14
Aura
By the time we got Easton back inside, the Sin Bin had gone from packed weekend chaos to the kind of silence people only pretended wasn’t fear.
The Red Wings game still played across the TVs, but nobody was watching anymore.
Tables had shifted out of place. Chairs sat crooked.
Someone had tracked rain and mud through the front entrance, and cold air leaked inside every time the door swung open behind another person deciding they had seen enough for one night.
The whole bar smelled like beer, fryer oil, wet pavement, and now blood.
Rider handed Easton the hoodie he had left behind before they brought him through the door.
Easton walked ahead of him and Briggs with the fabric shoved against his split mouth and his knuckles hanging at his side like they didn’t belong to him anymore.
His shirt was damp from the rain and clung to his shoulders, while the bruising near his cheekbone had already begun to darken.
He didn’t look at the crowd. He didn’t look at Hannah.
He looked at me like the rest of the bar had burned down and I was the only thing left standing in the smoke.
I hated that I felt it.
I hated that, after all this time spent watching him look through me like I was nothing but a bad decision he had outgrown, one look from him could still hit the center of my chest and make everything inside me shake.
Bliss was there before I could make sense of it.
She came through the front with Cade behind her, Charm beside her, and Ryan right on their heels, all of them damp from the rain and wide-eyed from whatever nightmare version of the story I had managed to give Bliss over the phone.
Bliss’s face went white the second she saw the state of the bar, then whiter when she saw Easton.
“Oh my gosh,” she whispered.
Cade’s arm came around her without hesitation, anchoring her against his side, but his eyes were already moving.
Easton. Briggs. Rider. Me. The blood near the entrance.
The basketball players clustered outside with Maddox half-sitting against the wall between two of them while another pressed a wad of napkins against his face.
Charm looked at me first, then Bliss, then Maddox in the parking lot, and I watched the pieces click into place for them both. “Was that Maddox Vincent?”
I nodded, still frozen from the shock.
Her eyes filled so quickly that something in my throat closed.
She didn’t run to me, and I was grateful because I didn’t know what I would do if anyone touched me right then.
She stood there, beautiful and horrified, one hand pressed against her mouth like she was physically holding herself together.
Ryan’s face went deadly quiet.
He looked at Easton, then past him toward the door, then back again, and whatever he saw made his jaw harden. “What the fuck happened?”
Hannah came around the bar with a towel in one hand and murder across her face.
“What happened is Maddox opened his mouth in my bar and proved the world would be better if some men had theirs permanently wired shut.” Her gaze cut toward the basketball players near the entrance.
“You can let him know he’s eighty-sixed for life.
I don’t want him in my bar, near my bar, looking through the windows of my bar, or sending some pathetic friend in here to pick up food from my bar. He’s done.”
One of the basketball players nodded once, his face tight. “Understood.”
“No,” Hannah said, her voice sharp enough to make half the room flinch.
“I don’t think you do, so let me make it cleaner.
If Maddox walks through that door again, I call campus security, Kimball Falls PD, his coach, and his mother if I can find her number.
If any of you decide his version of tonight is worth spreading, I hope you have very comfortable shoes because you’ll be walking your asses to another bar for the rest of your lives. ”
Nobody argued.
Good.
For once, men had found survival in silence.
Bliss moved toward me then, slow and careful. “Aura.”
I stepped back before I could stop myself, and her face crumpled.
That hurt. It hurt in a place I didn’t have room for.
“Don’t,” I said, and my voice sounded wrong. Too thin. Too raw. “Please don’t.”
Charm’s hand lowered from her mouth. “Ay.”
I shook my head, sharp and immediate. “No. I can’t. I called because Easton was going to fight him, and I knew if I didn’t get someone here, he was going to do something he couldn’t walk back from. That’s why I called. That’s all I can do right now.”
Bliss’s eyes shone. “We’re not trying to—”
“I know.” My laugh came out ugly and empty.
“That’s the problem. I know you’re not trying to hurt me.
I know both of you love me. I know you’re scared, and I know you want to help, but I cannot stand here and be held together by committee tonight.
I can’t have everyone looking at me like I’m made of glass because Maddox finally said my truth out loud. ”
Charm flinched like the words had landed inside her own chest.
Bliss pressed her lips together and nodded even as tears spilled over.
I looked away because if I watched her cry for me, I was going to break again, and I had already done enough breaking for one night.
