Chapter 1: Bound and Betrayed: A Prank Too Far
The first thing Rhett felt was the ache in her ribs. A dull, throbbing pain that pulsed with every shallow breath. Then the itch. A fierce, maddening crawl beneath the bandages wrapped tight around her chest and arms. The coarse fabric scratched against her skin, already raw.
She blinked, her eyelids gritty. Above her, the sky was a deep, bruised purple bleeding into orange at the edges. Sunset. The sharp scent of cut grass and the distant, tinny echo of the marching band’s practice faded into the smell of sun-warmed plastic and something sour, like spilled soda.
Her head was pillowed on something hard. Not a bed. Not her bed. The bleachers.
Memory came in a sickening rush.
Cade’s smile, lopsided and familiar. “Just a surprise, Rhett. For your birthday.” The sharp, chemical smell of the duct tape as he held it up, a silver roll gleaming in the late afternoon light. His buddies, Beckett and Jonah, laughing as they helped. Her own laughter, trusting and stupid, as they pretended to “mummify” her for a photo.
It had started as a joke. That was the worst part.
She’d let them. She’d laughed.
They’d used an entire roll. Around her ankles, her knees, her wrists pinned to her sides. The bandages were for show, but the tape was the lock. It cinched the layers tight, a slick, unyielding second skin. Then they’d wound the rough, nylon rope over it all, for “authenticity.” They’d hoisted her up, a cocooned joke, and wedged her into the narrow gap between the back of the top bleacher and the chain-link fence.
“Just for a minute,” Cade had promised, his warm breath against her ear. “Get the perfect shot.”
But a minute had stretched. The laughter from below had changed, taken on a different tone.
She’d craned her neck, the only part of her she could really move. And she saw them.
Cade wasn’t taking a picture. He was down on the track, his arm slung casually around Sutton Hayes. Sutton, with her long legs and her expensive smile, new this semester and already crowned with a halo of effortless popularity. Sutton was watching the bleachers, her head tilted. She wasn’t laughing. Her expression was one of cold, clinical amusement, like someone watching a mildly interesting experiment.
Cade whispered something in her ear. Sutton’s smile widened. Not warm. Victorious.
Below them, a small crowd had gathered. Phones were out, raised like lit candles at a vigil. The screens glowed in the twilight. Her face, pale and confused, would be on every one of them.
“Cade!” Her voice came out thin, strangled by the pressure on her ribs. “Okay, it’s funny! You got it! Let me down!”
He looked up. For a second, she saw the boy she’d known since kindergarten. The one who’d shared his glue sandwich when she forgot her lunch, who’d held her hand at his mother’s funeral. His gaze met hers across the distance.
And he looked right through her.
He turned back to Sutton, said something that made her laugh a bright, ringing sound that cut through the humid air. He’d lit a cigarette, the smoke curling lazily upward as he settled on the aluminum bench. He was staying.
The pain began as an inconvenience. The edge of a bleacher seat dug into her shoulder blade. The rope, knotted clumsily over the tape, began to bite. Every tiny shift grated the nylon against the adhesive, tugging at the hairs on her arms, pulling the skin taut. The tape itself became a vise, each breath a laborious expansion against its relentless hold.
She stopped calling his name.
The humiliation was a living thing, squirming in her gut, hot and acidic. It was worse than the physical discomfort. The videos. She could see them being composed, framed, uploaded. The whispers of the crowd below were not concern; they were commentary. Look at her. Did she really think…? What did she do to piss off Cade Walker?
The sky deepened to indigo. The security lights flickered on with a harsh buzz, throwing the scene into stark, shadowed relief. The crowd thinned, wandering off toward the parking lot, the drama expired for now. But Cade and Sutton remained. A tableau of casual cruelty.
Two hours.
Her mouth was desert-dry. A muscle in her thigh seized in a agonizing cramp she could do nothing to ease. She’d tried to scream, but her throat was raw, and it only made them glance over, then look away, bored. The tape had pulled at the corners of her mouth. She felt a warm trickle of blood where the adhesive had torn skin.
The rope had sawed into her, leaving fiery bracelets of pain around her biceps and ankles. Her fingers, trapped at her sides, were numb, bloated with blood.
