Page 228

The question is petulant, deliberate, and sharp enough to tell me Cade was right. I walked up three flights of stairs with my mother’s name still burning in my ears because I wanted to give Charm an opportunity to meet me somewhere outside her own pain. She has already decided that being kept out of my confrontation was something done to her.

“I am fucking up here trying to talk to you when I owe you nothing.” I hold her stare while the resentment in her face shifts. “You sleep on that.”

“Yeah, fuck you.”

I say nothing.

There is no answer I can give without reopening every violent thing I managed to leave outside, and I refuse to stand in another doorway begging Charm to hear me. I turn away and walk back toward the stairs.

She does not call after me.

By the time I reach my room, the adrenaline has given way to a restless exhaustion that makes my skin feel too tight. I lock the door, strip down to my boxers, and pour enough mezcal to burn the taste of blood from my mouth. The liquor stings the cut inside my lip and settles hot in my empty stomach.

I lie across the bed with one arm beneath my head and the bottle within reach on the nightstand. Sleep does not come. Every time I close my eyes, I see my mother’s face in photographs that were old before I understood they were all I would ever have left of her. Then I see Lance’s mouth shaping the word he used for her, Cade stepping back, Briggs staring at the ground, and Charm folding her arms while asking whether she was allowed to speak to me.

I drink again.

The room remains silent long enough for the party below to become a distant vibration beneath the floor. I consider calling Cade, but he should be beside Bliss. Briggs is in no condition to carry anything else tonight, and I cannot listen to Easton explain restraint while imagining how quickly he would have broken Lance’s neck if the same words had been said about someone he loved.

Another knock comes sometime after midnight.

I remain on the bed and stare at the door.

The knock comes again, harder this time.

I set the glass down, grab my shirt from the floor, and pull it over my head as I cross the room. The fabric catches against my mouth, reopening the cut and sending another sharp taste of blood across my tongue.

When I open the door, Charm stands in the hallway with her arms folded again.

Her eyes move over my shirt, my bare legs, and the swelling beginning along my jaw. Whatever concern enters her expression disappears beneath the anger she carried here.

“We need to talk.”

“You had that opportunity.”

“You walked away.”

“You told me to go fuck myself.”

“Because you treated me like I had no right to be upset.”

I grip the edge of the door and remind myself that I came to her first. “If you came here to continue the conversation you refused earlier, come inside. If you came here to fight about whether I allowed you enough space inside what your father did to me, go back to your room.”

Charm’s chin lifts. “You don’t get to decide what I’m allowed to feel.”

“I didn’t say I did.”

“You decided I wasn’t allowed to speak downstairs.”

“That was my fight.”

“He is Lance.”

“And everything he said was aimed at me.”

“He hit you because of me.”

“He hit me because I exposed him.”