Briggs raised both hands. “I say that with fear and respect.”
Vivi looked at Ryan. “Your voice changed.”
Ryan exhaled slowly. “Thank you for the ongoing surveillance.”
“You are welcome.”
Skylar grinned. “So Aura is the other friend?”
The humor around the table thinned again as I took a drink of coffee I didn’t want.
Bliss looked at Vivi, choosing her words carefully. “Aura had something else this morning.”
That was a lie.
12
Easton
For three days, I tried.
I kept my mouth shut when Aura’s name burned behind my teeth. I didn’t corner her. I didn’t use anyone else as a weapon. I didn’t let the anger make decisions my sisters would be ashamed to witness. I carried the hurt quietly, like that made me noble instead of just fucking exhausted, and for three days, I almost believed I could keep being that man.
Three days changed nothing.
That was the lie I kept telling myself, anyway.
Three days should have given the anger somewhere to cool. Three days should have put distance between my mouth and the things I had said at Hockey House. Three days should have made it easier to pretend I had not watched Aura’s face go still when I held another girl in my arms and told her I had warned her what I would become.
Three days did not make me feel better. They only made me quieter.
By Thursday night, the edge had softened enough that I could sit in The Sin Bin with half of KFU athletics and not feel like I was going to put my fist through someone’s teeth for breathing wrong. That was growth, probably. Or exhaustion. It was hard to tell with me lately.
The place was packed wall to wall, all dark wood, neon beer signs, scratched tables, and the smell of fried food soaked into the bones of the building. Rain had started again because northern Michigan apparently had a seasonal contract with misery, and damp jackets hung from chair backs while the Red Wings game played on every screen behind the bar. The soundwas up just enough for the commentary to blend with shouting, laughter, and the constant clink of glass.
Hockey guys had claimed the back tables like we owned them. Football filled the high-tops near the dartboards. Basketball had taken over the long table along the side wall, all long limbs and louder voices, acting like the bar had expanded specifically to accommodate their wingspan. As more people arrived, chairs shifted, tables were dragged closer, and the separate groups blurred into one crowded section.
I sat with Briggs on one side and Rider on the other, nursing a beer I had no intention of finishing.
Briggs had been arguing with a sophomore linebacker for ten minutes about whether goalies were the smartest men on the ice or simply the most willing to get hit in the face for attention. Rider had contributed nothing except the occasional look that somehow made Briggs more committed to being ridiculous. Ryan was supposed to show up later after the Frost returned from another away game, which meant that, for now, I was trapped with current KFU guys, a few alumni orbiting the edges, and a cluster of basketball players I knew only by face and reputation.
And Aura was working.
I had known that before I walked in.
I still walked in.
That probably said something ugly about me, but I was tired of translating every self-destructive thing I did into emotional literacy. Sometimes a guy wanted a beer, a Red Wings game, and the opportunity to pretend the woman moving through the crowd with a tray balanced on one hand had never been the axis his whole body turned around.
She looked good. Black Sin Bin tank. Dark jeans. Long braids pulled back from her face. Gold hoops. Lip gloss. That calm, sharp expression she wore when she wanted the worldto believe she was too busy, too bored, or too superior to be touched by anything happening around her.
She moved from table to table with practiced ease, taking orders, dodging hands that reached for drinks too early, shutting down flirtation with one look and a smile just sweet enough to qualify as customer service. She didn’t look at me when she passed our section the first time. She didn’t do it with cruelty or fear. She simply moved by me like I was another table she wasn’t responsible for yet.
That was somehow worse than the fights.
Indifference looked different on Aura when it was real. I didn’t know if anyone else could tell, but I could. Her shoulders were looser than they had been at Hockey House. Her mouth wasn’t weaponized. She seemed tired, maybe, but not brittle. She looked like the distance between us had given her room to breathe.
I hated how easy she made it look when I felt like I was dying inside.
