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He keeps his arm around Bliss while we cross the ballroom. Easton and Rider follow immediately. Briggs shoves the appetizer into his mouth, abandons the rest of his plate on the bar, and brings up the rear. Nobody jokes when Cade opens the doors and leads us onto the patio.
Evening air cuts through the heat beneath my shirt. The gardens have begun disappearing beneath shadows, but the lights strung across the terrace cast enough gold over everyone’s faces for me to see exactly how badly Bliss and Aura are shaken.
Cade closes the doors behind us. Music and conversation dull beneath the glass, leaving the seven of us alone.
“What happened?” he asks again.
Bliss turns toward me. “Charm told us about the argument on the patio.”
My jaw tightens. “What did she tell you?”
“That she saw you with Crystal and asked what happened after Thanksgiving. You told her she only knew the ESPN version, but you weren’t ready to talk about the rest of it.”
“She told you that?”
“She told us you said your pain belongs to you,” Aura says. “She understood. She said whatever happened to you was yours to tell and that she would wait until you were ready.”
Something shifts beneath my ribs before I can stop it.
“She didn’t ask you for details?”
“No,” Bliss says. “She specifically told us she wasn’t asking us to give her anything you refused to discuss.”
Briggs’s attention moves toward me, but I keep mine on Bliss. “Then what did she ask?”
“If you were okay. She wanted to know whether something was happening in Milwaukee that was making you more stressed or angry than usual.”
“She asked if you were happy there,” Aura adds. “If hockey was going well and whether anything was wrong with your contract.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
The pressure building behind my sternum changes shape. Charm had walked away from me hurt, furious, and convinced that everyone knew pieces of my life she didn’t. She still hadn’t tried to take what I told her wasn’t hers yet.
“What did you tell her?”
“That you’re happy in Milwaukee,” Aura says. “That you love the city and the Inferno has been good for you. We told her hockey is going well.”
“And the contract?”
Aura’s mouth tightens. “I said there wasn’t a problem now.”
“Now?”
“She caught it immediately,” Bliss says. “She knew we were hiding something.”
I drag one hand over my mouth. “Fuck.”
“We tried to tell her anything that happened to you was yours to explain,” Aura says. “She agreed. She kept agreeing. Then she asked whether whatever we knew involved her.”
Every muscle in my body locks.
“What did you tell her?”
Bliss begins crying again. Cade tightens his arm around her and brings her against his side.
“The truth,” she says.
