25 #3
I spoke the words carefully, hearing them in Ryan’s voice as I translated them into English. My tears started again anyway.
“He told me to leave his life, heart, and fucking soul. He said I killed him and asked me to let him rest without my memory.”
“Oh, Cee,” Aura whispered.
“He meant it.”
Bliss wrapped one arm around my shoulders. “He was hurt.”
“He meant it,” I repeated. “I kept waiting for my Ryan to return. I thought if I found the right words, he would remember me. He remembered everything. That was the problem.”
The bruises on Briggs’s face entered my mind.
“What happened between Ryan and Briggs last night?”
The women exchanged a glance.
“What?”
“Cade said they fought,” Bliss told me.
“Fought how?”
“On the ice.”
Aura released a worried breath. “Easton said Briggs drove to Flint because Ryan shouldn’t have been alone. They got into it at the arena.”
“Ryan did that to his face?”
“They did it to each other,” Bliss said. “Ryan has a black eye, bruised ribs, and split knuckles. Briggs’s lip and jaw are messed up.”
My stomach rolled. “Why?”
“We don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“Cade and Easton won’t tell us.”
“They know?”
“They know something.” Frustration sharpened Aura’s voice. “They became unbelievably tight-lipped the second we asked.”
“Briggs too,” Bliss said. “Whatever happened in the arena belongs to Ryan. That’s all Cade would tell me.”
I pictured Briggs carrying me through the snow, his coldness easing only far enough to call himself my friend before driving back to the man I had broken.
Ryan allowed Briggs to see something none of them would give me. The realization hurt, but I had no right to resent it.
“He should have someone,” I whispered.
“He has all of them,” Bliss said.
The sentence wasn’t intended to wound me. It did anyway.
Aura stared toward the small fireplace. “I hate this.”
“So do I,” Bliss said. “Cade and I never fight like that.”
“You fight.”
“Not like that.”
“Easton and I do.”
Bliss looked at her. “We know.”
Aura picked at a loose thread on her sleeve. “I told him I forbade him from going.”
“I heard.”
“I sounded like my mother.”
The admission cost her something.
“You sounded scared,” I said.
“I sounded controlling.”
“Did you apologize?”
“Not yet.”
“Aye.”
“I will.” She looked at me. “I’m still angry.”
“At Easton?”
“At all of them. At you. At myself for being angry with Ryan when I know he has every right to want us away from him.”
Bliss leaned forward with her elbows resting over her knees. “I don’t want this creating something between Cade and me.”
“It won’t.”
“You don’t know that. The bond between them was impenetrable before Cade was stabbed. It became even stronger afterward.”
“I won’t let it.”
Aura turned toward me. “You can’t control what this does to everyone.”
“No, but I can stop asking all of you to protect me from it.”
Neither woman spoke.
I pulled away from Bliss’s arm and stood. My legs remained unsteady, but I held myself upright.
“Go apologize before they leave.”
Bliss frowned. “Charm—”
“Cade needs to go to Ryan. Easton does too, and so does Rider. Ryan trusted them enough to tell them about us when I wouldn’t tell either of you. They are his family, and I won’t become the reason you make them feel guilty for acting like it.”
Aura’s eyes searched mine. “What about you?”
“I’ll stay here.”
“Alone?”
“I deserve to be alone tonight.”
Bliss stood. “No.”
“I don’t mean it as punishment. I need to stop making everyone responsible for holding me together.”
“We’re your friends,” Aura said.
“And I lied to you.”
The words silenced both of them.
“I lied every time I made what Ryan and I had sound smaller. I came home after being with him and let you believe it was only studying.”
Bliss’s face tightened. “Why?”
“I was scared.”
“We wouldn’t have told your parents.”
“I know.”
“Then why hide it from us?”
I pressed my hands against my stomach. The answer existed beneath years of carefully managed appearances and the voice insisting that nothing was safe once another person could see it.
“If I told you, it became real outside Ryan’s apartment. Then I would have to make a move against my parents. I was terrified of losing him and terrified of losing them.” My voice cracked. “I lost everything when I lost him.”
“It was already real,” Aura said.
“I know.”
“You knew then.”
“Yes.”
Her expression hardened. “Give us something more than fear.”
Shame moved beneath my skin.
“I didn’t want you looking at me the way my parents would.”
Bliss stared at me. “For loving Ryan?”
“For wanting someone so different from the life I was supposed to choose.”
“That’s fucked, babe,” Aura said.
I nodded. “I know.”
“What did you think we would do?”
“I don’t know!” My voice broke through the room. “That’s the worst part. I didn’t believe you would judge him. I knew you loved him and would be happy for me.”
Aura rose slowly. “Then you weren’t afraid of what we thought about Ryan.”
I looked at her.
“You were ashamed because your parents drilled their rules about what was acceptable so deeply into you.”
The truth left me nowhere to hide. “Yes.”
Bliss wiped tears from her cheek. “You made us part of your parents’ control without giving us the chance to prove we were safe.”
“I know.”
“No, Cee. You don’t get to cry and say you know until we stop being angry.”
I flinched.
Bliss had never spoken to me that way. Her voice remained soft, which made every word sharper.
“You hid six months from us. You sat on our couch and talked around the biggest thing happening in your life while Aura and I tried to support you with half the truth. We found out because the guys knew more about your relationship than we did.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I believe you.”
The answer didn’t offer forgiveness.
“You didn’t only hide Ryan,” Bliss continued. “You hid from us. You decided your fear mattered more than our friendship.”
Tears blurred her face.
“I would have helped you,” she said. “If you told me you were terrified of your parents finding out, I would’ve helped you decide how to tell them.
If you said you weren’t ready, I would’ve kept your secret.
If you said you loved him so much that it scared you, I would’ve sat beside you until it didn’t. ”
My throat closed.
“You never gave us the chance.”
“I’m sorry, B.”
“I know.”
Aura stood beside her. “Ryan asked you to let him exist in your life. You kept him inside whatever parts nobody else could see.”
“I wasn’t ashamed of him.”
“Then you need to figure out what you were ashamed of.”
The answer came from somewhere deeper than thought.
“Me.”
Both women went still.
I wrapped my arms around myself, but nothing could protect me from the truth once it had been spoken.
“I was ashamed of me.”
Bliss’s anger faltered.
“I wanted him so badly, and wanting anything that much has always felt dangerous. If I told you, I had to admit I possessed something my father could take away. I had to admit Ryan mattered enough to destroy me.”
Aura’s eyes filled.
“So, I kept him where I thought nobody could reach him.” My voice dissolved beneath the sob rising through it. “I hid him so well that when he finally needed me to claim him, I didn’t know how.”
Bliss cried silently.
Neither woman rushed toward me. They allowed the truth to remain between us because loving me no longer meant helping me escape it.
“I made him feel like I was ashamed of him.”
“You did,” Aura answered.
“I made my best friends feel like I didn’t trust them.”
“You did.”
“I made all of you choose sides.”
Bliss wiped beneath her eyes. “You did.”
The accountability hurt exactly as it needed to.
I nodded through my tears. “Go fix things with your men.”
Aura’s mouth trembled. “We aren’t leaving you.”
“You don’t have to leave me forever.” I looked around the cabin Ryan chose because he remembered what Vivi needed. “Stop making everyone else pay for what I did.”
Bliss crossed the room first. For one second, I thought she would leave without touching me. Then she wrapped her arms around my neck. Aura joined us, closing herself around my back while I stood between my best friends and cried for every truth I had been too afraid to give them.
They held me without pretending that holding me erased what I had done.