27 #2
“He fucked with my girl. I also get bonus points because he tried to make me the dead guy.”
“Awe, happy endings.”
Bliss ignored all of them and walked into the living room. I considered going upstairs, but Cade caught the back of my shirt before I took the first step.
“Don’t make me earn the no-cock-blocking portion of this agreement.”
“Traitor.”
“Sit with my woman.”
I shrugged him off and followed Bliss.
She took one end of the couch, and I sat in the armchair across from her, keeping enough distance between us that she could say whatever she needed without trying to hug me afterward. The others remained in the kitchen pretending to clean, but no one believed them.
Bliss folded her hands inside the sleeves of her sweatshirt. “I’m not going to ask you to take her back.”
“Good.”
“I’m not going to tell you what happened was okay.”
“Even better.”
“And I’m not going to explain her parents like you don’t understand them.”
“Great talk. Are we done?”
She’d already removed the three arguments I expected to fight, but her face told me I wasn’t leaving anytime soon.
“What do you want, B?”
“I want you to stop hurting her on purpose.”
My jaw tightened. “She hurt me more times than I can count in English and Spanish.”
“She didn’t do it on purpose.”
“What the fuck ever. Intent doesn’t change the result.”
“It changes what you do next.”
I looked away, but Bliss waited until I returned my attention to her.
“What you did last night was cruel.”
“I know.”
The admission surprised her. I continued before she mistook it for surrender.
“I knew which part of her neck to touch because she loved it. I knew kissing her would make her believe I’d changed my mind, and I knew pulling away would destroy her.”
Bliss’s face crumpled slightly. “You still did it.”
“I did it anyway, with intent.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted her to hurt.”
The honesty made the room colder. Cade entered from the kitchen and sat on the arm of the couch beside Bliss. His hand settled against the back of her neck, but he didn’t interrupt.
“I wanted her to feel what she did to me,” I said. “I wanted her to have something she could almost touch and know she would never get to keep.”
“That isn’t you,” Bliss whispered.
“Chica, you know nothing about who I am at the core. That is very much me.”
“No. That’s what you become when you’re wounded enough to need someone else bleeding beside you.”
“Sounds like me.”
“You hated it afterward.”
I thought about waking with Charm’s mouth inside my memory. “Yeah, but only because it fucked me up too.”
Bliss nodded like that mattered.
“It doesn’t mean I’m taking it back,” I said.
“I’m not asking you to.”
“I meant what I told her.”
“All of it?”
“Fuck no.”
Her eyes searched mine, and I hated that answering required showing her how much of me Charm still owned.
“I don’t believe she used me just for sex, and I don’t believe I was only a rebellion against her parents.
Parts of what happened between us aren’t your business, but there were real things inside it.
” My voice hardened around the next truth.
“I said those things because I wanted to drag the part of our relationship she was most ashamed of into the open.”
“She wasn’t ashamed of you.”
“She hid me from everyone.”
“She was ashamed of herself.”
I laughed once. “Convenient distinction.”
“It isn’t convenient. It’s destroying her.”
“Good.”
“Ryan.”
The warning came from Cade. I looked toward him. He didn’t appear angry, but the line had been drawn clearly enough for me to recognize when I crossed it.
I lifted one shoulder. “You told me to hear her out.”
“You can hear her without becoming an asshole.”
“I’m still working on that.”
Bliss’s eyes glistened, but she didn’t cry. “Charm told us why she hid you.”
“I don’t want to know.”
“I think you already do.”
“Then save us both some time.”
“She said if she told us, your relationship became real outside your apartment. It became something her father could reach.”
“He reached it anyway.”
“Yes.”
“And when he did, she handed it to him.”
“Yes.”
Her agreement stole some of the anger from my next response.
Bliss looked down at her folded hands. “Aura realized Charm wasn’t afraid of what we would think about you. She knew we loved you, and she knew we would be happy for both of you.”
“Then why hide it?”
“Because telling us required her to admit how much you mattered.”
I stared at her.
“She has spent her entire life believing anything she loves can be used to control her,” Bliss continued. “Her father threatens money, school, her mother’s happiness, and every part of her future. Charm thought if she kept you hidden, no one could take you.”