Finally, movement. Cade stubbed out his cigarette. He said something to Sutton, who nodded and stood, stretching her long limbs with a casual grace that felt like a slap. She walked away without a backward glance.
Cade climbed the bleachers, his footfalls making the old structure groan. Beckett and Jonah followed, their earlier mirth replaced by a sullen, guarded energy.
“Alright, birthday girl,” Cade said, his voice too loud in the quiet. “Prank’s over.”
He didn’t look at her face. He flicked open a pocket knife and sawed at the rope. The fibers popped and gave. Then he grabbed a loose end of the duct tape and yanked.
It was like being flayed. The tape took with it a layer of skin, the fine hairs, the very surface of her. She cried out, a sharp, animal sound.
“Chill, Rhett, it’s just tape,” Jonah muttered.
The last of the bindings fell away. There was no one to catch her. The support gone, her body, stiff and broken-feeling, tipped forward. She slid off the bleacher seat and dropped the three feet to the concrete walkway below.
The impact knocked the last of the air from her lungs. She lay there, gasping like a fish on a dock, her cheek pressed to the cool, gritty concrete. Every part of her screamed.
A shadow fell over her. Cade hopped down, landing lightly beside her. He reached out a hand. “Come on. Get up. You’re gonna mess around and make it weird.”
She rolled onto her back, ignoring his hand. The world swam. Her body was a map of pain: the deep, bruised ache in her side from the fall, the radiating burn of the rope burns, the fiery sting where the tape had torn her skin. She pushed herself up onto her elbows, her arms trembling violently.
Her eyes found his. “Weird?” Her voice was a rasp, scraped raw. “You left me up there for two hours.”
“It was a joke,” Beckett said, shifting his weight. “You used to have a sense of humor.”
“People film stuff,” Cade said, a defensive edge creeping into his casual tone. “It’s just how it is. It’ll blow over by Monday.”
Rhett looked at him. Really looked. At the boy she’d told every secret to. At the boy who used to cry during sad movies. She searched his face for a flicker of the person she knew. All she saw was a stranger lounging behind his own eyes, annoyed that the toy he’d broken was making a scene.
The fury didn’t rise hot. It settled, cold and absolute, in the marrow of her bones.
She got to her feet, the movement clumsy, agonizing. She swayed, but did not fall. The humiliation crystallized into something else, something sharp and hard and focused.
“A joke,” she repeated, her voice low.
Cade finally seemed to register the state of her. The bloody welts on her arms. The tear-streaked grime on her face. The way she held her ribs. His brow furrowed, not with remorse, but with a dawning irritation at the consequences. “Rhett, come on—”
“Don’t.” The word cut the air between them. “Don’t say my name. Don’t talk to me. Don’t ever look at me again.”
She turned, each step sending jolts of pain up her legs. She walked toward the empty parking lot, away from the bleachers, away from the echoing laughter, away from the boy who had been her best friend.
Behind her, she heard Jonah scoff. “Drama queen.”
Cade said nothing.
The word hung in the air behind her, a final, brittle thread. Then Jonah’s voice, smug and dismissive, severed it.
“Drama queen.”
She stopped walking.
The cold fury that had settled in her bones ignited. It was a clean, white-hot flame. She turned on her heel, the movement sending a lightning bolt of pain from her ankle up her spine. She didn’t care.
She walked back toward them, her gait uneven, each step a declaration. The three boys watched her approach, a spectrum of guilt on their faces: Beckett’s nervous avoidance, Jonah’s defensive scowl, Cade’s confused impatience.
She didn’t speak at first. She stopped within arm’s reach of Cade. The security light buzzed above, painting everything in sickly yellow.
Slowly, deliberately, she raised her left arm. The sleeve of her shirt was torn. She pushed it up, past her elbow. The skin there was a grotesque palette of angry red welts crusted with tiny dots of dried blood, a deep purple bruise blooming beneath. The pattern was unmistakably from the rope.
“Two hours,” she said, her voice quiet and terrible.
She tugged the collar of her shirt to the side, revealing the edge of the adhesive burn on her collarbone, the skin rubbed raw and weeping. “Two hours.”
She bent, wincing, and pushed her jeans up over her calf. More bruises, darker, uglier, from where her legs had been pinned against the metal. She straightened and simply held out her wrists. The tape had taken the top layer of skin, leaving behind raw, meaty patches.
