Briggs broke the silence with the delicacy of a man dropping a piano down a staircase. “I feel like I should pay extra for dinner theater, but I’m scared to move.”
Nobody laughed.
Rider sighed. “Briggs.”
“What? I said I’m scared.”
Charm stood, all soft hair and lethal eyes, and came around the edge of the bar area like she had decided politenesshad expired. She took the wing baskets from my hands with gentle force.
“Table twelve?” she asked.
I blinked at her. “You don’t work here.”
“No, but I can identify hungry men and emotional catastrophe. Go breathe near the ice machine before you commit murder in referee stripes.”
“I’m fine.”
Charm’s face softened, but her voice stayed firm. “Ay, you’re shaking.”
I looked down and saw my hands trembling.
She was right.
Damn her.
I curled my fingers into my palms, then looked back at Easton because letting him see me break would finish something I wasn’t ready to bury.
His eyes had dropped to my hands. The cruelty was gone, replaced by something worse—regret.
I hated that more than the anger.
I stepped back. “Enjoy your night, Captain.”
“Aura,” Easton said, and my name in his mouth scraped across every place I had tried to heal wrong.
“No.” I lifted my chin. “You don’t get my name soft after that.”
His mouth closed.
Bliss’s eyes filled behind the bar, but she didn’t interfere. Cade looked like he wanted to drag Easton outside by the back of his jacket. Ryan’s face was unreadable except for the muscle ticking in his jaw, and Charm stood beside me holding two baskets of wings like she would throw them at the first man who breathed wrong.
I turned toward Bliss. “I’ll come Friday.”
Her eyebrows pulled together. “You don’t have to decide right now.”
“I just did.”
Easton went still.
I looked at him because I wanted him to hear every word and hate all of them. “I’ll be there for Cade’s first game back. I’ll be there for Briggs and Rider and the rest of the Fury. I’ll be there because my best friends asked me to sit beside them and because I support the team even when its captain acts like pain gave him an exemption to be cruel.”
His eyes burned into mine.
I smiled, and this time there was nothing pretty in it. “You don’t get to decide if or when I disappear.”
For a long second, Easton didn’t move. The bar roared around us, but the space between us stayed silent, charged, and ruined.
Then he picked up his water, took one sip, and set the glass down with careful control.