“That isn’t love. It’s avoidance in the face of adversity.”
“No,” Bliss said softly. “It’s fear.”
“It felt like shame from where I was standing.”
“I know.”
“I asked her to call me her man.”
“I know.”
“She wouldn’t.”
“I know.”
“She came into my life, took everything I offered, and kept me somewhere no one important to her could see.”
“I know, Ryan.”
“Stop saying that like her reasons are supposed to change the experience.”
“They aren’t.” Bliss leaned forward, her hands still tucked inside her sleeves. “You’re allowed to be done. You’re allowed to decide you can’t trust her again. You’re allowed to love her and still refuse to be with her.”
The words settled somewhere beneath my ribs.
“What you aren’t allowed to do,” she continued, “is use everything she trusted you with to punish her until you stop hurting.”
Anger stirred again. “She used everything I trusted her with against me.”
“She did.”
“So, she gets understanding, and I get rules?”
“You get friends willing to tell you when your pain is turning you into someone you’ll hate later.”
The kitchen went silent. Briggs dried one plate that had already been dry for several minutes. Easton stood beside him with his arms folded, while Rider leaned against the counter and watched me without judgment. Cade remained beside Bliss.
“I already hate him, amiga. I have for years.”
“El Cuchillo?” Briggs asked.
I glanced toward him. “That part of me is hateful and unforgiving. I learned easy on you needed to be scarier than everything else and everyone else, around you. That side of me is what kept me alive.”
Briggs nodded. “That doesn’t mean it gets to make every decision now.”
“No, but it made the right one.”
“Ending it?” Cade asked.
“Yes.”
Cade’s hand moved slowly across Bliss’s shoulder. “I agree.”
She looked up at him, but he didn’t take it back.
“Ryan doesn’t owe Charm a relationship because she has trauma,” Cade said. “He doesn’t owe her access to him while she figures out how to stop hurting him.”
“I never said he did,” Bliss replied.
“I know, but he needs to hear that from us too.”
Easton left the kitchen and lowered himself into the chair beside mine. “Aura’s going to hate me for saying this, but love isn’t enough.”
Bliss released a breath. “I know.”
“Charm’s reasons explain why she froze,” Easton continued. “They don’t make Ryan feel less abandoned. We can understand her and still recognize that he can’t survive being the person she practices courage on.”
The sentence cut deeply because it put words to everything I’d been trying to say.
“I am not her recovery plan,” I told Bliss. “I’m not the safe man she gets to destroy while learning how to stand up to the unsafe ones.”
“No, you aren’t.”
“I can’t love her through this.”
“I know.”
“And I won’t try.”
Bliss’s tears finally spilled. Cade drew her closer, but she kept looking at me.
“She thinks she lost you forever.”
“She did.”
Her lips trembled, and I forced myself not to soften the answer. False hope would be another version of last night’s kiss.
“She needs help,” Bliss said.
“Then help her.”
“She needs all of us.”
“She has all of you.”
“She needs you.”
“No, B. She doesn’t get to need me now.”
The words filled the room, and my voice roughened as I continued.
“I was the person she needed before Thanksgiving. I was the man telling her what her parents were doing. I held her while she shook after their calls and reminded her she wasn’t weak.
I gave her every version of me I knew how to give, and it wasn’t enough to make me safe when standing beside me cost her something. ”
Bliss wiped at her cheeks.
“I can care whether she eats,” I said. “I can want her safe. I can hope she gets whatever help she needs and builds a life where nobody controls her. None of that means I can be part of it.”
“She isn’t eating,” Bliss said quietly.
My entire body reacted. Briggs noticed first. His expression changed, but he didn’t move toward me.
“How long?”
Bliss hesitated.
“How long, B?”
“She barely touched anything yesterday. Aura got her to eat some toast this morning.”
Anger cut through the worry. “Then stay on her.”
“We are.”
“You want to know what I saw while I was with her?” I leaned forward, pressing the cold bag more firmly against my ribs.
“She was already too fucking thin, and it got worse after that shopping trip with Crystal months ago. She started skipping meals, pushing food around her plate, and finding reasons she wasn’t hungry.
She checks her body every time she passes a mirror, and she gets this look like she wants to tear herself out of her own skin. ”