“You sat there,” she said, looking only at Cade. “You sat with her, and you watched. You heard me calling you. You watched me try not to cry. Then you watched me cry. For two hours.”
Jonah opened his mouth. “We didn’t mean for—”
“Shut up,” Rhett snapped, the force in her voice silencing him. “You meant to do it. You just didn’t mean for this to be what it is.” She gestured at her own body. “You thought it would be a funny story. ‘Remember when we taped Rhett to the bleachers?’ This isn’t a story. This is damage.”
Cade’s eyes finally dropped to her wrists. A flicker of something crossed his face—not remorse, but a dawning, unpleasant comprehension. Like he’d drawn on a wall and only now realized it was actually a window, and he could see the wreckage inside. “It was just…”
“It wasn’t ‘just’ anything,” she finished for him. “It was everything. It was the last thing.”
The fight left her all at once, the adrenaline burning off to reveal the sheer, overwhelming toll of the pain. The world tipped slightly. She locked her knees.
“The next time you want to be popular,” she said, her voice fading to a ragged whisper, “try being a person instead.”
She turned again. This walk was different. Shaking. Each breath was a knife-twist in her side. The parking lot stretched before her, vast and black. Her car was a mile away, at the far end near the street.
She focused on putting one foot in front of the other. The sound of her own breathing was loud in her ears, a wet, ragged rhythm. She didn’t look back. She didn’t hear if they spoke. The night swallowed their presence whole.
Halfway across the asphalt, her ankle, weakened from the bonds and the fall, buckled.
It wasn’t a dramatic collapse. It was a total systems failure. Her leg simply gave out. She pitched forward, hands scraping on the rough pavement as she tried to catch herself. A cry was torn from her, less from pain and more from sheer, frustrated helplessness.
She lay there for a second, trying to summon the strength to push herself up. The cool asphalt against her cheek. The smell of oil and gasoline.
Headlights.
They washed over her, two blinding white suns. Tires hissed on the pavement, too close. A car horn blared, a sharp, angry sound that split the night.
The car swerved, missing her by inches. The gust of wind from its passage ruffled her hair. It screeched to a stop a few car lengths ahead.
“What the hell, are you drunk?” a man’s voice yelled from the driver’s side window.
Rhett couldn’t answer. She couldn’t move. She just lay in the afterimage of the headlights, a small, broken shape on the vast, empty blacktop. The car door slammed. Footsteps approached.
From the distant bleachers, if anyone was still watching, she would have just disappeared into the dark, swallowed by the sheer ordinary night.
From the distant bleachers, if anyone was still watching, she would have just disappeared into the dark, swallowed by the sheer ordinary night.
The driver’s door slammed. Heavy footsteps crunched on gravel, then slapped against asphalt. “Hey! Idiot! You trying to get yourself killed?”
Rhett turned her head. The headlights blinded her, casting the man in silhouette. He was big, broad-shouldered, his voice thick with disgust.
“I said, are you drunk?” He loomed over her. “This is a parking lot, not a bedroom. Get up.”
Every instinct told her to apologize, to scramble to her feet, to make herself small and agreeable. It was the reflex of a lifetime. But that reflex had been shredded, along with her skin, back on those bleachers. A different current, dark and recklessly hot, surged through the numbness.
She pushed up on one elbow. The world spun. She looked directly at the darkened shape of his face, and slowly, with deliberate, shaking effort, she raised her right hand. She extended her middle finger.
The man froze. Then he laughed, a short, sharp bark. “You little bitch.”
His foot shot out. It wasn’t a wild swing; it was a controlled, punitive jab, the hard toe of his work boot connecting with the soft part of her thigh, right where the deepest bruise was already blossoming.
A white-hot star of pain exploded. The air left her lungs in a silent gasp. She curled onto her side, wrapping her arms around her leg. Tears, hot and shameful, leaked from the corners of her eyes, merging with the grit on her face.
“Stay out of the damn road,” the man muttered. She heard his footsteps retreat, the car door open and shut. The engine revved. The headlights swung away, plunging her back into near darkness as the car sped off toward the exit.
The new pain radiated up her leg, a sickening throb that syncopated with the older aches. She lay there, spent. The cold of the asphalt seeped through her clothes. She could smell oil and her own sweat.
