10 #2
“Neither are you,” I shot back because if he wanted to pry, I could pry too. “Since we’re apparently doing emotional dentistry, what the hell was that with Charm?”
Ryan’s expression didn’t change, but the air around him did.
I caught it and latched on because deflection was a sport, and I was still good at something that night. “You look at her like she owes you money or a kiss. Could’ve been either.”
His eyes narrowed. “You noticing my business now?”
“Your business was sitting beside mine making eyes over beer and bad decisions.”
“It’s studying, East.”
“It was eye contact with sexual intention.”
A quiet laugh escaped him despite himself before he looked toward the window like the rain held answers he trusted more than me. “It’s just fun, ese.”
“Fun?”
“Yeah. Fun. Pretty girl. Sharp mouth. Family name that probably has its own wing at a museum.” His jaw shifted. “Charm is not the kind of girl whose people get excited when a barrio kid with foster files, tattoos, and a last name he got from his white junkie father walks through the door.”
That shut me up faster than I liked.
Ryan glanced back at me, reading my face. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re about to tell me that’s bullshit because friendship makes you optimistic.”
“I was going to say it’s bullshit because Charm doesn’t strike me as a woman who lets her family decide who she looks at.”
“She wouldn’t.” His mouth pulled toward one side, but it wasn’t a smile. “Her family will decide for her.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know Charm.”
“You know Charm?”
“I know people with gates, East. I know the way they scan a man’s shoes before deciding whether his hand is clean enough to shake.
I know the smile they use when they want to be polite without letting you forget you don’t belong.
” His gaze sharpened before he killed the reaction.
“Charm is different… she seems different. Different doesn’t mean possible. ”
I finally sat because his words had teeth and none of them were aimed at me. “You like her.”
He gave me a look. “No me jodas.”
“Was that denial?”
“That was me telling you not to fuck with me in two languages.”
“She got under your skin.”
Ryan pointed at me. “We’re talking about your disaster.”
“I can multitask.”
“You can barely handle one task without bleeding.”
“Charm Harlen,” I said, dragging out her name because apparently I wanted to die. “She might be a rich girl, but that eye-fucking you two do isn’t for the weak.”
Ryan’s gaze flattened. “You done?”
I almost smiled. It felt strange on my face. “Not even close.”
“Then I’ll help you get there.” He leaned forward again, his forearms braced on his knees.
“You want to talk about women who scare us? Fine. Charm scares me because she has a life that looks like it has places to land, and I spent most of mine learning how to leave before anyone got the chance to shove me out. Aura scares you because she got beneath all that noble, captain, good-son bullshit and found the part of you that wants something for yourself.”
My almost-smile died.
Ryan watched it happen. “That’s why you’re so pissed.”
“I’m pissed because she hurt me.”
“You’re pissed because she hurt you where nobody else was allowed to touch. You’re pissed because it was real, East.”
I looked down at the towel around my hand. Blood had spread through the cotton in uneven patches. “You get poetic after midnight?”
“I get honest after midnight. Big difference.”
“Since when do you know so much?”
His gaze moved toward the bookshelf and paused on an open novel filled with notes in the margins, then shifted toward the framed photograph of him with the guys. “Since I learned early that people can feel something and still fuck it up beyond recognition.”
I frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means I didn’t come from money like you boys.”
My head snapped up. “I didn’t come from money.”
Ryan raised his brows.
“My old man died,” I said as defensiveness rose before I could stop it. “My mom got some life insurance and a little help, but I’m here on scholarship. I don’t have Mercer money or Lawson money. I don’t have Charm Harlen money, and I don’t have some trust fund waiting if hockey doesn’t work.”
Ryan watched me without looking offended or impressed, only steady enough to make my skin prickle.
“Hermano,” he said, his voice quiet and cutting without cruelty, “that is rich.”
My mouth opened, but nothing came out.
He leaned back in the chair, his jaw tight and gaze flat.
“I’m not saying you had it easy. Losing your dad fucked you up.
I know money doesn’t tuck you in at night or make grief tolerable.
But food on the table? Heat in the house?
A school that didn’t treat you like you were already a statistic?
