My jaw tightened.
He held my stare. “And you also don’t get to punish her forever because she survived badly before she learned how to tell you why.”
That one hit harder.
Briggs made a quiet noise. “Mercer with the blade work.”
“I’m serious,” Cade said, his eyes still on me. “You can be hurt without being cruel. You can need time without making her beg. You can say you’re not okay and still stop acting like the only way to protect yourself is to cut first.”
Ryan’s expression darkened slightly. “You’ve been cutting at her all this time.”
I looked at him. “You think I don’t know that?”
“I think you know and still kept doing it because hurting her was the only proof you had that she mattered.”
The silence afterward was sharp enough to draw blood.
Briggs stared down at the ice. Cade looked away, not because Ryan was wrong, but because everyone in the rink knew he wasn’t. Rider kicked his blade back and forth across the ice. My hand tightened around my stick until my busted knuckles screamed.
Ryan didn’t soften. “You wanted her to react. You wanted her to crack. You wanted proof she wasn’t untouchable after she made you feel disposable. Then Maddox cracked her open in front of you, and now you’re standing here sick because you finally saw the wound you kept poking at.”
I hated him in that moment.
Not because he was wrong.
Because he was not wrong enough.
“I didn’t know,” I said.
Ryan’s voice dropped. “No. You didn’t. But you know now.”
The words traveled through me slowly.
Before, my anger had been blind enough to feel righteous. She hurt me. She used me. She made me want something she refused to name. Every cruel thing I did afterward had come wrapped in the justification of a man who thought heartbreak made him owed.
Now I knew enough to see her rules differently. Her panic differently. Her no lights and no names as survival instead of cruelty. I knew enough to understand why wanting me had probably terrified her more than hating me ever could.
And I still hurt.
That was the part that made me feel like a monster.
“I still don’t forgive her,” I said quietly.
Cade’s voice came steadily. “Maybe don’t decide that on the ice with a swollen face and four men who barely qualify as adults.”
Briggs lifted one finger. “Excuse you. I pay taxes.”
“You do not,” Ryan said.
“I pay in vibes.”
Cade shook his head, then looked back at me. “Call your mom.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Call Gayle.”
“No.”