She had no strength to get up. No will.
A part of her, a quiet, terrible part, listened to the empty hum of the night. She heard a car engine in the distance, approaching on the main road beyond the school fence. She pictured its headlights cutting through the chain-link, hitting her here in this crumpled heap. She imagined not moving. Letting the light wash over her. Hearing the tires not swerve.
The thought was a dark, warm blanket. It was peaceful.
The sound of the distant car grew, then faded, taking the fantasy with it.
Then, a different sound. Running footsteps. Frantic, slapping against the pavement, coming from the direction of the bleachers. Too light to be the driver returning.
She didn’t care. She kept her eyes shut.
The footsteps skidded to a halt near her. Heavy, ragged breathing.
“Rhett.”
Cade’s voice. Cracked. Unrecognizable.
She didn’t open her eyes. She felt him kneel. The air moved, and she caught his scent—the cheap drugstore cologne, the cigarette smoke, the faint, underlying smell that was just him, a smell that yesterday meant safety and now meant nothing.
“Oh, god. Rhett.”
His hands touched her shoulders. She flinched, a full-body spasm.
“Don’t touch me.” It came out a wet whisper.
“I saw… from the bleachers. I saw his lights stop. I saw him get out.” His hands were hovering now, afraid to land. “Did he hit you? Rhett, did that guy hit you?”
She finally opened her eyes. He was crouched beside her, his face pale and stricken in the dim ambient light. His eyes were wide, scanning her, taking in the new dirt stains, the way she clutched her leg. For the first time all night, his expression held no smugness, no annoyance. It held something like horror.
“He kicked me,” she said, her voice flat. “Because I flipped him off. Because I’m done. I’m just done, Cade.”
A sound escaped him, a choked, guilty thing. “Can you stand? We have to get out of here. Please.”
She had nothing left. No fury to burn, no pride to shield her. She was a collection of broken parts on cold ground. Her hatred for him was a granite weight in her chest, but it was inert. It couldn’t lift her.
When his arms slid under her—one behind her shoulders, the other under her knees—she didn’t have the energy to fight. Her body, betraying her mind, instinctively sought the stability, the relief from the hard ground. A small, broken noise caught in her throat as he lifted her.
He held her carefully, like she was made of splintered glass. She let her head loll against his chest. The wool of his sweater scratched her cheek. She could feel the frantic hammer of his heartbeat against her temple.
She was too tired and hurt to fight. So she melted into him, a sigh of absolute defeat leaving her lungs as he carried her, step by careful step, away from the dark center of the parking lot.
So she melted into him, a sigh of absolute defeat leaving her lungs as he carried her, step by careful step, away from the dark center of the parking lot. Her arms came up, of their own weak volition, and her fingers curled into the fabric of his sweater. She clung to him. It was a child’s gesture, born of sheer systemic failure, and it seemed to break something loose in his chest.
He made a sound, a ragged inhale. He bent his head, his lips pressing against the crown of her hair, a frantic, punctuation mark of a kiss. “I’m sorry. God, Rhett, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” The words tumbled out, a broken mantra against her scalp. Each one felt warm and damp.
She didn’t have the voice to answer. Her throat was stripped. Instead, she turned her face deeper into the wool, feeling the rapid fire of his heartbeat against her cheek. With a hand that trembled, she lifted her fingers and pressed them flat against his chest, over his heart. She drew two letters in the damp fabric: O. K.
It wasn’t a word. It was a sign. Their sign. From when they were kids and one of them was too upset to talk. A promise that the world hadn’t ended, even if it felt like it.
He felt the movement. His stride hitched. He kissed her head again, harder this time. “It’s not. It’s not okay. Don’t say that.”
But he carried her toward the glowing rectangle of the athletic building’s side door. The world passed in a blur of shadow and stark light from security poles. Her leg throbbed in time with his steps.
He shouldered the door open, the rubber seal making a sucking sound. The fluorescent lights inside were brutal, humming a high-pitched note that drilled into her temples. The hallway smelled of industrial bleach and old sweat. He turned into the girls’ locker room, kicking the door wide.
It was empty, silent except for the drip-drip of a showerhead in the distant stalls. The rows of blue lockers stretched into infinity. He set her down gently on a wooden bench in the center aisle, the one the teams used for pre-game talks. The vinyl cushion was cold through her jeans.
