24
Ryan
Briggs woke me by opening every cabinet in my kitchen.
I knew it was every cabinet because the first three slams dragged me out of sleep, and the next four convinced me murder was probably still frowned upon by the Frost organization.
“What the fuck are you doing?” My voice came out rough from the bedroom.
“Looking for coffee.”
“It’s beside the coffee maker.”
Silence followed before he answered, “That feels manipulative.”
I opened my eyes and stared at the gray ceiling. For one disoriented second, nothing hurt except my ribs. Then I breathed, and Charm entered my body with the air.
Grief returned first, low and crushing beneath my sternum. Anger followed closely enough to hold it down, spreading ice through every place that burned the night before. I lay still and let both settle because fighting either one would require energy I didn’t have.
Yesterday, I woke up believing I had a woman. This morning, I woke up without one and knew exactly who made that choice.
There was no panic driving me toward my phone or desperate instinct to reopen the door I closed in her face and see whether she was still standing on the other side. Whatever broke on the ice the night before hadn’t repaired itself while I slept. It had frozen.
I sat up carefully as pain spread across my ribs.
Briggs had checked me harder than I remembered, and my left cheek throbbed where his shoulder caught me during our completely illegal interpretation of hockey.
The bathroom mirror had confirmed sometime after two that a black eye was forming beneath the swelling, although Briggs looked worse, which helped.
“Make enough coffee for me.”
“I already did.”
I glanced toward the doorway and found him leaning against the frame in Frost sweatpants he had definitely stolen from my dresser. He held two mugs, and one side of his jaw was bruised while his lower lip remained swollen where I punched him.
“You stole my clothes.”
“You told me I smelled like the rink.”
“I told you to shower.”
“I did.”
“And then you dressed in my clothes.”
He crossed the room and handed me a mug. “I’m adaptable.”
“You’re a parasite.”
“I prefer guest.”
“You weren’t invited.”
“That still hurts.”
Briggs drank his coffee while I held mine between my hands. Heat seeped into my palms and warmed the knuckles I had split against the glass before he arrived.
His gaze moved across my face. “You look like shit.”
“You look worse.”
“Yeah, but I have a naturally approachable face.”
“You have a naturally punchable face.”
“That too.”
The corner of his mouth lifted, but he didn’t force the smile to remain when I didn’t return it. His attention shifted toward my phone, which sat facedown on the nightstand exactly where I left it when we returned from the arena.
I had blocked Charm before leaving Kimball Falls and removed myself from the group chat before anyone had the chance to turn my breakup into a discussion. No messages from her could reach me during the night, yet I checked anyway. Twice.
My phone showed texts from Cade, Chris, two Frost players, and the team trainer reminding everyone practice had been moved to four. Nothing from Charm appeared, and it shouldn’t have been possible for her silence to hurt after I made it the only option, but it did anyway.
Briggs took another drink. “You want the updates?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
He accepted the answer so easily that irritation scratched beneath my skin. “You’re not going to tell me anyway?”
“You said no.”
“Since when do you listen?”
“Since you tried to rearrange my face.”
“You needed the improvement.”
“Probably.”
He turned to leave, and the pressure beneath my ribs tightened until I couldn’t let him make it through the doorway.
“Wait.”
Briggs stopped without looking back.
I hated that he knew I would ask. I hated the part of me willing to trade another piece of dignity for proof that Charm survived the night.
“Is she okay?”
Briggs turned. “No.”
The answer entered cleanly, without reassurance or a promise that Bliss and Aura had everything under control. He told me the truth because I demanded it from everyone the night before, even when the truth was the thing cutting me open.
I looked into my coffee. “What happened?”
“After you left the chat?”
I nodded.
“Easton and Aura were at the ABC apartment when she got there. Cade, Bliss, and I showed up a few minutes later.”
“Was she driving?”
“Yeah.”
“Was she safe?”
“She made it there.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“She was hysterical, Ry. I don’t know how safe anybody is driving like that, but she made it.”
My jaw locked.
I had watched her walk into the hallway unable to keep her knees steady. Then I climbed into my truck and left town knowing she would try to drive somewhere. I could have called Aura or Easton and told them to watch for her.
I didn’t.
I cut the tie without checking whether the other person survived the bleeding. The thought should have made me feel guilty, but the guilt couldn’t reach deeply enough to overpower what she did.
“Keep going.”
Briggs studied my face. “You sure?”
