23
Easton
Rain moved softly against Aura’s bedroom window, steady enough to make the room feel separate from the rest of the world.
The lamp on her nightstand threw a warm circle of light over rumpled sheets, her braids spread across my arm, the curve of her shoulder tucked against my chest, and my hoodie in a wet heap on the floor where she had ordered it to die.
Her room smelled like coconut lotion, rain, sex, and gummy candy from whatever emotional support snack situation she and the girls had abandoned in the living room.
Aura lay with her back against me, one of my arms locked around her waist, her fingers moving lazily over the wrap on my knuckles. She kept touching it like she hated it and needed to make sure it was still there at the same time.
“You’re staring at my hand again,” I said against her hair.
“I’m judging your conflict resolution skills.”
“That’s fair.”
“They’re primitive.”
“Also fair.”
“You do know punching people is not a sustainable legal strategy, right?”
“I’ve been informed.”
“By who?”
“Coach. Rider. Cade. Ryan. Briggs. My mother.”
Aura’s fingers paused on mine. “Your mother knows?”
I tightened my arm around her before I answered. “She knows I got in a fight. She knows I hit someone after he said something about a girl I care about.”
Aura shifted in my arms, turning enough to look back at me. The sheet slipped lower on her shoulder, and I forced myself to look at her face because I was trying to be a better man and not immediately become stupid every time her skin existed near me.
I laughed at her worried expression.
“This isn’t funny.”
“No,” I said, looking back at her. “It’s not.”
Her hand went to her mouth, and the sight of her sitting in bed with swollen lips, tear-bright eyes, and guilt crawling across her face made something ugly wake up in my chest.
I sat up too. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Take my injuries and put them on your back.”
She laughed once, brittle and awful. “You got hurt because of me.”
“I got hurt because I fucked up Maddox and he managed to land a few hits.”
“Because of what he said about me.”
“Because he opened his mouth, and I made a choice with my fists.” I took her wrist gently, pulling her hand away from her mouth. “You did not swing for me.”
Her eyes shone. “You could lose your scholarship if he reports you.”
“Doubtful.”
“You could lose hockey.”
“That’s dramatic.”
“Athletic suspension, pending assault charges, and a conduct hearing is not exactly a light scheduling conflict.”
My mouth twitched. “That was a very pre-law concern for shit that isn’t happening.”
“Don’t flirt with me while I’m panicking about ruining your life.”
“I’m not flirting. You just sound hot when you’re legally furious.”
She stared at me.
I lifted one shoulder. “That was flirting.”
“Easton.”
“I’m serious.” I slid my thumb over her pulse because it was jumping too fast under her skin.
“I’m not scared. I’m not going to stand here—or sit here, technically—naked in your bed like an idiot and tell you I’m not scared he may get a case of the rat and go tattle.
If he does, I might lose things I can’t afford to lose. ”
Her face crumpled a little.
“But what I did to Maddox was worth it.”
She shook her head fast. “Don’t say that.”
“It was.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Aura.”
“No.” She shoved the sheet higher and shifted away from me, putting a few inches of mattress between us like she needed the space to argue.
“Do not make this romantic. Do not make violence sound noble because it happened to be aimed at a guy who deserved it. I can’t carry that.
I can’t carry you losing pieces of your future over me. ”
I leaned back against her headboard and watched her try to turn fear into a courtroom. “You don’t get to decide what my line is.”
Her mouth shut.
I held her gaze. “You have every right to say you don’t want me fighting your battles.
You have every right to tell me you hate violence around your name.
I’ll hear that. I’ll do better with that.
But I’m not going to lie to you and say I regret putting my fist in Maddox’s mouth after he did what he did. ”
Her throat worked.
“I understand Cade in every way now,” I said, quieter.
“I used to think I understood it when he went scary over Bliss, but I didn’t.
Not really. I understand it now. The way your body moves before thought, the way the room narrows, the way every decent thing in you steps aside for one second because someone put filth on the woman you love and expects to keep their teeth. ”
Aura looked down at the sheet twisted in her hands. “I don’t want to be the woman who makes you cruel.”
“You aren’t.”
“I saw you that night. At The Sin Bin. I saw your face.”
“I was cruel before that.” My voice roughened. “I was cruel for months. That wasn’t you making me anything. That was me choosing the easiest way to bleed.”
She went still.
I reached for her slowly, giving her time to pull away. She didn’t. My fingers closed around her ankle over the sheet, warm and fragile beneath my palm.
