23 #2
The rage I had been trying to skate out finally had a target willing to survive it.
I grabbed the front of his shirt. “You think showing up makes you understand?”
“No.”
“You think losing people makes this the same?”
“No.”
“Then stop standing there like you know what this feels like.”
Briggs locked one hand around my wrist. “I know enough.”
“You don’t know shit.”
“I know you told her exactly what would happen.”
I drove him backward into the glass.
“I know you walked into that house anyway.”
His back struck the boards.
“I know you asked her for one sentence.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“I know she didn’t give it to you.”
I swung again.
This time, Briggs blocked me. He caught my arm and drove his shoulder into my chest, forcing me away from the boards.
I recovered and came back at him.
Our sticks struck the ice as I grabbed his shirt with both hands. Briggs caught me around the upper arms, and we slammed into the glass together. The impact shook through the empty arena.
“Hit me,” I snarled.
“No.”
“Fucking hit me.”
“No.”
“I don’t need you protecting me.”
“I’m not protecting you.”
“Then what the fuck are you doing?”
“Letting you decide when you’ve had enough.”
I shoved harder, but he had the better position. Briggs locked his skates against the ice and absorbed everything I gave him.
“I haven’t had enough.”
“I know.”
“I told her.”
“I know.”
“I fucking warned her.”
“I know.”
“She promised me.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying that!”
My voice tore through the rink, but Briggs didn’t flinch.
I shoved him again, although the strength had started leaving my arms. “She knew what walking away from her would do to me.”
“I know.”
“I stood there and let him say every fucking thing because I thought she would finally hear it. I wanted her to hear what he does. I wanted her to see him tear me apart and realize he would do the same thing to anybody she loved if they didn’t fit inside the life he picked for her.”
Briggs’s hands remained locked around my arms.
“I didn’t back down.”
“No.”
“I didn’t make myself smaller.”
“No.”
“I didn’t let him make me ashamed.”
“No,” Briggs repeated quietly.
My grip tightened around his shirt. “Then I looked at her.”
He said nothing.
The memory entered me whole.
Charm stood beneath the light in her father’s study with her hands clasped so tightly that her knuckles had gone white. Lance’s desk remained between us, and her mother hovered near the doorway while I demanded one thing from the woman I had given everything.
Tell him I matter.
“I watched her choose him.”
Briggs’s jaw flexed.
“She looked at the floor.”
“I know.”
“No.” My voice cracked. “You don’t.”
He didn’t argue.
“She looked at the fucking floor.”
The strength left my arms all at once. My forehead struck Briggs’s shoulder, and for half a second, I didn’t understand why. My hands remained twisted in his shirt, but they no longer had enough power to hold him against anything.
A sound tore out of me from somewhere beneath the anger. It dragged through my chest so violently that my entire body folded around the pain.
I tried to swallow it, but another followed. Then another.
Briggs released my arms. He didn’t hug me. He planted his skates, braced one hand against the glass behind him, and let me use his body to stay upright while mine forgot how.
“I begged her.” The admission broke apart against his shoulder.
Briggs’s free hand closed around the back of my neck. “You asked her.”
“I fucking begged her to tell him I mattered.”
“You asked the woman you loved to tell him.”
“She couldn’t.”
“No.”
The answer came immediately. It didn’t excuse her, tell me she tried, or remind me that she was afraid. Briggs gave me the truth because anything softer would have destroyed what little remained of me.
“She couldn’t do it.”
My knees hit the ice, and Briggs went down with me. I landed hard enough for pain to shoot through my legs, but I barely felt it.
My hands released his jersey and pressed against the ice between us. Tears struck the surface beneath my face, melting tiny dark circles into the frost.
I hadn’t cried like this since I was a kid.
I had cried quietly in bathrooms, inside cars, and with my face buried in pillows belonging to people whose last names I had forgotten. I learned young how to contain grief because crying made adults uncomfortable, and uncomfortable adults sent foster kids somewhere else.
There was nothing quiet about what Charm had done to me.
My breath dragged in and came out broken. I clenched my teeth against the sounds, but my body forced them through. My shoulders shook beneath my practice jersey while my lungs seized around air that tasted like ice and blood.
Briggs stayed on his knees in front of me. His hand remained wrapped around the back of my neck, heavy and steady, while I came apart between the blue line and the boards.
He didn’t tell me to breathe or promise I would be okay. He didn’t remind me that Charm loved me as though love had ever stopped anyone from leaving.
“I hate her.”
“I know.”
