10
Easton
Ryan’s apartment was exactly what I expected from him. It wasn’t cozy or warm in the way people meant when they talked about home, but it was clean with purpose. Everything had a place because men who grew up without control either learned how to build it or drowned trying.
Bookshelves lined nearly every wall, packed with every genre of literature imaginable.
Classics sat beside horror, poetry, biographies, literary fiction, and battered paperbacks with broken spines.
Other shelves held books on interpreting literature, criticism, writing craft, and enough annotated novels to prove Ryan’s English degree wasn’t decorative.
Some books were stacked two rows deep, others sideways across the tops, the only abundance he allowed in an apartment built around restraint.
His boots were lined up near the door, Flint Frost gear hung over the back of a chair, and a half-zipped duffel sat near the couch because he had only just returned from Ontario.
A roll of hockey tape held down a stack of mail on the counter like a paperweight with unresolved issues.
Two mugs waited in the sink, protein powder stood beside the coffee maker, and one framed photo sat among the books, showing Ryan in his Fury jersey with the guys after a game sophomore year.
There were no family pictures or sentimental clutter. Nothing soft except the couch he pointed toward like it had personally offended him.
“Sit down before you put your fist through my drywall,” Ryan said.
“I’m not your charity case.”
“You’re bleeding on my floor.”
I looked at my hand. My knuckles were split again, which meant my body had decided to keep physical evidence of every terrible decision I made that night. “Your floor’s ugly anyway.”
“It matches my personality. Sit.”
I sat because fighting him over the couch felt pathetic, and I had reached my quota for public humiliation forty minutes ago when I lost my shit at Hockey House and put half the room on alert like I was a natural disaster with blond hair.
Ryan moved around the apartment without fussing, which was one of the only reasons I tolerated him right then.
He didn’t hover or use the careful voice people adopted when they wanted to make sure you knew they were being kind.
He grabbed a clean towel from a kitchen drawer, tossed it against my chest, then pulled a bag of frozen peas from the freezer and dropped it onto the coffee table.
I stared at it. “Very medical.”
“I’m not Bliss. I don’t keep a trauma kit organized by wound category and glittered edges.”
“Amateur.”
“Bleed quieter.”
I pressed the towel against my knuckles and leaned back into the couch as the adrenaline drained hard enough to leave me hollow.
Rage had momentum and gave me somewhere to put my hands, my mouth, my body, and everything I didn’t want to feel.
Once it burned out, only the wreckage remained beneath it, along with the memory of Aura’s face when I told her I had warned her what I would become.
The line felt good for exactly as long as it took me to see it sting. After that, it settled inside my chest like a stone.
Ryan opened the refrigerator. “Water or coffee?”
“It’s almost midnight.”
“So, coffee?”
“Water.”
He looked disappointed but slid a bottle across the counter anyway. “You sure? Water feels suspiciously close to self-care.”
“Don’t start.”
“I haven’t started. You’ll know when I start.”
I twisted the cap from the bottle and drank because my throat still hurt from yelling and from everything I had said too loudly in front of too many people. Aura had stood there with her chin raised and her eyes too bright, letting me carve at her because she had already carved me first.
Maybe that was the only version of fairness we knew how to use anymore. Maybe it was only cruelty with better posture.
Ryan leaned against the counter, watching me with eyes that had seen too much and trusted almost nothing.
“What?” I snapped.
He lifted one shoulder. “Just trying to decide how bad the damage is.”
“To my hand or my pride?”
“Both are concerning.”
“Then stop staring.”
“No.”
I laughed without humor and dropped my head against the couch. The ceiling had a water stain shaped vaguely like Michigan if Michigan had been kicked in the ribs. “Great. Hostage situation.”
“You’re free to leave.”
“Am I?”
Ryan’s mouth barely moved. “Not a chance.”
At least he was honest.
I closed my eyes, but that was worse because the second the room went dark, Aura appeared.
Aura by the fireplace, her chin lifted and her eyes bright with fury.
Aura smiling at me like every word I threw at her didn’t hurt when I knew it did because I knew the exact way her face went too smooth whenever she was wounded.
I knew how her mouth sharpened when she needed to make sure nobody saw the pain beneath it.
I knew what she looked like when she lied to everyone, including herself.
And I knew the worst thing.
Some part of me still wanted to believe she had been lying every time she said I didn’t matter.
