I walked out before I could turn around and comfort her for hurting me. Before Charm could say my name again. Before the apartment pulled me back with every memory of us on that couch, on that floor, and in that kitchen, laughing like the world could never get its hands on us if we stayed close enough.
The door closed behind me with a soft click that sounded nothing like the size of what had just happened.
Outside, the hallway smelled like old carpet and winter-wet coats, and my overnight bag bumped against my hip as I walked toward the stairs with tears still on my face and my phone already buzzing inside my pocket.
I did not look at it.
For once, I let them wait.
9
Easton
Neither Ryan nor Cade said anything for the first ten minutes of the drive.
That was how I knew it was bad.
Cade had picked Ryan up from the airport earlier after he flew in from Ontario. Ryan’s truck was still in Flint, which was why Cade was behind the wheel now, driving both of us to Ryan’s place.
Ryan Decker had a quiet streak most people mistook for indifference, but his silence usually had shape. Annoyed silence. Observant silence. I’m-not-saving-you-from-your-own-bullshit silence. Cade wasn’t much different, but his silence was Bliss-based, both hands locked around the wheel, jaw tight and eyes forward while the windshield wipers cut hard across the glass and the rain smeared the streetlights into long yellow streaks.
I sat in the back seat with my head against the headrest, one hand wrapped around my phone and dried blood caught in the creases of my split knuckles. Cade had shoved me toward the Rover while Ryan called after Bliss and Charm one more time.
Hockey House disappeared behind us.
Good.
That was what I told myself as Cade turned onto the main road and the old brick shape of the place vanished in the side mirror. I didn’t need to be there. I hadn’t truly lived there in months, and I’d left my old room stripped down to spare hoodies and equipment because moving out had seemed easier than admitting I couldn’t sleep in the same house where every hallway knew her.
Aura had ruined Hockey House for me.
No—that wasn’t fair.
I had let her.
I had let her into the kitchen, the stairs, the back porch, the living room couch, the bathroom with the broken fan, and the laundry room where she once sat on top of the dryer in my shirt while I folded towels badly just to make her insult me. I had let her turn my room into something that smelled like coconut lotion, her hair products, and sex. I let her sleep in my bed after insisting she didn’t sleep over, curl into my side when she thought I was already out, then wake up mean like tenderness was a crime scene she needed to flee before I dusted for prints.
That house used to be noise, hockey, and brotherhood. Briggs yelling from the kitchen, Cade enforcing rules nobody followed, Ryan appearing out of nowhere like a tattooed judgment call, and Rider leaning against walls while hearing everything.
It used to be home.
Then Aura stayed there for five days after Luke attacked Bliss, and it became the closest thing to a life with her I had ever been stupid enough to imagine.
The memory hit so hard I closed my eyes.
Ryan twisted around in the passenger seat. “You gonna puke?”
“No.”
“Pass out?”
“No.”
“Confess to a felony?”
I turned my head enough to glare at him. “You always this comforting?”
“Only when I’m escorting a bloody defenseman away from a fight that turned into an emotional collapse.”
