15
Aura
I made it three blocks toward Hockey House before Easton spoke.
“Clarke, I wasn’t joking. I don’t live there anymore.”
My hands tightened around the steering wheel, knuckles bleaching white. The Sin Bin was already a dark smear in the rearview, and Cade’s headlights faded behind us with Bliss probably crying in his passenger seat because she was emotionally inconvenient and loved people like a full-contact sport.
I had expected a fight before Easton got into my car.
I had expected him to tell me to fuck off, call someone else, bleed on a curb out of spite—anything except slide into the passenger seat and stare through the windshield with every ounce of violence gone quiet behind his eyes, banked to embers but still burning.
Then I turned toward Hockey House, and he finally decided to use his mouth.
I looked over at him. “What do you mean, you don’t live there anymore?”
His jaw worked beneath the passing wash of streetlights, a hard, rhythmic clench and release.
His knuckles were wrapped in cheap first-aid gauze already spotted with rusty red blooms, his hoodie bunched in his lap because there was blood on the sleeve, and one of the ice packs Hannah had shoved at him sat against his ribs instead of his face because Easton Wade apparently prioritized internal damage over visible evidence.
Dried blood marked the corner of his mouth like a warning, a dark, flaking comma, and the bruise blooming near his cheekbone had turned mean beneath the shifting light.
“The sentence was pretty clear, Clarke.”
I hated my last name in his mouth. Hated it in a way that made my whole body heat, a flush crawling up my neck, because he knew exactly what he was doing with it.
No Aura. No East. No room for anything that used to happen in the dark between us when he was mine for a few hours.
It was a weapon now, and he wielded it with brutal precision.
“When did you move?”
“A while ago.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“That’s tragic.”
I hit the blinker too hard, the click-clack echoing through the tense silence, and kept driving past the turn. “Where am I taking you?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“It does when I’m the one driving.”
His eyes cut toward me, pale and glacial in the dim light. “I only agreed to this because Ryan looked two seconds from dragging me to his place and Cade had that rich-man hostage face on.”
“Rich-man hostage face?”
“The one where he pretends something is a suggestion while already having a room prepared, a doctor on call, and enough emotional blackmail to make leaving feel rude.”
Despite everything, my mouth almost moved.
Almost.
Easton saw it, and his face remained cold. “Don’t look pleased. I wasn’t choosing your car. I was avoiding another babysitting sleepover where everyone stares at me like I might chew through drywall if left unattended.”
“You might.”
“Probably.”
“At least you’re self-aware.”
“Don’t start applauding yet, Clarke. I’m still bleeding on your seat.”
“Address, Easton.”
His eyes sharpened. “Do not use my name like you get to order me around.”
“Then stop acting like a man who needs handling.”
He shifted in the seat, slow and controlled, a predator uncoiling, but the air inside the car snapped tight anyway, charged and dangerous. The movement made him wince before he swallowed it, one hand pressing harder against the ice pack over his ribs.
I caught it.
He caught me catching it, and his mouth flattened.
“You cracked a rib?” I asked.
“No.”
“That was less certain than it should have been.”
“That was an answer.”
“That was a lie.”
“Add it to the list. You’re good at keeping one.”
I looked back at the road, my grip tightening around the wheel. “You’re impossible.”
“And you’re driving the wrong direction.”
“Address.”
He stared at me long enough for the light to turn green and the car behind us to lean on its horn in one long, impatient blare.
I didn’t move. I sat there with my foot on the brake and my eyes locked on his profile until he finally rattled off an address on the south side of town, the numbers spat out like curses.
The car behind us honked again, longer this time.
I drove.
Campus disappeared behind us block by block, the neat brick buildings and manicured lawns giving way to cracked sidewalks, boarded windows, and streetlights that looked like they had given up asking to be replaced, their glow sickly and weak.
Easton stayed silent while I drove past a liquor store with half its neon sign dead, a laundromat fogged from the inside, and a gas station where two men in hoodies watched my car like they were deciding whether it was worth their time.
I pulled into the lot behind a three-story brick apartment building that looked like it had lost every argument it had ever been in.
Rust crawled down the outdoor stairs like a weeping wound.
The security light above the back entrance flickered like a horror movie with budget cuts, stuttering on and off.
Someone had dumped a stained mattress beside the chain-link fence, and a shopping cart sat tipped near the dumpster with one wheel spinning lazily in the wind.
