Chapter 34 #2
“Everybody stop doing that,” she hissed. “You look like a disturbed football team.”
“Hockey,” Briggs said softly.
She turned her glare on him. “Read the room, lab partner.”
His face cracked for the first time since I’d walked in, not into a grin but into something tender and wrecked. “Yes, ma’am.”
I watched Aura and Charm move closer to Bliss, both of them fussing over her blanket and water cup like that had been the whole reason they offered to come.
It wasn’t.
I knew fear when I saw it.
Aura’s shoulders were too tight. Charm’s hands kept trembling whenever she thought nobody was looking.
Neither of them wanted to go back to that apartment without knowing Luke was behind bars.
Neither wanted to admit Luke had made them afraid of their own front door.
And neither would ever say that in front of Bliss because Bliss would drag herself out of that bed with broken ribs before she let them feel endangered because of her.
So, they made it about toner. About female supervision. About Hockey House smelling like poor choices. They protected her by pretending they were not scared.
I looked at Easton, and he was already watching Aura with the same realization burning behind his eyes. “I’ll take them to get their things,” he said.
Aura’s head snapped toward him. “That is not necessary.”
“I know.”
“Then why did you say it?”
“Because I’m doing it anyway.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Wade.”
“Aura.”
The air between them changed instantly, thick enough that even half the Bennett family noticed despite the crisis.
Charm’s mouth twitched. Bliss, injured or not, caught it and looked like she wanted popcorn.
Easton’s voice stayed calm. “You need clothes, chargers, whatever else. I’ll drive. Ryan can come.”
Ryan, who had been leaning quietly near the far wall with his arms crossed, nodded once. “Yeah.”
Aura glanced at Bliss, then away. “Fine.”
Easton’s mouth did not move, but something in his eyes warmed. “Good.”
“Do not make that face,” Aura said.
“What face?”
“The one where you think you won.”
“I did win.”
“You absolutely did not.”
“You said fine.”
“I said fine with hostility.”
“That still counts.”
Bliss made a tiny sound that was dangerously close to a laugh and then groaned. “I hate all of you. This room is a health hazard.”
Daniel looked at the nurse, who had watched the last thirty seconds with the shell-shocked expression of someone who did not get paid enough for Bennett-family logistics. “Can you finish telling me what she needs?”
The nurse blinked. “Yes. Of course.”
I stood before anyone could stop me. “I’m going to step out for a second.”
Bliss’s eyes cut to me instantly.
I leaned close enough to lower my voice for her. “I’m not leaving.”
Her expression softened despite the bruises. “I wasn’t worried.”
Liar.
I brushed my thumb once across the blanket near her hand because there were too many people in the room for what I wanted to do. “I’ll be right outside.”
“Try not to start a felony support group.”
“No promises.”
Her mouth curved, careful and small. “Mercer.”
I smiled faintly. “Bennett.”
I left before the sight of her tiny smile and bruised throat could do any more damage to whatever control I had left.
The hallway outside had filled while we’d been in the room.
My guys stood near the wall—Easton, Ryan, Briggs, and Rider—quiet for once, which was saying something.
Ryker stepped out behind me a few seconds later, followed by Knox, Kellen, Emmitt, and Lyon after Daniel waved them off to give the nurse room.
The second the door clicked shut, the air changed.
Inside that room, everyone was careful. Out here, nobody had to pretend as hard.
Ryker walked three steps down the hall, stopped, and braced both hands on the back of his neck like he was trying to keep his head attached to his body. When he turned around, his eyes were red, furious, and wild in a way I understood too well.
“If I find him first,” he said, voice low enough not to carry but rough enough to scrape, “I’m going to need bail money, a lawyer, and every single one of you to understand there is no stopping it.”
Knox’s face hardened. “Ryker.”
“No.” Ryker pointed at him. “Don’t cop me right now.”
“I’m your brother.”
“You’re both, and right now I need you to pick the one that doesn’t make me want to put my fist through your chest.”
Knox stepped closer, anger flashing fast and hot. “You think I don’t want him?”
“I think you’re already building a legal cage around yourself so you don’t have to say it.”
The hallway went silent.
Knox’s jaw flexed.
Daniel’s grief was loud in his silence. Ryker’s was fire. Knox’s was something colder, sharper, locked behind procedure because procedure was the only thing keeping him upright.
Kellen looked down at the floor, shaking his head slowly. “I’m not stopping you.”
“Kellen,” Knox snapped.
“What?” Kellen lifted his head, eyes bright with rage. “You want me to lie? You want me to say if that piece of shit walks in front of me, I’m going to calmly wait for backup?”
