Charm reached for my knee.
“He looked at me like…” I stopped because saying it felt like stepping off a cliff with no promise of ground under me. “Like I made sense.”
Aura’s voice was quiet. “You do make sense.”
“Not to everyone.”
“Yes, you do,” she said. “To anyone who knows you, you make sense. Cade is just seeing it from a side you have never given anyone since you were fourteen.”
That was the problem.
That was exactly the problem.
Cade Mercer was not supposed to make me feel understandable. He was supposed to be hot and dangerous and temporary. He was supposed to be the fun bad decision with dimples and a hockey schedule. He was not supposed to sit beside my pain and somehow make the room feel less impossible to survive.
Charm squeezed my knee. “So, what’s stopping you?”
I laughed once, but there was no humor in it. “Other than crippling fear, emotional damage, and my deeply inconvenient survival instincts?”
“Start there,” Aura said.
I looked between them, and my smile faded. “I never want to give myself to someone fully like that again.”
The truth settled heavy between us.
“I know Cade isn’t Luke,” I said quickly, because their faces changed and I needed them to know I knew. “That’s not what I mean. I don’t look at Cade and see him. Cade is nothing like him. Cade is… Cade is so much more than him that comparing them feels insulting to basic oxygen.”
“Then why?” Charm asked softly.
“Because Cade could hurt me in a way Luke never did,” I whispered.
Aura’s brows pulled together.
I tried to explain it without sounding insane and failed before I started. “Luke hurt me. He damaged me. He took things. But Cade matters in a way that would destroy me differently. If I let him all the way in and he leaves, or changes his mind, or decides I’m too much after all…” My voice cracked, and I looked down before they could see too much. “There’s no rebound from him. I can feel that already.”
Charm’s eyes filled.
Aura slid off the arm of the couch and knelt in front of me like she had been waiting for my fear to finally say its real name.
“Luke controlled you and abused you,” Aura said, her voice quiet but brutally steady. “And just because he dressed it up as love doesn’t mean it ever was. You were fourteen, Bliss. Fourteen. You didn’t have the tools to understand what he was doing, and he made sure of that. He was older, smarter, and fifty steps ahead of you because he knew exactly what he was doing. He set it up to protect himself before you even understood there was something to protect yourself from.”
My throat tightened, but she didn’t stop.
“You have beaten yourself blue over wanting him once. Over believing him. Over thinking he mattered. But you were a kid with a crush, and he was a predator who saw that and used it. That’s not love. That’s not a relationship. That’s not somecomplicated tragic romance you need to keep punishing yourself for. There is nothing he has done to you, not one second of it, that makes him redeemable.”
“Aura,” I whispered.
“No.” Her eyes flashed. “You need to hear this. What you’re feeling with Cade is normal. It’s exciting and scary and messy, but it’s honest. You deserve the butterflies, B. You deserve the giddy, stupid, smiling-at-your-phone part. You deserve to think a guy is hot without comparing him to the monster who taught you wanting someone was dangerous.”
She squeezed my hands tighter.
“Luke is not the standard for men. He is not the shadow Cade has to keep outrunning. Luke is a predator, not a man. Cade is nothing like him, and deep down, you know that. You’re not scared because Cade feels wrong. You’re scared because for once, you want someone enough to stand against Luke and live your life.”
I pressed my lips together. “Is he worth the backlash from Luke, though?”
“Luke has needed a wake-up call for years,” Aura said. “And we have watched you live around his control long enough. We know he still scares you, Bliss. We have been waiting for you to finally say enough.”
Aura’s words hit something I had spent years keeping sealed shut.
