27
Ryan
I woke with my tongue glued to the roof of my mouth and somebody trying to drive a nail through the back of my skull.
For several seconds, I didn’t move. Light pushed around the edges of the curtains, far too bright for the amount of tequila still poisoning my blood.
My ribs ached, my left knee was stiff, and the bruise beneath my eye throbbed in time with my heartbeat.
Then I remembered Charm kissing me back, and my stomach turned.
Closing my eyes only made the memory clearer. Her hand caught in my shirt. Her body moved into mine. The broken sound she made when my tongue touched hers told me how quickly she’d believed I was giving back everything I’d ripped away.
I refused to remember her taste.
Last night had been alcohol, anger, and every vicious thought I’d carried out of her parents’ house.
I wanted to blame the tequila for more of it, but tequila didn’t put my hand around the back of her neck.
It didn’t choose the exact touch she loved or make me kiss her long enough to believe I’d changed my mind.
Alcohol lowered the walls. The cruelty waiting behind them belonged entirely to me.
I wanted Charm to hurt. For a few seconds, I wanted her to feel what it was like to have the one thing she wanted placed inside her hands before somebody ripped it away.
I succeeded, and the satisfaction lasted less time than the kiss.
“Pinche cabrón,” I muttered at the ceiling as I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes.
I hated what I’d done, and I hated that some part of me still believed she’d earned it. Both truths lived inside the same body, tearing at each other without canceling anything out.
One day, I might be able to apologize without turning the apology into another opening between us.
That day was too far away to picture. Anything I said to Charm now would come from a place still bleeding badly enough to make me want her covered in it too.
Staying away was the kindest thing I had left to give her.
I forced myself out of bed and walked stiffly toward the bathroom. The shower ran nearly cold by the time I stepped beneath it. Water struck my bruises while I braced both hands against the tile and waited for the nausea to pass, but Charm’s mouth kept returning.
I shoved the memory away and thought about Minnesota.
Their right defenseman drifted too high when the puck cycled behind the net. Their goalie dropped early on shots from the left circle. Their second line became impatient when forced outside and started taking stupid penalties before the end of the first.
Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, and Washington would be in the stands. Nothing reached the ice unless I let it, and everything that did could be turned into fuel.
By the time I shut off the water, I’d forced Charm beneath game film, line changes, and every reason I couldn’t afford to let last night follow me into the arena.
I dressed in black Frost sweats and a team shirt, then slid my sunglasses over my eyes before leaving the bedroom.
They hid the black eye, the hangover, and whatever else my face might reveal before coffee made me human.
Voices carried from the kitchen.
Bliss sat sideways on Cade’s lap at the table, kissing him like the argument that nearly split the lodge the night before had ended with a treaty requiring excessive mouth contact.
Cade’s hand rested beneath the hem of her sweatshirt against her lower back, and her fingers moved lazily through his hair.
Easton occupied the chair across from them, looking even worse than I felt. Rider stood near the stove attempting to make eggs while Briggs watched with the suspicion of a man observing a dangerous experiment.
I stopped inside the doorway. The sight of Cade and Bliss hurt in a petty, exhausted place I refused to examine, so I pushed the sunglasses higher and leaned one shoulder against the frame.
“Good to see you two made up.”
Bliss kissed Cade again before looking at me. “We did last night.”
I turned toward Cade. “When?”
“After you passed out.” His hand moved slowly along Bliss’s back. “I walked over to the second cabin, took her out of bed, and carried her to mine.”
“What room?”
“The master upstairs.”
“The closet,” Briggs and I shouted together.
Cade rolled his eyes. “We saw the books.”
My stomach tightened so quickly that the hangover nausea returned. I looked directly at Bliss. “Don’t you dare fucking tell her.”
Cade’s expression changed. “Hey.” He lifted one hand, motioning for me to bring the anger down.
Bliss didn’t flinch. Her eyes remained locked with mine, clear and steady despite the way Cade’s arm tightened around her waist.
“I wouldn’t,” she said. “It would only hurt her more, and after your stunt last night, she can’t handle much more.”
A rude laugh left me. “My stunt? She gets what she deserves.”
Bliss went completely still. Cade closed his eyes like he could already see the morning deteriorating around him, and Bliss climbed off his lap.
“You don’t want to hear what I have to say, but you sure as fuck are going to.”
“Am I?” I looked at the guys and laughed before dropping my sunglasses enough to meet her stare over the top of them.