Across the room, Ryan stepped into Easton’s space with no patience left in him. “Let me see.”
Easton stared at him. “I’m fine.”
Ryan grabbed his wrist and lifted Easton’s hand anyway. His eyes moved over the split knuckles, the swelling, and the blood smeared between his fingers. Then he looked at Easton’s face, the bruise, the cut mouth, and the way his shoulders still hadn’t dropped from the fight.
Ryan’s voice went low. “I told you this was going to happen.”
Easton’s jaw flexed. “Not now.”
“Yes, now.” Ryan’s anger sharpened, controlled and furious. “I told you that you were going to crack. I told you this shit was eating you alive, and instead of dealing with it, both of you kept dragging everyone around you through the wreckage like this was sustainable.”
“Ryan,” Briggs warned.
Ryan didn’t look away from Easton. “No. This shit needs to stop before you fuck up your life.”
Easton’s eyes flashed. “You think I don’t know that?”
“I think you know it and keep doing it anyway.”
The words hit the room hard.
Easton went still, but Ryan wasn’t done. He turned his head toward me, and the force of his stare made my spine straighten on instinct.
“Fix this,” he said.
My mouth parted.
He pointed between Easton and me, leaving no softness and no room to hide. “Both of you. Enough is enough. You’re destroying each other and pretending everyone else is dramatic for noticing. You’re bleeding all over the people who love you, and tonight proved it isn’t staying contained anymore.”
“Don’t put this on her. Put it on the piece of shit in the parking lot,” Easton snapped.
Ryan’s eyes cut back toward him. “I’m putting it on both of you because it belongs to both of you.” He pointed toward the parking lot. “That was just the spark to this inferno.”
The bar went so quiet I could hear a fryer basket drop in the kitchen.
Then Charm made a small sound.
It barely counted as anything. Not a sob. Not a word. Only a broken inhale that slipped out before she could make it pretty.
Ryan heard it, and his whole face changed.
The anger didn’t vanish, but it shifted direction, softening around the edges as he looked at her. Charm stood near Bliss with both arms wrapped around herself, tears streaking her cheeks, looking like she hated being seen and couldn’t stop shaking.
Ryan crossed the room without asking permission from anyone.
Charm looked up as he reached her. “Ryan.”
That was all she got out before he pulled her into his arms.
Not casually. Not with some half-hidden, almost-friendly touch they could explain away later.
He wrapped one arm around her shoulders and the other around the back of her head, tucking her into his chest like it was the most natural thing in the world to hold Charm Harlen in front of half the team, Cade, Bliss, me, and every secret they had clearly been pretending wasn’t growing teeth.
Charm folded into him, and he kissed the top of her head.
The whole room noticed.
Bliss blinked through her tears, her mouth parting slightly.
Cade’s eyes narrowed for half a second. Briggs somehow looked like even his grief had paused to process it.
Rider’s gaze flicked toward Ryan’s hand in Charm’s hair, then away like he had just learned something he didn’t know what to do with.
Ryan didn’t care.
He bent his head close to Charm’s and murmured something I couldn’t hear. Whatever it was made her fingers tighten in the front of his jacket.
Something inside me ached in a way I didn’t have words for.
Bliss wiped beneath her eyes and looked back at me. Her voice came softer now, but steadier. “Ryan’s right.”
I gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “Wonderful. Are we voting?”
“No.” Bliss shook her head and stepped only close enough to make me feel loved without trapping me. “We let it go on too long. All of us. We watched you two tear chunks out of each other because we didn’t know how to stop it without making it worse, and we were wrong.”
I looked at her.
Her chin trembled, but she kept going. “You want to be mad at us? Be mad. We earned some of it. We pushed when we shouldn’t have.
We backed off when we should have pushed.
We tried to manage you instead of trusting you to tell us what you needed.
” Her gaze slid briefly toward Easton, then returned to me.
“But this is fixable, Aura. Maybe not easy. Maybe not clean. Maybe not tonight in some perfect way. But it is fixable, and you both know how.”
Easton’s voice came rough from behind me. “Bliss.”
“No,” she said without looking at him. “I love you too, Easton, but I’m not doing this anymore. I’m not standing in another room while you two look at each other like you’re dying and act like the rest of us are insane for noticing the blood.”
The words sank into the floor, and no one moved for a second.