21
Aura
The apartment felt too quiet after Bliss and Charm left.
Not empty exactly, since the couch still looked like a snack aisle had been robbed by women with emotional damage.
Blankets hung off the cushions, the movie sat paused on Kristen Wiig’s exhausted face, and a half-open bag of gummy worms slumped against the coffee table leg like it had also survived a crisis.
Easton stood in my kitchen dripping rain onto the floor.
His black KFU Fury hoodie was soaked through, clinging to the width of his shoulders and darkening at the seams. Water beaded in his hair and slid down the hard line of his jaw.
His lips had a faint bluish cast from the cold, and the bruising near his cheek had faded to ugly yellow at the edges, making the healing cut near his mouth look worse somehow.
He looked like punishment if punishment had walked through rain to knock on my door.
I hated that the thought made my stomach pull tight.
He watched me from across the kitchen, not moving closer, not giving me the easy thing of space either. He took up the room without trying, broad and wet and exhausted, with one wrapped hand flexing at his side like even standing still cost him something.
“You’re freezing,” I said.
His mouth barely moved. “I know.”
“You walked here?”
“Yeah.”
“In the rain?”
His gaze held mine. “It wasn’t raining when I started. I wanted the walk, though.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“No,” he said, and his voice was rough enough to make my fingers curl against the counter. “But if I tell you I needed the walk, you’re going to tell me that’s emotionally suspicious.”
“It is emotionally suspicious.”
“Probably.”
I stared at him, trying to find a version of myself that knew what to do with this. The last time I’d seen him, he’d told me to leave. He’d stood in his cheap apartment with every piece of me on the floor between us and told me he had love and anger but no forgiveness.
Now he stood in mine like a man who had either come to save me or ruin me again, and I wasn’t sure I had enough left to survive either one.
“You said you needed to say something,” I reminded him.
He nodded once, but he still didn’t move. His eyes went to the sink, then the floor, then his own wrapped knuckles, like he needed places to put his attention before he could look at me with all of it.
“I’ve been thinking about what I said.”
“That you couldn’t forgive me?”
His jaw flexed. “Yeah.”
I swallowed around the ache. “It was pretty clear, Easton.”
“I know. That’s the problem.”
My fingers tightened on the edge of the counter. “The problem is clarity?”
“The problem is that I used it like a wall.” He dragged one wet hand through his hair and let out a breath that shook at the end.
“I meant it when I said I couldn’t just hand you forgiveness like it was clean.
I still mean that part. I can’t pretend what happened between us didn’t wreck me.
I can’t pretend I didn’t spend months walking around feeling like a fucking idiot for loving you. ”
I flinched, even though I expected the hit.
His eyes caught it immediately, and pain moved across his face. “See, that right there. I hate that. I hate that every true thing between us lands like a weapon now.”
“Truth has not been kind to us.”
“No,” he said. “It hasn’t.”
Rain tapped at the kitchen window over the sink. A drop fell from the edge of his sleeve and hit the floor between us.
I looked down at it, then back at him. “Did you come here to tell me again that I hurt you? Because I know. I swear I know.”
“No.” His voice sharpened, not at me, more at himself. “No, I came here to tell you what I did with that hurt.”
That stopped me.
Easton’s throat worked. He looked almost angry with the words, like every one of them had to fight through his pride before it reached his mouth.
“I was someone I didn’t recognize,” he said. “After I ended it, when I walked out of Cade’s penthouse that night and decided I was done being the guy who cared, I let myself become someone I would’ve dragged off a woman if I saw him across a room.”
My chest tightened.
“I used girls,” he said, eyes locked on mine now.
“Not in the way that makes it sound like I lied to them about forever or fed them lines, but I still used them. I let them touch me because I wanted you to see it. I kissed them because I wanted to prove I could. I let them think they were part of a fun night when really I was using their bodies as weapons aimed at you, and that is not who I am. My mom raised me better than that. My sisters watch what I do even when they aren’t in the room.
I don’t treat girls like props. I don’t turn women into collateral damage because I’m bleeding. ”
My throat tightened so fast I had to look away.
“Aura.”
“I’m listening.”
“No, look at me for this.”
I dragged my eyes back to his.