“I fucking hate her.”
“I know.”
“I want her out of me.”
Briggs’s fingers tightened.
“I want her out of my apartment, my head, and my fucking skin. I want to take every place she touched and cut it away because I can’t breathe without feeling her there.”
“I know.”
“I love her.”
“I know that too.”
The words tore another sob from me.
Briggs lowered himself fully onto the ice with one leg bent beneath him. He sat close enough to hold me upright without pulling me into an embrace I hadn’t asked for.
“She was everything.” My voice scraped against my throat. “I didn’t know she was everything until I tried to make her nothing.”
Briggs looked down.
“I took the key.”
“I know.”
“She couldn’t get it off the ring because her hands were shaking.” I dragged the heel of my palm across my face. “I took the whole fucking thing from her, ripped my key off, and gave the rest back.”
Briggs’s expression tightened.
“I made it ugly. I said shit I knew would make her feel dirty enough to stop romanticizing what we were.”
“Did you insult her?”
“No.”
“Threaten her?”
“No.”
“Put your hands on her?”
“She grabbed my arm.” Shame moved through me before I could stop it. “I ripped away and yelled at her to get her fucking hands off me.”
“Did you hurt her?”
My throat closed. “Yeah.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“No. I didn’t fucking touch her.”
Briggs nodded once.
“I told her to leave my life, heart, and soul. I told her she killed me and to let me rest without her memory.”
His eyes closed briefly. “Did she understand?”
“She understood my face.”
“What happened after?”
“I opened the door.”
Briggs waited.
“I looked her in the eyes and made her walk out.”
My voice disappeared beneath the memory of Charm standing in the hallway with her keys pressed against her chest. Her knees weakened, and my hand moved before I stopped it.
“I almost caught her.”
Briggs didn’t speak.
“She looked like she was going to fall, and I almost reached for her.” I stared at my bleeding knuckles. “That’s why I know I’m done.”
“Because you wanted to catch her?”
“Because I didn’t.”
The rink hummed around us. Briggs’s hand slipped from my neck to my shoulder, his weight steady enough that I could feel it through the pads.
“I don’t want to be the man who doesn’t catch her,” I whispered.
“You had to be.”
“Yeah, well I hate him.”
“El Cuchillo?”
I nodded.
Briggs looked toward the empty stands. “Being that guy kept you alive before.”
“That version of me is cold and relentless. I destroy everything before it can destroy me.”
“Sometimes that’s the same thing.”
The truth stayed between us as I lowered myself onto the ice beside him. My back struck the boards, and my legs stretched in front of me, skates cutting shallow grooves into the surface.
Briggs sat at my side with blood drying near the corner of his mouth.
Neither of us spoke for several minutes. The tears slowed, but the pain remained and spread through every place anger had kept numb.
“I bought her books.”
Briggs turned his head.
I kept staring across the rink. “For the cabin.”
“What kind?”
“Poetry. A first edition she wouldn’t buy for herself because she said the price was stupid. A leather notebook with her name embossed inside.”
Briggs lowered his gaze.
“I ordered pens from France because she liked the way one of mine wrote.”
“Ryan, you bougie fucker.”
“I booked two cabins for five days. Ten fucking grand. Indoor pool, game room, two hot tubs, a private Jacuzzi off the master suite, a gourmet kitchen, and enough rooms for everybody.” My throat tightened again.
“I spent hours looking at every picture because I wanted the room to be perfect for her.”
Briggs rubbed his thumb over the tape wrapped around his stick.
“She was afraid cabin meant old mattresses and sleeping bags.” I pressed the back of my head against the glass. “I was giving her snow outside the windows and coffee in bed. I wanted to lock the door and ignore everybody until noon.”
“Fuck.”
“I made a home for her inside an apartment in Kimball with a water stain on the ceiling.” The admission broke something open again, quieter this time.
I covered my eyes with one hand. “I made room for her everywhere, Briggs.”
His shoulder pressed against mine.
“My apartment, schedule, and fucking future had room for her. I turned down women without thinking about it. I bought food I didn’t eat because she liked it.
I kept a blanket on the couch because she was always cold.
I learned the difference between every stupid product in my bathroom so I wouldn’t use something that cost more than my first car. ”
Briggs released a breath that might have become a laugh on any other night. Tonight, it died between us.
“I built my life around someone who couldn’t call me her man when I needed her to.”
“You built it around the woman you believed she was.”
“I knew who she was.”
“Then you knew she might freeze.”
My head turned sharply.