“No.” I lifted my gaze to his. “Tell me anyway.”
“Bliss asked what she had done. Charm kept saying she didn’t mean it and that she was awful.”
My fingers tightened around the mug.
Briggs stayed in the doorway, giving me the information without decorating it. “Then Cade told her he talked to you.”
“What did she ask?”
“If you were okay.”
A dry laugh left me. “Little late for that.”
“Cade told her no.”
“Good.”
“He didn’t soften it.”
“Good.”
Briggs looked down into his coffee.
“What else?”
“I asked what she thought was going to happen.”
My eyes lifted sharply. “You went after her?”
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t need to do that.”
“Probably not.”
“Then why did you?”
“Because I was pissed.”
“At her?”
Briggs nodded.
The answer should have satisfied me, but an old instinct rose anyway, demanding that I tell him Charm was scared. Her parents knew how to force her back inside herself, and nobody got to make her cry unless it was me, which was a fucked-up distinction I no longer had the right to claim.
I pressed the feeling down because Charm wasn’t mine to defend anymore.
“She tried to explain,” Briggs continued. “Easton wanted to know how serious you were. That’s when everything else came out.”
My stomach tightened. “What everything?”
“Bliss and Aura didn’t know.”
“Know what?”
“That you were together.”
Pain sharpened behind my ribs. “They knew we were fucking around. They had to know.”
“They knew enough to understand something was happening. They didn’t know you had been trying to make her your girlfriend for six months.”
My teeth locked. “She told them? Last night is when she finally told them?”
“She had to after Easton asked.”
The anger returned so fast that the mug shook between my hands.
We had never discussed making some ridiculous announcement until recently.
I didn’t expect her to hold a press conference or change her relationship status for people who needed social media to understand what was in front of them.
I had assumed Bee and Aye knew because my guys knew.
Cade, Easton, Rider, and Briggs understood exactly how deep I was, and none of them betrayed that confidence to their women because they knew it wasn’t their story to tell.
That loyalty didn’t escape me. Neither did the humiliation beneath it.
Charm hadn’t trusted her best friends with the truth. She wanted the brown barrio kid in private and kept the Chicano bad boy they all remembered from KFU hidden from the two women who had loved her since she was twelve.
“And?” I forced out.
“Bliss asked how long.”
I looked away, and Briggs answered without needing the question.
“Almost six months.”
The words sounded different in his voice. They sounded real and fucking humiliating.
Six months of Charm sleeping in my bed while refusing to give our relationship a name where anyone could hear it.
Six months of waking up beside her, teaching her Spanish, learning the way her mind moved through poetry, buying food for my apartment because she forgot to eat when she studied, and allowing myself to picture a future I had never asked anyone else to enter.
Six months became a confession she finally gave her friends after I took back my key.
“I told you,” I said.
“I know.”
“All of you knew.”
“The guys knew how serious you were.”
“Because I didn’t hide her.”
“No, you didn’t.”
The answer hurt more than it should have.
I drank the coffee even though it had become too hot against my tongue. “What did the girls say?”
“Bliss looked wrecked. Aura looked like she wanted to shake her.”
“She would have to stand in line.”
“Easton and Cade are with you.”
“Were sides assigned?”
“Nobody needed to assign them.”
I looked at him.
Briggs shifted one shoulder against the frame. “They love Charm. So do I. That doesn’t mean anybody in that room thought what she did was defensible.”
“She had reasons.”
“She did.”
“I know what they are.”
“I know you do.”
“They don’t matter.”
“They matter,” Briggs corrected. “They don’t change your decision.”
My grip tightened around the mug. “That’s different.”
“Yeah, it is.”
He said nothing else. He didn’t remind me that her fear was real or use the history I had taught him to understand as a weapon against my boundary. He allowed both truths to exist because he understood one didn’t erase the other.
Charm was trained to freeze, and I was still the man she left standing alone.
“What did she say about her parents?”
“Not much before I left. Bliss and Aura started explaining the Harlens to Cade and Easton. They talked about how her father controls her without raising his voice, how her mother makes her feel guilty for upsetting him, and how every decision turns into a threat against her future even when Lance never calls it one.”
“I know all that.”
“I know.”
“I spent six months trying to teach her how to see it.”
“I know you did.”
“I told her she was trained.”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t agree to let her destroy me while she unlearned it.”
“No.”
The answer came immediately, and something cold settled deeper inside me.