“You need to tell me something,” I said.
Her eyes lifted to mine, wary now. “That sounds like a trap.”
“It’s not.”
“Men say that right before traps.”
“I deserve that.”
She swallowed. “What do you want to know?”
I rubbed my thumb once along the inside of her ankle. “You said the night at my apartment wasn’t the whole story. You said you gave me the CliffsNotes version.”
Her gaze dropped.
“I’m not asking for all of it right now,” I said before she could go somewhere I couldn’t reach. “I’m asking if there’s something I need to understand so I don’t keep stepping on wounds I can’t see.”
The rain filled the silence between us.
Aura pulled her ankle from my hand, not harshly, then hugged her knees beneath the sheet. Her braids fell forward, hiding part of her face.
“I don’t remember enough to give you the kind of story people expect,” she said.
I stayed still.
“I hate that part. People think trauma is linear if it’s real.
Beginning, middle, end, villain, proof, trial, justice, inspirational survival arc.
” Her mouth twisted. “Mine is lights and sound and pieces of my own body moving like it belonged to someone else because I was drugged. Mine is waking up with blank spaces and then having those blank spaces thrown back at me by people who were more comfortable making me a slut than admitting boys they knew were monsters.”
My hand curled into the sheet beside me.
She saw it and pointed at me. “No murder face.”
“I’m trying.”
“You are failing with enthusiasm.”
“That’s my brand.”
A tiny, broken smile touched her mouth, and I wanted to keep it alive with my hands.
Then it disappeared.
“I watched it,” she said.
The air left my lungs.
Her voice turned quieter. “The video. I watched it a few times. Not a lot. Enough.”
“Aura.”
“Don’t say it like that.”
I forced my mouth shut.
She looked at the window, at the rain sliding black and silver against the glass.
“The first time, I thought if I watched it, I’d know.
I thought my body would recognize what my brain couldn’t.
I thought maybe there would be a moment where I could say, see, there, that proves it. That proves I didn’t want this.”
I couldn’t move.
“I watched my own face under those lights,” she said, her voice trembling now but still steady enough to cut.
“I watched myself look wrong. Heavy. Gone. I watched Darian say my name over and over like he was making a record for everyone who would need proof later. And the worst part was the others.”
My jaw locked so hard it hurt.
She wrapped her arms tighter around herself.
“No faces. That was the point. Shadows. Angles. Voices low enough to make doubt useful. Hands that came in and out of the frame. Laughing behind the camera. Someone saying something I couldn’t make out.
Someone else answering. Enough to know Darian wasn’t acting alone.
Not enough to prove who stood where or did what. ”
“Maddox,” I said.
Her eyes flicked to mine. “Maddox. Iver. Darian. Jerod. They were his boys. They were at the party. They all took turns with me, took pieces of me. Maddox used to lean against my locker and ask if my memory had come back yet.”
Something moved through me so violent I had to get out of bed.
Aura reached for my wrist before I made it one step off the mattress. “Easton.”
I stopped because her hand was on me and shaking.
“I’m right here,” she said.
I looked down at her fingers wrapped around my wrist. “I want to kill them.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.” My voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. “I want to find them. I want names, addresses, jobs, wives, mothers, everyone who thinks they’re men now. I want to put them in a room and make them understand what faceless feels like.”
Her face shifted, pain and fear and something softer all moving at once. “That is exactly why I didn’t want to tell you when you were bleeding and furious.”
“I’m still furious.”
“I noticed.”
“I’m always going to be furious about this.”
She let go of my wrist slowly. “I can live with that if you don’t make me live inside it.”
That landed.
I sat back down, farther from her than I wanted, closer than I probably should have been. “I won’t.”
“You say that now.”
“I mean it now.”
Her eyes searched mine. “Easton.”
“I mean it,” I said, holding her stare. “I won’t turn your worst night into my revenge hobby. I want to. Holy fuck, I want to. But I won’t make you watch me become another man making choices with your trauma in his mouth.”
Her lips parted, and for a second she looked young. Too young. The age she had been when it happened, maybe. The age none of those bastards had let her remain.
“That was…” She swallowed. “That was a good sentence.”
“I have those sometimes.”
“Rare, but devastating.”
“Put it on my scouting report.”
Her eyes softened, and that softness was so new between us now I almost didn’t know what to do with it.
I reached for her hand again, palm up this time. She looked at it before she put hers in mine.