6
Aura
Hockey House was packed wall to wall with post-game chaos, but the air felt wrong before we made it ten feet inside.
The Fury had won their first game of the season.
Easton had played like he wanted every scout in the building to regret breathing near a clipboard, Cade had looked impossible to kill, and Briggs had taken one dramatic lap around the living room telling anyone who would listen that his third-period save had restored faith to the American people.
The house should have felt loose, loud, and stupid in the usual Hockey House way, with music vibrating through the floorboards, cheap beer sweating on counters, and neon pink and yellow lights glowing around the windows.
Instead, it felt like the whole place had been waiting for me to walk in and find the knife.
Easton was in the kitchen, and so was Brinley.
She stood tucked beneath his arm like she had been built for the exact purpose of being seen there, her glossy blonde hair falling over one shoulder, her cropped KFU top cut high enough to show the smooth strip of stomach beneath it, and her black skirt short enough to make subtlety a lost cause.
One hand rested against Easton’s hoodie, directly over his heart, while the other held a red cup as she laughed up at him like he had said something worth the giggle.
He wasn’t smiling.
Easton looked bored, cold, and detached in that brutal way he had perfected, letting her lean into him while his gaze stayed somewhere beyond the room, the party, and anything she could offer. He didn’t have to touch her back for it to work or want her for it to count.
He only had to let me see it.
Bliss stopped beside me, and Charm stopped on my other side. No one said anything, which was impressive because silence between the three of us was usually either a medical emergency or a tactical choice.
Brinley’s fingers curled into the fabric of Easton’s hoodie. She said something near his ear, and he lowered his head enough to hear her.
It was only a tiny movement, but my stomach still dropped like I had missed a step in the dark.
Bliss’s hand brushed mine. “Aura.”
I smiled because too many people were watching for me to do anything else. “What?”
“Don’t react, please.”
The warning lit something ugly inside me.
Charm kept her eyes on Easton and Brinley, but her voice came out soft and too careful. “She’s right.”
I turned toward her, and the softness in her face only made it worse. Charm looked tired. Maybe not tired of me, but tired of the way I kept bleeding on people and acting like it was glitter.
“Wow,” I said. “Two votes against fun before I’ve even had a drink.”
Bliss shifted slightly in front of me, all small body, huge nerve, and engagement rings flashing beneath the neon when she lifted her hands. “This isn’t fun.”
“Oh, so him letting puck bunnies crawl all over him while treating me like a disease for seven months is fun and totally fine, but me reacting is apparently where everyone finds morals.”
“That’s not what this is.”
“That’s exactly what this is.”
Charm touched my arm. “Baby, he’s trying to hurt you.”
I looked back toward the kitchen. Brinley was still there, still angled into him, still glowing like a woman who had no idea she was being used as a warning shot.
“Then he’s doing great,” I said.
Bliss’s expression pulled tight. She glanced toward Cade, who had just entered from the living room and was already watching Easton with his jaw locked. His eyes shifted to Bliss and then me, and I saw the choice pass between them.
She remained beside me, but some part of her loyalty now belonged to the man standing across the room, protecting Easton with his stare.
Bliss was fucking fence-riding.
That hurt more than I expected.
Charm’s fingers tightened around my wrist. “Please don’t pick a fight tonight just to hurt him back.”
I laughed, and it sounded pretty enough to make the lie worse. “You say that like Gage won’t enjoy the experience.”
Charm closed her eyes for half a second as my meaning settled. “Aura.”
There it was, not in her words but in the way her shoulders dipped.
She was tired of watching me turn pain into performance. Tired of knowing the viciousness between Easton and me might stop if I came clean about my rape. Tired of me demanding that everyone understand me without handing them the truth of why they should.
And Charm had spent enough time listening to Ryan defend Easton’s hurt that I could practically hear his balanced bullshit beneath her voice.
Across the kitchen, Ryan leaned near the island with a beer in one hand and his eyes on Charm, though he looked away the instant she glanced over.
Fast. Too fast.
Charm noticed anyway because she noticed everything beneath all that softness and lip gloss. Her expression didn’t change, but the hand around my wrist loosened for one beat.
Even in the middle of my emotional collapse, I clocked it.
Unbelievable. My life was on fire, and Charm was having a subplot.