“Yes. I’ve earned that as your friend because I have always been your friend, Ryan.”
She turned toward Cade with an expectant look that belonged on the face of a spoiled teenager demanding parental support.
Cade stared back. “Don’t look at me like that, Pip.”
“Are you going to say something?”
“I am.” He stood and moved her gently out of his path. “I’m going to shower because I’m not doing this shit again.”
Her mouth fell open, and he kissed her forehead.
“In Pip’s defense, you were a massive dick last night.”
I started to answer, but Cade held up one hand.
“I understand why,” he said. “I’m only making my position clear so I don’t get cock-blocked tonight.”
Bliss smacked his chest. Cade caught her wrist, pulled her against him, and wrapped both arms around her.
“You make her cry, and you and me have problems,” he told me over her head.
I nodded, completely unbothered. “She cries at everything, so be specific.”
Bliss smacked his chest again as if my answer was somehow his fault. Cade laughed into her hair and squeezed her tighter.
“We’ll talk. Let me shower before your friendship tribunal begins.”
He released her and headed toward the stairs.
“Coward,” Bliss called after him.
“Preserving my relationship.”
“You carried me out of bed without asking.”
“You wrapped around me like a fucking vise, Pip.”
“You could’ve woken me.”
“You bite when you’re startled.”
“That happened once.”
Cade looked back from the staircase. “It happened last night.”
Rider flipped an egg at the stove. “She drew blood.”
“Thank you,” Cade said.
“That doesn’t mean I’m on your side.”
“I don’t care whose side you’re on.”
“You will when you eat these eggs.”
Cade disappeared upstairs, and Bliss turned back toward me. I walked past her and headed for the coffee before she could begin her interrogation.
Easton sat with both forearms braced on the table, staring into a mug as though it had personally disappointed him.
“No Aura?” I asked.
He groaned without lifting his head. “She told me to fuck off.”
“What did you do?”
“Tried to apologize.”
“How did that make it worse?”
“I told her I forbade her from being mad at me.”
I stared at him until Easton finally looked up.
“I heard it after I said it,” he admitted.
A laugh pulled painfully at my ribs. “How’d that go?”
“She asked whether I wanted to keep all my internal organs.”
“Reasonable.”
“I told her she was being dramatic.”
“Less reasonable.”
“She threw me back onto the porch.”
Briggs looked at me from across the kitchen. “You are almost chipper this morning.”
I filled a mug and raised it toward him. “Dreamed about killing Minnesota.”
He lifted his coffee in return. “You know it.”
Rider set a plate of eggs on the island in front of me. “Eat before you die.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Coach said to hydrate and eat.”
“You weren’t in that conversation.”
“I was standing six feet away.”
“Eavesdropping.”
“Observing leadership.”
I took the plate because arguing required more energy than chewing.
Breakfast continued with enough noise to dull the hangover.
Cade returned with wet hair and a clean shirt.
Briggs stole half my eggs, claiming I hadn’t eaten quickly enough to establish ownership.
Rider produced bacon no one had seen him cook, while Easton wrote and deleted six different texts to Aura before I took his phone and composed one for him.
Easton read it and shook his head. “No. That has feelings.”
“That is usually how apologies work.”
“She’ll know I didn’t write it.”
“Then learn from the structure.”
“I’m not calling her my emotional safe place.”
“You called her that last week.”
“During sex.”
Every head turned toward him.
Easton took his phone back and locked the screen. “That felt private as soon as I said it.”
“Deeply,” Cade agreed.
Laughter moved through the kitchen, and for a few minutes, I almost felt normal.
The pain remained, but it had settled into the familiar place where old wounds went once the body understood they weren’t immediately fatal.
I didn’t hurt less than I had the night before.
I’d simply become more accustomed to carrying it.
That was how survival worked. Pain consumed every breath at first, and then the body learned how to move around it until everyone mistook function for healing.
I finished the eggs, drank two glasses of water, and held a bag of frozen vegetables against my ribs while Bliss waited with unnerving patience. Once the plates were cleared, she pointed toward the living room.
“You and me.”
I looked over the top of my sunglasses. “Bossy.”
“Yes.”
“I have a game.”
“In several hours.”
“I need to prepare.”
“You need to sit down.”
Briggs passed me on his way toward the sink. “I suggest compliance. She’s tiny, but Cade responds aggressively when she becomes distressed.”
“I respond appropriately,” Cade said.
“You murdered a guy.”