“Let me see,” he said, his voice low. He crouched in front of her, his hands hovering over her injured leg.
Before he could touch her, the locker room door banged open.
Sutton stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the hall light. Her breathing was sharp, her cheeks flushed. She’d run. Her eyes swept from Cade, crouched at Rhett’s feet, to Rhett herself, crumpled and dirty on the bench.
“What is this?” Sutton’s voice was a whip-crack in the sterile quiet.
Cade didn’t look up. His focus was on the dark, blooming stain on Rhett’s thigh. “She’s hurt, Sutton.”
“I can see that,” Sutton snapped, stepping inside. The door hissed shut behind her. “So you’re the nurse now? After what you just did? What, you feel guilty so you get to play hero?”
“Back off,” Cade said, but it was distracted. He reached out, his fingers ghosting the edge of the bruise on Rhett’s leg. Rhett flinched.
“Don’t touch me,” Rhett whispered, the words automatic.
Sutton let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “You hear that, Cade? She doesn’t want you touching her. Why are you even in here? The prank’s over. You won. We won. Everyone’s seen it. Mission accomplished.” She took a step closer, her designer boots clicking on the tile. “Now you’re in the girls’ locker room with her? What’s the endgame here? You trying to undo it?”
Cade finally looked up at Sutton. His expression was unfamiliar, stripped raw. “A guy kicked her. In the parking lot. Did you see that part? While you were walking to your car?”
Sutton’s gaze flickered, just for a second. She had seen. She’d kept walking. She recovered, crossing her arms. “That’s not your fault. That’s her fault for lying in the middle of the road. This is pathetic. You’re pathetic. You set this whole thing up and now you’re crying over the mess?”
“Get out, Sutton.” Cade’s voice was quiet, final.
“No.” Sutton planted her feet. “You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to humiliate her for me and then turn around and cradle her like she’s yours. You made your choice. Out there. On the bleachers. You sat with me.”
The words hung in the chlorinated air. You chose.
Cade looked from Sutton’s furious, beautiful face to Rhett’s pale, broken one. Something in him settled. Hardened.
He turned his back on Sutton. Fully, completely. He ignored her. He reached for Rhett again, not to touch the bruise, but to carefully push the hair back from her damp forehead. His thumb smoothed over her temple.
“Can you stand?” he asked Rhett, his voice dropping into a private register. “We need to clean that cut on your head.”
Sutton made a choked sound. “Are you serious? You are literally ignoring me right now.”
Cade didn’t turn. He kept his eyes on Rhett, waiting for an answer.
Rhett, dazed by the lights and the pain and the sheer surreal collision of it all, just nodded once.
“Okay,” Cade said. He slid his arms under her again, preparing to lift her to carry her to the sink.
“Cade!” Sutton’s voice shattered, rising to a shrill peak. “Look at me! You don’t get to do this to me!”
As he stood, lifting Rhett smoothly into his arms, Sutton lunged forward. She didn’t go for him. Her hand shot out, fingers clawed, aiming for Rhett’s arm to yank her away, to break the connection.
Cade saw the movement. He reacted instantly, spinning on the ball of his foot, putting his body between Sutton’s grabbing hand and Rhett’s limp form. He held Rhett tighter, securing her against his chest, her face tucked into the hollow of his neck.
Sutton’s hand closed on empty air.
She stood there, hand suspended, her chest heaving. The cold amusement from the bleachers was gone, incinerated by a jealousy so hot and immediate it twisted her features. She looked at the two of them, fused together, Cade’s entire being curved around Rhett in a shield of muscle and intent.
“You’ll regret this,” she hissed, the words venomous. “You think this makes you a good guy? It just makes you a weak one. And she’s never going to forgive you. Look at her. She hates you.”
Cade finally met Sutton’s gaze over Rhett’s head. His arms didn’t loosen. If anything, they tightened further, a definitive, unyielding pressure.
“Then she hates me,” he said, his voice hollow but clear. “But you don’t get to touch her.”
He turned his back on her again, a second, more profound dismissal. He carried Rhett past the silent lockers, toward the bank of stainless steel sinks at the far end of the room, leaving Sutton alone in the bright, humming aisle, her fist still clenched around nothing.