That was what made me want to put my fist through Ryan’s wall.
“Do you think it’s possible?” Ryan asked.
I opened my eyes. “What?”
He looked down at the floor for a moment, like he already knew I would hate the question and had decided to ask it anyway. “Just hear me out, East.”
“I’m already against it.”
“I haven’t said it yet.”
“Your face did.”
He exhaled through his nose. “Do you think it’s possible she feels the same and is terrified?”
Every muscle in my body locked, but Ryan didn’t look away.
I stared at him, waiting for the punch line or the part where he made the idea less insulting and impossible, less like he had reached into my chest and dragged my worst thought into the open air.
He didn’t.
“She looked gutted tonight,” Ryan said. “That wasn’t indifference.”
Something inside me snapped upright. “How the fuck could you think she feels the same?”
“Because I saw her face.”
“You saw her face?” I stood so quickly that the peas slid from my hand and struck the floor with a dull slap. “You saw her face and decided what? That this is love? That she’s scared? That I should be understanding because Aura might have feelings she refuses to admit?”
Ryan folded his arms. “I said hear me out.”
“No, you hear me out.” I pointed at him with the towel-wrapped hand, blood already seeping through the white cotton. “Love doesn’t look you in the eye and tell you to fuck off.”
Ryan went still.
“Love doesn’t call you dramatic the second you finally say the thing that’s been eating you alive,” I continued, my voice climbing because if I stopped, I would feel too much of it.
“Love doesn’t make you feel stupid for handing over the one part of yourself nobody else gets.
Love doesn’t take the truth and make it ugly because the room got too real. ”
“I’m not saying what she did was right.”
“If that was love, then her version and mine are not the fucking same.”
Ryan took the hit without flinching. “Fear can block a thousand emotions.”
I laughed, and it came out ugly. “Great. Put that on a pillow.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” I dragged one hand through my hair and paced toward the window before turning back because the apartment was too small for that much fury.
“You all want to think that’s love? Fine.
What a beautiful, romantic story. Aura loved me so much she lied to me ten toes down, let me stand there feeling like I was losing my mind, and cosigned her own bullshit when I called her on what was happening between us. ”
Ryan held my gaze, and I hated him for letting me keep going. I hated him more for looking like he understood.
“She didn’t only deny it,” I said, quieter now, which made it worse. “She made me feel stupid for feeling it. That’s what eats me alive. Not that she didn’t feel it, because I could survive that. Rejection is clean. It hurts, but at least it’s honest.”
My voice cracked, and I looked away quickly, my jaw clenched hard enough to ache.
“It’s the thought in the back of my head that maybe she did feel it. That maybe I wasn’t making it up. If she felt even a fraction of what I did, Ryan, tell me how the fuck she could do that to me.”
Ryan didn’t answer immediately.
The apartment hummed around us, the old heater rattling beneath the window while rain tapped against the glass. Party noise still rang faintly in my ears even though we were blocks from Hockey House. My hand throbbed, but my chest hurt worse.
Ryan finally pushed away from the counter and crossed toward the couch. He didn’t sit beside me. Instead, he lowered himself into the armchair opposite it with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped between them, like whatever he was about to say carried weight.
“You ever notice how you talk about your life like it’s a checklist somebody handed you at birth?”
I stared at him. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means captain, defenseman, scholarship, scouts, North Cut, your mom, Skylar, Vivi, money, grades, practice, lifts, don’t fuck up, don’t fall apart, don’t let anyone see you sweat.” He counted each item on his fingers, his voice calm enough to piss me off. “You say it all like it’s normal.”
“It is normal.”
“No, hermano, it’s familiar. That’s not the same thing.”
I rolled my neck as tension pulled from my shoulders to the base of my skull. “I didn’t come here for therapy from a guy whose emotional range is intimidation and life lessons.”
Ryan’s mouth twitched. “I’m versatile. And for the record, I’m not the second-chances guy. Burn me, you lose me. There’s no in-between, so don’t get it twisted.”
“Great. Growth looks awesome on you.”
“Sit your ass down before you bleed on more of my ugly floor.”
I stayed standing because sitting felt too close to admitting I needed the conversation. “I’m fine.”
“You’re on the edge, East. One more trigger and you’ll fuck your life up.”
“I’m better than that.”
“You’re not.”