Even in the middle of my emotional collapse, I clocked it.
Unbelievable. My life was on fire, and Charm was having a subplot.
“Do not look at Gage,” Bliss said.
I looked directly at Gage.
He stood near the far side of the kitchen, laughing with two forwards, his hair still damp from his shower, his sleeves pushed up, and his easy smile already halfway aimed at me when he caught my attention. He was good-looking in a clean, athletic, unserious way, the kind of man who could flirt without making it feel like a blood oath.
He came without history, old bedrooms, porch railings, dark-room rules, or a voice in my head telling me I had ruined the best thing I had ever been brave enough to want.
Perfect.
Bliss made a small sound. “Aura, I am begging you.”
“Don’t,” I said, still watching Gage. “You don’t get to beg me to stop when I have to watch him decorate himself with Brinley.”
Bliss flinched, and guilt tried to rise, but I stepped over it.
Charm’s voice sharpened for the first time. “He is wrong for that, and you are wrong for this.”
I turned toward her. “What are you, the moral police?”
Her face went pale, but she didn’t back down. “I’m on the side where you don’t stoop to his level. He isn’t stopping, so maybe you need to.”
The words landed too close.
“Cee,” Bliss whispered.
“No.” Charm’s glossy, furious eyes stayed on mine. “I love you. You know I love you. But you cannot keep waiting forEaston to magically understand your reasoning and then punish him for it later.”
I stared at her, genuinely stunned by the logic.
I wasn’t asking Easton to understand why I ran. I was asking for the basic human decency to stop punishing me and move forward.
Instead, I was expected to allow his bullshit because his feelings had been hurt.
Yeah, fuck that.
The music thudded through the house. Someone laughed too loudly in the living room. Easton still had Brinley at his side, and his eyes were on me now.
He had heard enough.
His expression didn’t change, but his attention sharpened like a blade sliding from its sheath.
I smiled at Charm because if I didn’t, I might cry in the entryway of Hockey House, and I would rather walk barefoot over glass. “Thank you for the group therapy. I’ll be sure to leave a review.”
Bliss’s eyes shifted nervously. “Don’t do this.”
I looked past her toward Easton, Brinley’s hand still on his chest and the cold, detached stare he had spent seven months using like a punishment he could keep handing out because nobody wanted to make him stop.
Seven months of women, comments, and him making sure I saw every body he used to prove I wasn’t welcome near his anymore.
And somehow, I was the one everyone kept asking to be careful.
“He did it first,” I said.
Charm stepped closer, her voice low and tight. “That doesn’t make this better.”
