Cadence climbed into the tiny shower stall and let the water rush over her. She focused on taking deep breaths in and out, and she tried to shake the dread that was threatening to take over her heart.
Willie was dead.
Dad.
Dad was dead.
It had been forever since she’d seen her adoptive father, but Cadence had never stopped missing him. When her parents got divorced, it had been messy, and she’d never understood why Mom had been in such a rush to get away.
Cadence hadn’t wanted to go.
She’d begged to stay.
Cried.
She’d thrown herself on the floor and promised she would be good, that she’d never get into any trouble, if only her mother would let her stay. Just for a little while longer. It hadn’t mattered, though. Maryanne had made up her mind and when Maryanne made a decision, she stuck with it.
Cadence knew that.
She finished washing and got out of the shower. She dried her body and slipped into the robe hanging on the back of the door. It smelled like the man from upstairs, and she liked it. His scent was comforting to her, which was just weird. Now that she knew what she was, little things that had bothered her for years suddenly seemed to make sense.
Cadence had always been into scents and smells. She’d always been quick and had incredible reflexes. Now she knew those things weren’t because she was just an incredible human, but because she wasn’t really human at all.
Not even a little bit.
And that was the problem.
She went into the bedroom and saw the clothes laid out carefully on the bed. She peeked around, but there was no one in sight, so she dropped the robe and slipped on the t-shirt and sweatpants. It was nice of the man to be so welcoming to her. She had basically woken him up in the middle of the night and demanded he help her, and he had.
She went upstairs and he was sitting at the table with tea, as promised.
“Sugar?” He asked politely. He didn’t look her up and down, didn’t scope her out. She wasn’t sure why, but she liked this about him. He didn’t comment on her appearance or point out she hadn’t put a bra on after her shower. Cadence didn’t feel threatened around him. She felt safe.
It didn’t make any sense.
“No, I’m fine. Thank you.”
“Clothes fit all right?”
“They’re perfect.”
She sat down and gripped her cup of tea, and then looked at the man expectantly.
“My name is Liam,” he said. “And I worked for your father.”
“How long? How did you meet? Did he ever talk about me?”
“Slow down,” Liam said. “I’ll tell you everything. Drink your tea.”
Cadence frowned, but sipped the tea. She wasn’t used to being bossed around. She wasn’t sure that she liked it very much, but Liam didn’t seem mean. He just seemed like he was decisive. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. Maybe that’s what she needed right now. A little bit of stability could go a long way, and Cadence had been struggling in that area.
“My brother died,” Liam said slowly.
“I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago,” Liam said, but the pain he still held was obvious. “Willie helped me.”
“How?”
“He took me in, gave me a job, helped me find a place to live. He was basically a surrogate father. I didn’t know how to cope with the pain of losing someone close to me. If it wasn’t for Willie, I probably would have…” His voice drifted off, but he didn’t have to finish the sentence because Cadence knew what he was going to say.
And she hated that he had hurt so deeply.
“I’m really sorry about your brother,” she whispered. “But I’m glad my Dad was able to help you.”
“He helped me more than you’ll ever know.”
“What happened to him?”
“Your parents divorced,” Liam said slowly, and Cadence nodded. “Your father didn’t want that, Cadence. He told me about it. He talked about you all the time. Willie missed you like crazy, but your mom…well, she didn’t think you should grow up around the people who hang around these parts.”
“Dragons, you mean.”
He raised an eyebrow. “So you know?”
“What I am? I know.” She paused, and then added, “I didn’t. Not until very recently. My mom died, and I found a journal she had kept. She talked about it. I’m adopted,” Cadence shook her head. “They never told me. I’m adopted, and I’m a dragon shifter, and my parents didn’t tell me. They didn’t know for certain I could shift, but then one day, I started displaying a bunch of dragon tendencies.”
“Your skin turned purple,” Liam said. “Your father told me.”
“Yeah. So my parents got divorced and my mom took me far away from here. Mom said it was just a fluke. She said I’d gotten a virus, but not to talk about it, and eventually, I just forgot about it. Now she’s dead, and I’m a shifter, but I have no idea what to do with this information.”
“Why didn’t you come looking for your dad sooner? I’m not trying to be insensitive. I’m just curious.”
“I thought he didn’t want me,” she said sadly. “My mother always blamed me for their divorce and she made it clear my dad wanted nothing to do with me. After she died, I discovered that wasn’t true.”
“It wasn’t true at all. I’m sorry your mother did that to you, Cadence. It must feel like a harsh betrayal.”
“Yeah,” she sniffed, irritated she was still crying over the secrets her mother had kept. “But finding out Willie is dead is even worse. I didn’t know I was adopted. I didn’t know where we’d moved from. I didn’t know anything about my dad except what I remembered from when I was little. All of his information was in my mom’s journal, though, so I decided to trek across America and come find him.” She shook her head. “Stupid, huh? I should have known I would be too late.”
“It’s not stupid,” he reached for her hand. “You aren’t stupid. You couldn’t have known. He searched for you, Cadence. We both did. Like I said, I even managed to find your mother, which was something Willie never could. She promised me you had left, though. Said you had run away and she hadn’t heard from you.”
“Did you believe that?”
“Not at first, but then I could never find you.”
“She changed my name,” Cadence said. “She changed my last name to Gait. That’s why you couldn’t find me.”
He sighed sadly. “I’m sorry your father isn’t here for this. He was so proud of you. He knew you were going to be an incredible woman one day, Cadence. He even named his boat after you.”
“I saw,” she said quietly. She had shed a tear over that, too. It didn’t make sense that a man she thought hated her had really been the one person who seemed to want her, and now he was gone. Where was the fairness in that? Where was the justice?
“He wrote you this letter,” Liam produced a worn envelope. “I read it,” he said. “It wasn’t addressed to you and I opened it to see what was inside. The letter makes it clear that he loved you to the very end, Cadence, and he wanted you to know the truth about who you are.”
“You mean what I am.”
“I mean your dad loved you,” Liam said firmly. “And he didn’t want there to be secrets between you. I don’t know everything that went down between him and your mom, but I think he really cared about you, even after so many years apart.”
“I don’t want to read it,” she whispered. Then she looked up at Liam. “I don’t think I can read it,” she clarified. “I’m going to cry on it and ruin it.”
“Would you like me to read it to you?”
“Would you?” She felt bad asking, and it was kind of weird. Not only had she woken up this stranger in the middle of the night, but now she was asking him to hang out with her and read her a letter from her dead dad.
It’s like she had no manners at all.
Life was too short to care, though, she thought. She should have reached out to her dad years ago, should have found out exactly what had kept him back. Maybe then she would know why her parents had gotten a divorce. Maybe then she would have understood exactly what happened when she was a little girl.
“Of course,” Liam said. “I would do anything for you, just as I would do anything for Willie.”
He pulled the letter out of the envelope gently. Cadence wondered how many times Liam had read the letter her father wrote. Once? Twice? A dozen? They had been friends, obviously. They had been very close, and then Willie had been gone. Hell, his death had probably been harder on Liam than it was on Cadence.
Liam had been a son to Willie.
Cadence had just been the daughter who disappeared.
She closed her eyes as Liam began to read, and she imagined her father was speaking to her. As the words passed Liam’s lips, she began to remember her father. She began to remember the things her mother had been running from. She began to remember who she was.
She began to change.