A mom who could keep you in gear, gas, and registration fees long enough for your scholarship to matter?
” His mouth pulled slightly to one side. “That’s wealth where I come from.”
I sat back slowly.
Ryan looked at his hands. “I had nights when dinner was whatever I could lift from a corner store without getting caught. Nights when I slept in my clothes because the heat was off and taking them off felt stupid. I had coaches who liked my talent but not the mess that came with me. Foster houses where I learned which floorboards creaked and how lightly I needed to sleep before a door opened.”
I had known Ryan’s past was rough. Everyone knew the broad strokes: foster homes, no money, too many places that weren’t home, and hockey as his one clean exit.
Broad strokes were easy to carry. Details had teeth.
He rubbed one hand across his jaw. “That shit fucks with me. Still. I have nights when my apartment is paid for and my fridge has food, but some part of me waits for someone to take it away because that’s how my brain learned safety works. Temporary. Conditional. Don’t get comfortable.”
My anger had nowhere clean to land.
Ryan looked up. “So yeah, if I met a woman and felt anything that could touch my drive to succeed—that unquenchable thirst for success—or anything that could make me want to stand still when all I know how to do is climb, I’d be terrified.”
I stared at him.
“Aura’s shit isn’t my shit,” he continued.
“I get that. Whatever happened to her in high school—getting fucked over, cheated on, or something worse—isn’t the same as sleeping with one eye open because the lock on your bedroom door is broken.
I’m not comparing pain like we’re measuring scars at a bar. ”
His voice roughened.
“But something fucks all of us up. Sometimes the thing that fucked us up makes us cruel in ways we swear are survival. I’m telling you, something big fucked that girl up.”
I hated how badly I wanted to reject it.
I wanted to throw it back at him and say Aura didn’t get a tragic pass because some high school asshole had hurt her. I wanted to tell him I wasn’t interested in understanding the architecture of her fear while I remained buried beneath the wreckage it left.
Ryan wasn’t giving her a pass, though. He was asking me to look at the wreckage and admit there had been a building before it fell.
“A little understanding of the thing fucking her up might change things,” he said.
I looked down at my bleeding hand. “Understanding doesn’t undo it.”
“No.”
“Doesn’t make me trust her.”
“No.”
“Doesn’t make what she did hurt less.”
“Never said it did.”
“Then what the fuck is the point?”
Ryan leaned forward again. “The point is deciding whether you want to keep bleeding just to prove she cut you.”
Somewhere across town, Aura was probably with Bliss and Charm or already home, pacing the ABC apartment with her sharp mouth pressed tight while she replayed the fight and pretended she didn’t care until she was alone enough to fall apart.
Maybe she wasn’t falling apart at all. Maybe she was already convincing herself I had proved every ugly thing she believed about men who wanted too much.
I didn’t know.
“I can’t be the one who crawls back,” I said.
Ryan nodded. “Then don’t.”
“I mean it.”
“I believe you.”
“No, you don’t.” I looked at him, needing someone to understand the line before I crossed it again. “If I go back first, I’ll never respect myself. Not after that. Not after begging once and giving her the chance to make me hate myself for it.”
Ryan’s expression changed in a way I didn’t want to name. “Then don’t crawl.”
I scoffed. “What, walk?”
“No,” he said. “Stand still.”
I frowned.
“Stop performing. Stop trying to hurt her in every room you share. Stop turning every party into a crime scene. Stop handing her evidence that you became exactly what she feared.” He held my gaze. “Stand still and let her come correct if she’s going to.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
“Then you’ll know, hermano.”
I laughed, but it sounded tired now. “That simple?”
“Nothing about this is simple. I’m saying maybe stop pouring gas on it and acting surprised when there’s fire.”
I sat back with the towel loose around my knuckles and blood drying along the edges.
For the first time all night, I felt exhausted instead of furious, and that frightened me more.
Fury was useful. Exhaustion left room for things I didn’t want to consider, like the way Aura had said she was sorry, the sound of her voice when she said I would know that if I had spoken to her even once, and the fact that I had read her texts and left them there, not because I didn’t want to answer but because I wanted to answer too much.