18
Aura
I sat in my car outside Easton’s apartment with both hands locked around the steering wheel, my Sin Bin referee shirt twisted across my ribs, my shorts crooked on my hips, and my mouth swollen from the kind of goodbye that didn’t feel clean enough to survive.
Rain tapped softly and steadily against the windshield, blurring the parking lot lights until every yellow glow stretched long and warped across the glass.
The building behind me looked as tired as I felt, all stained brick, dim stairwell windows, rusted metal stairs, and one flickering security light over the entrance that made the wet pavement flash every few seconds.
Somewhere up there, Easton was alone with busted knuckles, bruised ribs, a split mouth, and every truth I had finally handed him too late.
My phone sat in my lap.
Bliss had texted six times since The Sin Bin.
Charm had texted four.
I hadn’t answered any of them.
I told myself I needed space. I told myself silence was healthier than saying something awful and permanent. I told myself a lot of things, apparently, because lying to myself had become my most consistent extracurricular.
The group chat was still pinned at the top of my messages.
Ay. B. Cee.
Three girls who had survived middle school bathroom breakdowns, high school hallways, bad eyeliner, worse boys, my public ruin, Bliss’s attack, Charm’s quietly terrifying family obligations, and one Hockey House fight that had split us right down the middle.
My thumb hovered over the keyboard for so long the screen dimmed. I tapped it awake and typed before pride could talk me out of needing someone.
Me: I’m sorry. I need you.
Bliss answered so fast it hurt.
Bliss: Where are you?
Charm came in right behind her.
Charm: Send your location. Right now.
My thumb hovered over the screen again. Turning my location back on felt like unlocking a door I had slammed shut with both hands.
It felt like admitting I had been alone and hated it.
It felt like giving them a way back in when I still had bruises from the last time they had stood too close to the wound.
I did it anyway.
Then I dropped the phone onto the passenger seat, folded forward over the wheel, and cried so hard my throat forgot how to make sound.
By the time headlights swung into the lot behind me, I had one palm pressed to my chest and the other over my mouth, trying to shove myself back into something with edges.
A dark SUV pulled into the space beside me, tires hissing through shallow puddles, and my first thought was Cade, which made my spine snap straight with panic because I could not survive another man trying to manage the blast zone that night.
Then Bliss climbed out from one side in leggings, boots, and one of Cade’s hoodies swallowing her whole body. Charm stepped out from the other in a cream cardigan over pajama shorts and rain boots that probably cost more than my car payment.
Ryan pulled away as soon as they were clear, leaving without getting out.
No boys.
No Cade.
No Ryan.
Just my girls.
That broke something worse.
Bliss yanked my door open before I could decide whether I was ready to be seen. “Move over.”
I blinked at her through wet lashes. “That is not how car doors work.”
“I’m not emotionally available for mechanics right now.” She leaned in, smelling like rain, Cade’s detergent, and panic, then took one look at my face and went pale. “Ay.”
“No.” I lifted one shaking finger toward her. “If you say my nickname like I’m a lost child, I’m driving into a lake.”
Charm opened the passenger door, grabbed my phone, my purse, and the shoe I had kicked onto the floorboard, then looked me over with eyes too sharp to be fooled by attitude. “You are not driving anywhere.”
“I drove here.”
“That wasn’t a defense. That was evidence of poor supervision.”
Bliss reached across me, turned off the ignition, and pulled the keys free. “Out.”
“I’m comfortable.”
“You’re crying in a parking lot outside the saddest apartment building in Kimball Falls while wearing your work uniform like evidence,” Bliss said, her voice shaking around every word. “You are not comfortable. You are feral with cup holders.”
Charm leaned one elbow against the roof and looked at Bliss. “That was unexpectedly strong.”
“I have been emotionally abandoned for days. My material has sharpened.”
A laugh broke out of me before I could stop it, small, ugly, and soaked in tears.
Bliss’s face crumpled immediately. “Don’t laugh like that.”
“I don’t have a prettier one available.”
“Then get out and let me hug you before I throw up from guilt.”
That should have made me mean. Three days ago, it would have. I would have sharpened myself on the word guilt and sliced until both of them backed away bleeding. That night, I was too empty to enjoy the weapon.
I stepped out.
Rain misted over my face the second I stood, cold enough to make me shiver. Bliss reached for me, then stopped with her hands hovering inches from my arms like she had no idea whether she was still allowed.
That hurt worse than being grabbed.
I took the decision away from both of us and stepped into her.