“Do not look at Gage,” Bliss said.
I looked directly at Gage.
He stood near the far side of the kitchen, laughing with two forwards, his hair still damp from his shower, his sleeves pushed up, and his easy smile already halfway aimed at me when he caught my attention.
He was good-looking in a clean, athletic, unserious way, the kind of man who could flirt without making it feel like a blood oath.
He came without history, old bedrooms, porch railings, dark-room rules, or a voice in my head telling me I had ruined the best thing I had ever been brave enough to want.
Perfect.
Bliss made a small sound. “Aura, I am begging you.”
“Don’t,” I said, still watching Gage. “You don’t get to beg me to stop when I have to watch him decorate himself with Brinley.”
Bliss flinched, and guilt tried to rise, but I stepped over it.
Charm’s voice sharpened for the first time. “He is wrong for that, and you are wrong for this.”
I turned toward her. “What are you, the moral police?”
Her face went pale, but she didn’t back down. “I’m on the side where you don’t stoop to his level. He isn’t stopping, so maybe you need to.”
The words landed too close.
“Cee,” Bliss whispered.
“No.” Charm’s glossy, furious eyes stayed on mine. “I love you. You know I love you. But you cannot keep waiting for Easton to magically understand your reasoning and then punish him for it later.”
I stared at her, genuinely stunned by the logic.
I wasn’t asking Easton to understand why I ran. I was asking for the basic human decency to stop punishing me and move forward.
Instead, I was expected to allow his bullshit because his feelings had been hurt.
Yeah, fuck that.
The music thudded through the house. Someone laughed too loudly in the living room. Easton still had Brinley at his side, and his eyes were on me now.
He had heard enough.
His expression didn’t change, but his attention sharpened like a blade sliding from its sheath.
I smiled at Charm because if I didn’t, I might cry in the entryway of Hockey House, and I would rather walk barefoot over glass. “Thank you for the group therapy. I’ll be sure to leave a review.”
Bliss’s eyes shifted nervously. “Don’t do this.”
I looked past her toward Easton, Brinley’s hand still on his chest and the cold, detached stare he had spent seven months using like a punishment he could keep handing out because nobody wanted to make him stop.
Seven months of women, comments, and him making sure I saw every body he used to prove I wasn’t welcome near his anymore.
And somehow, I was the one everyone kept asking to be careful.
“He did it first,” I said.
Charm stepped closer, her voice low and tight. “That doesn’t make this better.”
“No.” Something inside me finally stopped bending. “It makes it even.”
Bliss flinched like I had slapped her, but I wasn’t done.
I looked at both of them then, at my girls, the two people who loved me enough to stand in front of the fire but apparently not enough to admit I was already burning.
“I love you,” I said, and my voice cracked just enough to piss me off. “I mean that. I love you both so much it makes me stupid, but enough.”
Bliss’s expression softened. “Aura—”
“No. Enough.” I shook my head as heat crawled up my neck, sharp, humiliating, and alive.
“You want me to be a mop for this shit. You want me to stand here and keep cleaning up the same mess because Easton is hurt and angry, and apparently that gives him unlimited permission to be cruel as long as I’m the one he’s aiming at. ”
Charm’s mouth parted, but no words came out.
“You want me to keep calm and not react. You want me to be the bigger person while he rubs women in my face at every party, makes shitty comments, looks through me like I’m trash, and then somehow I’m the problem when I finally decide I’m done taking it.”
Bliss swallowed. “That’s not what we’re saying.”
“It is, though.” My laugh came out awful.
“Maybe you don’t mean it that way, but that’s what it is.
You want me to tell him everything. You want me to split myself open and hand him every ugly thing that happened to me in high school like it’s a permission slip.
Like maybe if he knows enough, he’ll forgive me for not being easy to love. ”
My chest rose too fast, but I didn’t look away.
“Maybe Cade has made you understand Easton’s pain better than mine,” I said to Bliss. Then I looked at Charm. “And maybe Ryan has spent enough time defending him that you think balance means asking me to bleed quietly.”
Both of them looked wounded.
Good.
I was wounded too.
“And I need you both to hear me when I say this.” My voice dropped, quieter but somehow meaner. “I do not want a man who needs my trauma explained to him before he decides I deserve basic decency.”
They both went still.