22 #3
Cade sat in the armchair Aura had vacated. His posture appeared relaxed, but nothing in his face had softened.
“I believe you were afraid,” he said.
Relief moved through me so quickly that I almost thanked him.
Then he continued.
“I believe your parents trained you to freeze whenever their love feels threatened. I believe your father knew exactly what he was doing in that study, and I believe he intended to make Ryan feel so far beneath you that leaving became the only pride he had left. The fact is, you and your dad underestimated Ryan.”
My breath shuddered.
“I also believe Ryan told you what walking into that house would cost him.”
“He did.”
“He warned you.”
“Yes.”
“He asked you for one sentence.”
My eyes closed.
“And you didn’t give it to him.”
“I couldn’t.”
“No.” Cade’s voice remained calm. “You could’ve. You didn’t.”
The correction landed harder coming from him, and I opened my eyes.
“You had fear,” he continued. “You had conditioning. You had twenty-three years of learning how to survive inside that family. Those are reasons, Charm. They matter. They explain why you froze, and later, when everyone isn’t bleeding, you’re going to have to deal with every one of them.”
My lips trembled.
“They don’t make what happened to Ryan smaller.”
“I know.”
“I don’t think you understand it yet.” Cade leaned forward with his elbows resting over his knees.
“You were handed everything—a home, an education, money, and parents who called you theirs every day of your life. Even their love, conditional as it may be, was offered often enough that you built your entire identity around keeping it.”
Shame burned through me.
“Ryan was handed garbage bags for his clothes and adults who taught him never to unpack all the way. He had no one, Charm. Every person who was supposed to love him proved love came with an expiration date.”
Tears slipped silently down my face.
“He walked into that house anyway,” Cade continued. “He stood in front of the kind of man who has judged him his entire life and stayed because you asked him to. He risked the only sense of belonging he has ever built because he believed you would stand beside him.”
“I wanted to.”
“I know.”
The gentleness in those two words hurt worse than Briggs’s anger.
Cade’s gaze held mine. “Ryan didn’t ask you to give up your money. He didn’t ask you to drop out of school or stop loving your parents. He didn’t even ask you to choose him over them.”
“He asked me to tell them he mattered.”
“And you let him leave believing he didn’t.”
My body folded around the sob that tore through me.
Bliss caught me before I slid from the couch, wrapped both arms around me, and cried with me this time.
Her quiet tears disappeared into my hair while Aura knelt in front of us and gripped my knees.
Easton stood and walked away, stopping near the kitchen with both hands planted against the counter.
“I love him,” I said into Bliss’s shoulder. “I love him so much.”
“I know, babe.”
“How do I fix it?”
No one answered.
I pulled away enough to look at them. Aura’s eyes were wet. Bliss’s face was streaked with tears. Easton stared at the dark kitchen window while Cade looked down at his clasped hands.
Their silence told me what none of them were willing to say.
I might not be able to fix it.
My phone vibrated on the coffee table, and every part of me lunged toward the sound until I saw my mother’s name glowing across the screen.
The instinct to answer rose immediately.
She would be worried and crying. My father would be angry that I left.
They would want to know where I was, whether I was safe, and when I planned to come home and discuss my behavior like I was still a child living beneath their roof.
I reached for the phone.
Aura caught my wrist. “No.”
“My mother will worry.”
“She can wait.”
“She’ll keep calling.”
Aura’s grip tightened. “Let her.”
The suggestion felt impossible.
The phone continued ringing while five people watched me fight the need to protect the woman who had helped destroy the best thing that ever happened to me.
I let the call go unanswered.
The screen went dark, but it didn’t feel like courage. It didn’t repair the damage or give me Ryan’s key back. He wouldn’t know I had ignored her call, and even if he did, a hundred unanswered phone calls couldn’t become the sentence I failed to say when he needed it.
I stared at my reflection in the black screen.
My father had taught me that love survived only when I behaved correctly. My mother had taught me that keeping everyone comfortable mattered more than telling the truth. I had spent my entire life terrified that one wrong choice would leave me with nothing.
Tonight, I had made the wrong choice anyway. Ryan had left, and my parents were still calling.
For the first time, I understood that losing their approval had never been the worst thing that could happen to me.
The worst thing had already happened.
Ryan asked me to tell them he mattered, and I proved they mattered more.