“I learned from the best.” Her thumb wiped beneath my eye with heartbreaking gentleness. “We knew what happened to you, and we still forgot that knowing isn’t the same as protecting you in the moment. We got scared of watching you hurt him because we knew you’d hate yourself for it later. We didn’t stop to remember you were also reacting to months of him hurting you. That was our failure, not yours.”
Charm’s hand settled between my shoulder blades. “You deserved your girls at your side. You deserved us saying, yes, Easton is hurt, and yes, Aura is hurt too. We made it feel like your pain needed to be tidier so everyone else could handle it.”
My throat worked around the lump there. “I was cruel.”
“You were,” Bliss said.
I blinked.
Charm nodded. “You were very mean. Spectacularly dressed, but mean.”
A strangled sound escaped me. “This is your comfort?”
“Yes,” Bliss said. “We are not going to lie to you. You were cruel, Easton was cruel, everyone in that house acted like a bag of knives with college credits, and we still love you.”
Charm’s mouth softened. “You don’t have to be innocent to be ours.”
That one landed so deeply I couldn’t breathe for a second.
I looked between them, rain slipping down my temples, my heart sore from Easton, my girls, myself, and every version of me I had been trying to keep alive at once. “I don’t know what to do now.”
Bliss brushed one wet braid over my shoulder. “Tonight? You come home.”
“I don’t know if I can be alone in my room right now. I’ll emotion-text or do something worse than drunk texting.”
“Then come to mine,” Charm said.
Bliss looked at her. “Your bed is decorative and terrifying.”
“It is expensive and emotionally supportive.”
“It has fourteen pillows.”
“Sixteen.”
“That is not a bed. That’s a fabric obstacle course.”
Charm lifted her chin. “Aura can have the center.”
I wiped at my face. “I’m not sleeping in Charm’s pillow museum.”
“Then you come to Cade’s,” Bliss said. “He won’t ask questions.”
I gave her a look.
“He won’t ask many questions,” she amended. “And if he does, I’ll sit on him.”
“That sounds like foreplay.”
“Aura,” Bliss said, scandalized and proud at the same time.
Charm sighed. “I missed you so much.”
That almost took me out again.
I reached for both of them, grabbing their sleeves like they might vanish if I didn’t hold on. “I missed you too.”
Bliss’s face crumpled. “Never go days without talking to me again. I’m not built for it. I started reorganizing Cade’s kitchen by emotional category.”