Emmitt’s laugh came out ugly and broken. “I’m not even sworn in yet, so technically my opinion is just civic engagement.”
Lyon’s face twisted. “My kid hugged him, Knox.”
That one shut everyone up.
Lyon’s voice dropped. “Danny hugged him. Called him Uncle Luke once because he heard Katie do it. I had that man around my son.”
Ryker flinched like he’d been hit.
Knox dragged both hands over his face. “I know.”
“No,” Lyon said, stepping forward. “You don’t know. None of us knew. That’s the point, right? We didn’t fucking know. Bliss knew. Bliss had to sit there and watch us love him.”
The words gutted the hallway.
Briggs turned away, one hand covering his mouth. Rider’s expression went flat and deadly. Easton stared down the hall like he was memorizing every place a man could run. Ryan watched me, because Ryan always watched me when the room tilted toward violence.
Ryker looked at me then, his eyes bloodshot. “You hit him.”
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
Knox made a sharp sound. “This is not helping.”
“It helped me,” Ryker said.
“It didn’t stop him.”
“No,” Ryker said, voice breaking for the first time. “Because I should’ve been the one to do it years ago.”
I stepped closer before that sentence could swallow him whole. “You didn’t know.”
Ryker’s eyes snapped to mine. “He was my best friend.”
“He was a predator.”
“He stood next to me at my wedding.”
“He fooled everyone.”
“He didn’t fool her.”
“No,” I said, holding his stare. “He trapped her.”
Ryker’s throat worked, and every Bennett brother around him went still because that was the part none of them had room to fight. Not without making it worse. Not without turning her silence into something she had done wrong instead of something Luke had built around her.
I kept my voice low. “If he shows up at Hockey House, I’ll make him hit first.”
Knox stared at me. “What?”
“I’ll make him hit first,” I repeated. “Then you have a why.”
Ryker’s mouth parted slightly.
Ryan muttered, “Mercer.”
I didn’t look at him.
Knox stepped toward me. “That is not how this works.”
“It’s exactly how it works if he comes into my house with a warrant out and threatens her.”
“You are not baiting him into assault.”
“I didn’t say bait.”
“You implied it.”
“I said if he shows up, I’ll make sure nobody has to guess who started it.”
For the first time, Rider spoke. “That’s a lawyer sentence if I’ve ever heard one.”
Briggs nodded faintly. “Very billable.”
Knox looked like he wanted to arrest all of us on principle.
I looked back at Ryker. “You find him first, you call me.”
He stared at me.
“I mean it,” I said. “You don’t go alone. You don’t hand him another weapon to use against Bliss. He’s already taken enough from her. We don’t give him your life too.”
Ryker’s face twisted with the need to argue, but the part of him with Emma, two little girls, and another baby on the way heard me.
Barely.
But he heard me.
“If I go,” he said, voice rough, “you go.”
“Same goes for me.”
His jaw flexed.
Then he nodded once.
“Same team.”
“Same team,” I said.
The words settled between us, ugly and simple and necessary.
Kellen looked at me then, his expression raw. “Thank you.” I shifted my gaze to him, and he swallowed hard. “For loving her.”
Emmitt nodded, eyes shining with a fury he was too young and too Bennett to hide well. “For seeing her when we were blind.”
“Don’t,” I said, because the words hit harder than they should have. “She was hiding from a man who knew exactly how to train her into silence.”
Lyon shook his head. “Still. You saw something.”
“Not enough.”
Ryan pushed off the wall. “Careful.”
I looked at him.
His face stayed calm, but his eyes cut through me the way they always did. Does this protect Bliss, or does it make her carry more?
I exhaled slowly.
“Not fast enough,” I corrected.
Ryker’s gaze softened by half an inch. “Fast enough to be here now.”
I didn’t know what to do with that either.
The Bennett family had a way of handing me things I had no practice holding.
Approval, gratitude, trust.
Their girl.
Inside the room, Bliss laughed at something Charm said, the sound tiny and pained and still somehow unmistakably hers. Every man in the hallway went silent at once, listening like that laugh was proof of life.
Because it was.
I looked toward the door, then back at the men standing with me in that sterile hospital hallway, all of us angry, wrecked, and useless against the fact that she had already survived the worst part without us.
“He comes near her again,” Ryker said quietly, “we end it.”
Knox’s eyes closed for half a second.
Nobody argued.
Not even him.
I looked through the small window in the door and found Bliss sitting in bed with Charm adjusting her hoodie and Aura pretending not to fuss over the water cup. She looked too small in that hospital bed and too alive to be anything but dangerous to the man who had tried to make her disappear.
“Yeah,” I said, voice low. “We do.”