His wrapped hand opened and closed at his side. “I did that because I wanted to break you.”
The words punched through the room.
He didn’t look away from them. He didn’t soften them. He let them stand there, ugly and alive.
“I wanted you to hurt,” he said. “I wanted you to walk into a room and feel your stomach drop when you saw me with someone else. I wanted you to choke on the same helpless, pathetic feeling I had been carrying since your mouth made a joke out of my heart. And I told myself you deserved it because you hurt me first.”
I barely breathed. “Easton.”
“I dismissed you every chance I got. I ignored you. I made shitty comments because I knew exactly where to cut. I stood there at Hockey House and let the room turn on you, and yeah, I was hurt. Yeah, you were cruel. Yeah, you used Gage to hurt me, and I’m not going to lie to you, it killed me.
Even thinking about his hands on you made me see black because even with everything I was putting you through, there was no fucking way I would let another guy take my place. ”
My lips parted, but nothing came out.
His mouth tightened. “But I knew I deserved your wrath that night too. I knew I had spent months making every room feel like punishment for you, and when you finally stopped taking it quietly, I acted like your reaction came out of nowhere.”
I pressed one hand against my middle, trying to hold still. “I wanted to hurt you with Gage.”
His eyes closed for a second.
When they opened, they were darker. Hotter. Hurt enough to make the air move differently.
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.” My voice cracked, and I hated how small it sounded.
“That isn’t my style. I don’t do that. I don’t use people that way.
I hated myself even while I was doing it, but I wanted you to look at me the way you made me look at you.
I wanted one second where you couldn’t pretend you didn’t care. ”
“I couldn’t pretend,” he said, voice low. “That was the issue.”
The space between us felt alive.
My fingers curled into my sweatshirt. “I thought you came here to talk about forgiveness.”
“I did.” He took one step closer, and water dripped from his hoodie onto the tile.
“I just need you to understand I’m not standing here saying I forgive you while pretending I was clean.
I was cruel on purpose. I broke things on purpose.
I wanted you to cry on purpose, and I am so fucking sorry for that. ”
The apology didn’t land like the word sorry usually did.
It landed with weight. With intention. With him standing in the wreckage and pointing to the pieces that belonged to him.
“I’m sorry for doing everything I could to make you cry,” he said. “I’m sorry for every time I saw your face change and kept going because some sick part of me wanted proof I could still reach you. I’m sorry I made you pay for hurting me by turning myself into someone unsafe.”
I blinked hard, but the tears came anyway.
He saw them and looked almost physically pained. “I’m not done,” he said.
A laugh shook out of me through the tears. “That sounds threatening.”
“It might be. Emotionally.”
“That is the worst kind from you.”
His mouth twitched, but it didn’t last. “My mom said something to me.”
“About me?”
“About me,” he corrected. “About what I was calling forgiveness.”
I wiped under one eye. “Your mom knows about this?”
“She knows enough to make me feel like I’m eight years old and caught lying about breaking a lamp.”
Despite myself, I almost smiled. “I like her.”
“She’d like you too.”
That hurt.
He saw that too, and his face shifted.
“She would,” he said more quietly. “Even knowing the mess. Maybe especially knowing there’s mess, because she has no patience for pretty lies.”
I looked down at the floor between us. “What did she say?”
“She asked if it was forgiveness I was refusing, or acceptance.”
My eyes lifted.
Easton took another step, slow enough to let me stop him. I didn’t.
“I’ve been stuck on that,” he said. “Forgiveness is easy when the wound is small. Someone bumps into you, says something stupid, forgets to call, breaks something that can be replaced. They apologize. You forgive them. It’s clean enough to hand back without losing skin.”
His voice roughened.
“But this isn’t small, Aura. This is huge and delicate and sharp in places neither of us knows how to touch yet. This is trust and love and truth. This is me handing you a part of myself I thought I had to lock away to survive you. And I’m scared of what it costs to give that back.”
My chest felt too tight. “Then don’t.”
His gaze burned into mine. “I can’t keep my distance from you and let this sort itself out when every part of me wants to touch you and forget the sorting exists.”
The words slid under my ribs.
He stepped closer again, close enough now that I could see rain clinging to his lashes.
“You crushed me when you told me you loved me,” he said.
I went still.