I stared through the windshield, my grip still tight on the wheel. “This is where you live?”
Easton unbuckled his seat belt, the click loud in the quiet. “Careful, Clarke. You sound disgusted.”
“I am disgusted.”
His hand paused against the door handle.
I turned on him before he could weaponize it. “Not because it’s cheap. Because you moved into a building that looks like it eats tenants and spits out security deposits when you have a mansion available to you for free.”
“Rent’s low.”
“So is the bar.”
He shoved the door open and got out without another word.
Cold air punched into the car, sharp and smelling of wet concrete and garbage, and I followed because letting him walk away with blood soaking through his hand and possibly cracked ribs would have been easy, and apparently I had lost the ability to choose easy the second he punched Maddox.
“Why?” I demanded, slamming my door hard enough for the sound to echo across the empty lot. “Why are you here?”
Easton didn’t slow, his boots crunching over broken asphalt. “Go home.”
“Why aren’t you at Hockey House?”
He reached the first metal stair and turned so quickly I almost ran into him. The flickering light cut harsh lines over his face, making the bruise near his jaw look meaner and his eyes almost colorless, like chips of winter sky.
“Fuck, because I hate my own mind, Clarke. Does that answer your question?”
The words hit hot and fast, but I refused to step back. “No. It makes you sound insane.”
“I moved because I was tired of walking into rooms full of you.”
I laughed, a short, brittle sound, because the other option was letting that split me open. “Rooms full of me?”
“The couch where you used to sit with your legs tucked beneath you while you acted like you weren’t waiting for me to look.
The kitchen where you stole my coffee and told me I made it wrong, then drank all of it anyway.
The back porch. My bed. My sheets. My fucking bathroom counter with your lip-gloss stain on it that wouldn’t come off no matter how hard I scrubbed. ”
He came down one step, closing the space between us, his voice sharp enough to draw blood without ever rising.
“I didn’t want to be near anything you touched. I didn’t want the memory of you in my room. I didn’t want to wake up smelling your coconut lotion on a pillowcase and spend the whole day wanting a woman who treated me like I was embarrassing for wanting her out loud.”
My throat tightened. I turned it into a smile with teeth. “So you moved into a felony with plumbing because I hurt your feelings?”
His eyes flared, one flash of pure, unguarded pain before it disappeared beneath ice. “You did more than hurt my feelings.”
“You spent all this time making sure everyone knew you hated me.”
“You made it easy.”
“You made it public.”
His laugh was brutal, a single harsh exhale. “That’s rich coming from you.”
The hit landed before I understood it was coming.
Darian. The video. Maddox’s mouth inside The Sin Bin. Easton knew enough now to use the word public like a match near gasoline, and for one second, I hated him so much I could barely breathe, the air turning to ash inside my lungs.
His face changed, just slightly, a flicker of something like regret. Like he knew exactly where the blade had gone and hated that he had thrown it. Then the regret vanished beneath cold anger because neither of us was brave enough to keep anything clean that night.
I stepped closer until our toes almost touched. “Say what you mean.”
“I mean you don’t get to stand here and act shocked that I learned from you.”
My palm twitched with the urge to strike him. “You are such an asshole.”
“Yeah, you preferred me when I was useful.”
“I preferred you when you weren’t cruel.”
“I preferred you when I was still dumb enough to play by your rules.”
The stairwell beneath us shifted, metal groaning, and a raspy voice called, “Wade.”
A man slumped near the bottom landing, half in shadow, one boot braced against the stair and a paper bag tucked beside his coat.
His beard was patchy gray, his cheeks red from cold or alcohol, and his eyes sharpened when they found Easton like this was routine.
He looked from Easton to me and back again with the delighted misery of someone who had found free entertainment.
“Bad night?” the man asked, his voice gravelly.
Easton reached into his pocket with his good hand, his movements stiff. “You could say that.”
“Pretty girl looks mad.”
“She is.”
“I’m mad because he is bleeding like a stubborn idiot,” I snapped before I could stop myself.
The man barked a laugh that turned into a wet cough. “She yours?”
“No,” Easton said too quickly and too hard, the word a bullet.
I felt it like a slap and smiled as though I didn’t, my lips stretching thin over my teeth.
Easton pulled out a folded bill and held it down. “Get food, Marv. Real food.”
Marv took the money with a shaking hand. “You always say that.”