She made a broken sound and wrapped herself around me so tightly I lost the little air I had left. Charm came in from the other side, one arm around my back and the other hand firm at the nape of my neck, holding me together like she had decided collapse was permitted only under supervision.
“I’m sorry,” I said into Bliss’s hoodie.
Bliss shook against me. “No, don’t start there.”
“I was horrible.”
“So were we.”
“I said things I knew would hurt you.”
Charm’s fingers tightened at my neck. “We deserved some of them.”
“No.” I pulled back enough to look at her. Rain had gathered on her lashes, and her mouth was pressed flat like she was holding in every apology so she wouldn’t drown me with them. “You didn’t deserve Ryan being thrown in your face like that.”
Charm’s expression flickered, pain, embarrassment, and love all moving through the same tiny crack. “Maybe I deserved the reminder that I was protecting the room more than I was protecting you.”
Bliss nodded, wiping beneath one eye with the cuff of Cade’s hoodie. “We were wrong.”
I shook my head. “You were trying to stop me from lighting myself on fire.”
“We were looking at the wrong burn.” Bliss’s voice broke, but she kept going, stubborn as ever.
“We knew your damage. We knew exactly what Darian did to your life, and we still got so scared you were going to hate yourself for reacting that we stopped looking at what Easton had been doing to you too.”
Charm looked toward the apartment building, her jaw tight. “We saw you swinging, and we forgot you’d been bleeding for months before you ever raised your hand.”
My throat closed.
Bliss grabbed both my hands and held them between us. “I hate that we made you feel alone in that room. I hate that you looked around for us and didn’t find us standing where we should’ve been.”
“I told you to leave me alone.”
“You were hurt,” she said. “And I listened, which was mature and respectful and the worst fucking thing I’ve ever done.”
Charm let out a wet little laugh. “We were giving you space like two emotionally evolved women.”
Bliss grimaced. “It was disgusting.”
“I hated it,” Charm said.
“I cried into Cade’s chest so hard he asked if he needed to call you and beg on my behalf.”
“Ryan offered to drive me over and then immediately looked terrified that I might accept,” Charm added.
I blinked through the ache. “Ryan offered?”
“He said, and I quote, ‘This is women’s business, and I value my life, but I can operate a vehicle.’”
Bliss sniffed. “That was actually sweet for Ryan.”
Charm looked personally offended. “It was. I hated that too.”
The laugh that came out of me sounded closer to human that time, and Bliss’s face crumpled again.
“No crying at my laugh,” I warned.
“I’m crying at your everything.”
“That seems medically broad.”
“Aura,” Charm said softly.
I hated how much I loved hearing my name from her. Not careful. Not pitying. Just mine.
My arms folded around my middle before I could stop them. “I fucked him.”
Bliss froze.
Charm’s face went blank in that expensive way she had when her soul left her body to consult legal counsel.
I nodded once, miserable, damp, and still tasting Easton on my mouth. “Yeah.”
Bliss blinked hard. “Tonight?”
“No, B, during the Lincoln administration.”
“Do not sarcasm me while I’m processing.”
Charm’s eyes swept over my clothes again, but not in a way that made me feel judged. It was more like she was reading the scene backward from the twisted shirt, crooked shorts, shaking hands, and bruised mouth I couldn’t hide. “Was it… did you want it?”
I met her eyes. “Yes.”
Her shoulders lowered by a fraction.
Bliss stepped closer. “Was he cruel?”
“Yes.” I swallowed. “And no. It was rage and pain and love and every ugly thing we never buried right. It was both of us trying to punish the past out of each other and finding out the past has teeth.”
Charm closed her eyes. “Ay.”
“I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do.” Bliss’s voice trembled, but her grip on my hands remained firm. “You are allowed to want him and still be hurt by what happened. You are allowed to have chosen it and still feel wrecked after. Those things can sit in the same room.”
“They’re apparently renting the room and refusing to leave.”
Charm’s thumb brushed the back of my arm. “What happened after?”
I looked past them at the rain moving in silver lines through the parking lot lights. Easton’s window was somewhere up there, dark or lit, I didn’t know.
I wouldn’t look.
I couldn’t.
“He told me to get dressed.”
Bliss’s face changed. “I’m going to kill him.”
“No.” I caught her sleeve before she could fully become a Bennett. “He was trying to stop us from doing something worse.”
“After coffee-table sex in the sadness apartments, I feel like worse needed a formal definition.”
Bliss’s eyes cut toward her. “Charm.”
“What? I’m furious and concerned. My filter is on medical leave.”
Despite myself, my mouth twitched.
Then it fell apart.