Bliss and Charm both lowered their heads because they knew exactly what button he had pushed.
Maybe now they saw my point.
Easton’s gaze flicked toward them, quick and lethal, and I saw the precise second he caught the movement. The slight change in his breathing told me he had found a seam.
His eyes returned to mine. “What?”
I lifted my chin. “Nothing.”
“That was not nothing.”
“It is to you.”
“It becomes something to me when I’m the one paying for it.”
Cade stepped in then, settling a palm against Easton’s chest. “Wade, back off.”
Easton stared at me over Cade’s shoulder. “No. I want to know what the hell I’ve been punished for.”
“You were punished?” My voice turned sweet in the way that meant I was about to become unforgivable. “Poor Easton. Did the girl with rules hurt your feelings?”
His face changed, and for half a second, I saw the boy from his bedroom the night everything ended—the one standing there in sweats, exhausted, beautiful, and furious, asking me to stop making him feel pathetic for loving me.
Then that boy disappeared.
“Yeah,” he said. “She did.”
That was somehow worse than a comeback.
I looked away first, and the room noticed because it was full of traitors with eyes.
Easton stepped around Cade, and Cade caught his hoodie in one fist before he could get too close. Easton stopped, but barely.
“You want to talk about hurt?” he asked. “Fine. Let’s talk about the year I spent being careful with you. Every move I made around your fucking rules was done with absolute fucking respect. Every time I broke one, you allowed it because with me, you didn’t want those rules.”
His mouth curled around my name.
“No names, right, Aura?”
My lungs stopped working correctly.
His voice lowered, which made everything worse. “I broke every rule you put between us because I thought I made you feel safe. And for what? For you to treat me like I was the burden?”
The kitchen blurred around the edges as he laid it all out for everyone to hear. Then, to add insult to injury, he started ticking the rules off one finger at a time.
“No lights. No names. Never fully naked. No phones in the room. No promises, and never give anyone proof that it was an actual fucking thing.”
He didn’t know.
He didn’t fucking know.
I repeated it to myself as if I were padding his landing, but the words still slipped beneath my skin like they had been made to find that exact wound.
Bliss stepped forward. “Easton, you need to stop now. This is too far. Please.”
His eyes cut toward her. “Please what?”
She froze.
