but actually slides back against the wall. "Give me back my fucking rum?" He hurtfully spits out, refusing to give me any more of his intoxicated time. Spotting the bottle of rum on the floor, he then gets on his hands and knees to try and get to it.

But I get there first, standing over him with it firmly held between my fingers. "Does this rum mean more to you than I do?" Tears now form in my eyes as I emotionally stare down at him. "Why won't you listen to me? If anything, I should be the pissed off one. I just practically rubbed shoulders with one of your disappointed conquests on the stairs. Yet you still won't listen to me...why?"

Looking utterly defeated and disoriented, Cade just lowers his head. "Because you're nothing." It comes out as a bitter whisper at first, but then lifting his head to defiantly look up at me, Cade has more of his bruising words to hurl at me. "You're nothing, Sophia Hale!" But now, those shouted words of his are no longer just bruising me; they become a bomb to my heart, causing it to explode into devastated little pieces.

He has now ripped me open, causing the deepest and most excruciating of hurts. You're nothing! Those scornful two words keep repeating themselves back to me. Over and over again, I keep hearing them. This is Cade discarding my heart; discarding it onto the very big pile of all the other hearts he has already obliterated. The things he has just said to me, are the cruellest of things—hurtful and grotesque things. It's excruciating to hear him actually say them. So excruciating, I am unable to move or speak, unable to believe that this is happening between us. Maybe this immobilising numbness, is me detaching myself from what is happening? His verbal slaying feels so very brutal, it keeps me painfully still; shaking me to the core of who I am. Although Cade is no longer looking up at me, his eyes were just so wild and angry when they did look at me, I actually felt ready to run.

But I won't run.

I will stay right here.

As savage as his drunken outburst has been, I won't run from him.

That is exactly what Margaret Lapley wants me to do. She absolutely knew how Cade would react to the pictures of me and Paul, but that bitch doesn't know me. She doesn't know enough about me to predict how I would react to Cade's destructive drinking this evening. She doesn't know enough about me to know that I am prepared to fight for what Cade and I could have together.

That rich bitch might be used to getting what she wants, but that poor excuse for a mother, won't win against me.

Not now.

Not ever.

Feeling strongly determined, I am now more than ready to do an emotional battle with Cade. Crouching down on the floor, I am encouraging him to look at me with a gentle nudge to his low shoulders. "I won't let you push me away, Cade." Drunkly knelt on the floor, his head hangs lower down than his depressed shoulders. "The pictures that your mother has shown you, aren't the truth. Paul kissed me to say goodbye. That kiss meant nothing."

Still, Cade won't look at me. Instead, he mumbles. "Just go, Sophia."

With panic and desperation turning my blood cold, I lunge forward, refusing to do just that. "I won't go. I am staying here until you bloody well listen to me, Cade Lapley!" More of my fighting spirit comes out, although what he has said keeps cruelly playing on repeat inside my hurting head. "I won't go because you say I should. You don't get to speak that way to me. You have no bloody right. No bloody right at all. I haven't fallen in love with you, Cade, only for you to try and make me fall out of love with you. You don't get to fucking do that!" That's when his bloodshot eyes lazily lift, trying to focus on me through his self inflicted stupor. I know I am starting to reach him, I can see it in his glazed green eyes. "That's right, I love you. You're a drunk asshole right now, but I'm still in love with you."

"You love me?" His voice is quiet, almost disbelieving.

"Yes, I do."

His insecurities begin to manifest. "What about Paul?"

Leaning in desperately closer, my eyes become wide with the same strength of desperation. "If I wanted to be with Paul, I wouldn't be here. I am here, because I want to be here with you." As blindly drunk as Cade actually is, I know he can see the truth that emotionally sits on my beseeching face. I know he has just acted like he doesn't care about us, but now, I can see the care veiling his glassy drunkard eyes. I just heard it in his intoxicated voice and now I can feel the care emanating from his rum-soaked pores. Reaching out to stroke his dispirited cheek, I offer him a smile as my tender fingertips faintly brush across his skin. "I am here, because I love you." My fingers keep on tenderly caressing with my smile remaining assuringly the same. "I love you, Cade....so much."

A sigh of sadness, relief and comfort urgently escapes from between Cade's slightly parted lips as he closes his eyes with all of the very same overwhelming emotions running through him. "I'm sorry." He suddenly falls against my body. "Just hold me." His pitiful request is just as broken as he is.

Wrapping myself right around him, I smother Cade with all of my love and devotion. I want to learn how to love the unloved. And it is while I am doing that, that he distressingly starts to cry into my lap. Underpinning all of who Cade successfully is, is a man who is just crying out for love. For all of his wealth and his professional accomplishments; he has never felt it.

I intend to change that.

I will love Cade.

And I will love him well.

Yes, we have a lot of things that we need to discuss.

But for now, Cade just needs to be held.

***AND DEEP BREATHS....PHEW, THAT CHAPTER REALLY GETS TO ME!!
HOW ARE YOU GORGEOUS READERS DOING?
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