2 #2
“Your apartment has one chair and a lamp that looks like it was rescued from a hostage situation.”
“I have more than that.”
“The hallway smells like old smoke and poor choices,” Ryan said.
“You lived with three foster families and once slept in your truck for two years,” I told him. “I don’t need housing criticism from you.”
Ryan pointed at me. “That’s why I know hard times when I see them.”
Cade didn’t smile. “Hockey House is paid for. Moving back would free up the money you spend on rent, let you send more home, and help you cut your hours at North Cut. The house has space. Your room is still empty.”
“It’s not empty.”
Nobody spoke for a second.
I looked at the water glass, at my hand beside it, and at the condensation running down onto the bar. “It has too much in it.”
Briggs’s face changed. “Because of her?”
I hated that he asked it like that. Gently. Like the answer could break if it hit the floor too hard.
I leaned my elbows on the bar and looked down. “I couldn’t sleep there after.”
No one made a joke.
I swallowed and kept going because stopping would make them treat it like something fragile.
“Everything was her. The stairs, the kitchen, the porch, my room, the stupid candle she pretended to hate and lit every time she came over, my sheets, and the hallway outside my door. I’d close my eyes and hear her laughing downstairs, or wake up thinking she was there, and then she wasn’t.
I felt like a fucking idiot for missing someone who made it clear I wasn’t enough. ”
Briggs looked down at his hands, and Rider’s coaster started moving again, slower this time.
Cade’s voice was careful. “She didn’t say you weren’t enough.”
I looked up at him. “It felt the same.”
Ryan nodded once, like that much he understood. “Feelings don’t care about transcripts.”
“Exactly,” Briggs said. “Which is why I’m on your side.”
Rider shot him a look. “This is not a trial.”
“It feels trial-adjacent.”
“It feels like two people in pain making it everyone else’s problem,” Ryan said.
Cade gave a short laugh without much humor. “That part tracks.”
I pushed the water glass away. “So, what do I do? Go apologize and pretend I don’t still want to wring Gage’s neck every time he looks at her?”
Ryan lifted a shoulder. “You can apologize and still hate Gage’s face.”
“That’s healthy,” Rider said.
“No, that’s honest.”
Briggs pointed at Ryan again. “See, this is why I like your advice. It allows anger.”
Ryan looked at me. “You apologize for stepping on something you didn’t know.
You stop making comments about her rules, her patterns, or who she talks to unless you want every woman in her life to skin you and hang your jersey in the parking lot.
Then you decide if you’re actually done with her or just punishing her because you’re not. ”
The words sat there.
I didn’t answer, so Cade did it for me. “He’s not done.”
I shot him a look. “Trust me, if I could stop loving her, I would. I would claw her out from under my fucking skin if I thought it would stop.”
Cade’s face didn’t change. “Then stop acting like the only options are hating her or falling at her feet. There’s a whole middle ground where you can be done and still care.”
Briggs made a noise. “Middle ground sounds like emotional torture, though.”
“It is,” Rider said. “That’s why none of you visit.”
Ryan glanced down the bar toward where Charm had been sitting earlier before she left with Bliss to help drop off the wing baskets. His face shifted for half a second, not soft exactly, just less guarded.
Briggs noticed because Briggs noticed everything he wasn’t supposed to. “Speaking of emotional torture, why were you staring at Charm like she came with a syllabus and a warning label?”
Ryan froze.
I looked at him. “Were you?”
“I wasn’t staring at Charm.”
Rider’s mouth curved. “You were absolutely staring at Charm.”
Ryan turned his head slowly toward him. “You really want to weigh in on Charm?”
Rider’s mouth flattened. “She was clear with me. I respected it.”
The bar went quiet for an entirely different reason.
Charm had been clear that friendship was all she could offer him. She hadn’t played with him or left the door cracked, but everyone with functioning eyes knew Rider’s feelings hadn’t disappeared just because she had been honest.
Ryan’s tone lost some of its edge. “I know. I’m not saying she led you on.”
“Good,” Rider said, “because she didn’t.”
Briggs’s eyes widened with vicious delight. “Wait. Hold on. Are we discussing Charm as a concept, or Charm as Ryan’s academic support girlfriend?”
“No empieces,” Ryan warned.
Briggs pointed at him. “Oh, good. He’s using Spanish now. That feels defensive.”
Ryan’s expression went deadpan. “She’s writing a paper.”
“Sure,” Briggs said. “And I’m lactose intolerant, but I still order motzzi’s because I enjoy danger.”
Cade shook his head. “Charm would eat all of you alive.”
“Not me,” Briggs said. “I’m lovable.”
“She’d politely end you,” Rider said.
Ryan took a drink. “She’d footnote the murder.”
Despite myself, I felt my mouth twitch.
Briggs saw it and looked far too pleased. “Holy fuck, the captain smiled. Everyone remain calm.”
“I didn’t smile.”
“You almost smiled, which counts as progress under current conditions.”
I looked at Ryan. “Take it from me, brother. Keep that shit in the open and the expectations clear. It’s all fun and games until you fall in love with a booty call.”
Ryan nodded, but I saw the seriousness in his eyes. “It’ll never happen, amigo. Her familia would never handle a barrio kid from foster care.”
Rider looked down at his coaster, but his jaw tightened like Ryan had just admitted this mattered more than he wanted anyone to know.
Ryan glanced toward the back hall where Charm had disappeared. “She’d have to accept it first, and I’m not sure she’s ready for that fight.”
The distinction landed harder than his first sentence.
He wasn’t worried her family would scare him off. Ryan had survived people and places that would have broken most of us before adulthood. He was worried Charm would never choose him loudly enough to make the fight worth having.
Cade’s phone buzzed on the bar. He looked down, and whatever he saw softened his face while pulling the attention off Ryan. For now.
“Bliss says Aura left.”
My almost-smile disappeared.
I knew she had hidden out after our fight, but I hated knowing I had made the Sin Bin feel less neutral for her. That had never been my intention.
Rider’s eyes flicked toward me. “You going after her?”
I stared at the door to the back hall even though she wasn’t there anymore. “No.”
Briggs looked disappointed. “Why?”
“Because if I go after her tonight, I’ll make it worse.”
Ryan nodded. “That might be the smartest thing you’ve said.”
“I still need to apologize.”
“You do,” Cade said.
“Not tonight,” Ryan added. “Tonight you’ll either yell or kiss her, and both seem like poor leadership.”
Briggs held up a hand. “For morale, I vote kiss.”
Rider sighed. “You are the reason team meetings need agendas.”
Cade looked at me, his voice lower now. “Your mom and sisters are coming in. Get through that. Get through the game. Then talk to Aura when you can do it without an audience.”
I wanted to argue that I didn’t need a plan, advice, or four guys and Bliss watching me like I was a pipe one hard hit away from bursting. Aura had made her choice, I had made mine, and what happened in this bar wasn’t supposed to change anything.
Her sentence was still there anyway, cutting around inside me.
“You don’t get to take what I survived—when you don’t know what I survived—and twist it into a personality flaw.”
I looked at Cade. “If she tells Bliss what it was…”
“She won’t tell you.”
“I know.”
“No,” Cade said, holding my gaze. “Bliss won’t tell you either.”
“I know that too.”
“Good.”
The fact that I liked him more for saying it made me hate the whole night.
I pushed away from the bar and pulled my jacket from the back of the chair. “I’m going home.”
Briggs frowned. “To the hostage-lamp apartment?”
“To my apartment.”
Ryan stood too. “I’ll walk out.”
“I don’t need a babysitter.”
“I know.”
He said it in a way that made arguing pointless.
Cade reached for Bliss’s hand when she came back toward us, and she looked from him to me with too much worry in her eyes.
“Easton.”
I stopped.
She didn’t come closer or soften what she was about to say. “You hurt her tonight.”
“I know.”
“She hurt you too.”
“I know that too.”
Bliss nodded, and her mouth trembled once before she pulled it together. “Then maybe both of you could stop trying to win long enough to remember you loved each other.”
Nobody made a sound. Even Briggs had the survival instinct to shut up.
I looked away first because there were some hits I still didn’t know how to take standing.
Ryan clapped a hand once against my shoulder and steered me toward the door before I could say something stupid. The cold air outside hit my face, and I dragged it into my lungs like it could scrape her voice out of my head.
The cold air didn’t scrape her voice out of my head, and nothing else did either.