Something inside me ached in a way I didn’t have words for.
Bliss wiped beneath her eyes and looked back at me. Her voice came softer now, but steadier. “Ryan’s right.”
I gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “Wonderful. Are we voting?”
“No.” Bliss shook her head and stepped only close enough to make me feel loved without trapping me. “We let it go on too long. All of us. We watched you two tear chunks out of each other because we didn’t know how to stop it without making it worse, and we were wrong.”
I looked at her.
Her chin trembled, but she kept going. “You want to be mad at us? Be mad. We earned some of it. We pushed when we shouldn’t have. We backed off when we should have pushed. We tried to manage you instead of trusting you to tell us what you needed.” Her gaze slid briefly toward Easton, then returned to me. “But this is fixable, Aura. Maybe not easy. Maybe not clean. Maybe not tonight in some perfect way. But it is fixable, and you both know how.”
Easton’s voice came rough from behind me. “Bliss.”
“No,” she said without looking at him. “I love you too, Easton, but I’m not doing this anymore. I’m not standing in another room while you two look at each other like you’re dying and act like the rest of us are insane for noticing the blood.”
The words sank into the floor, and no one moved for a second.
Then Briggs cleared his throat, careful in a way that didn’t belong on him. “Okay. We can emotional-intervention another day. Right now, Wade needs ice, probably a doctor, and somebody to make sure he doesn’t return to the parking lot for bonus crimes.”
Rider nodded. “We’ll get him home.”
“No,” I said.
Everyone looked at me.
My hand tightened around my phone. The screen was still dark from the call I barely remembered ending. My pulse was doing something stupid, slamming against my ribs too fast and too loudly, but the decision settled anyway.
“I’ll take him.”
Easton’s head turned toward me.
Briggs frowned. “Aura, I say this with love and fear, but that sounds like an emotionally catastrophic hurricane-meets-tornado-in-a-vehicle situation.”
“I didn’t ask for a weather report.”
“It’s not weather. It’s two natural disasters in a compact space.”
“Briggs,” Rider said quietly.
“No, seriously.” Briggs looked between Easton and me, his face drawn with worry now that the adrenaline had nowhere to go. “You’re both raw as hell. He’s bleeding. You’re shaking. The night has already featured public trauma exposure, an outdoor felony-adjacent beatdown, and enough unresolvedfeelings to choke a therapist. Maybe separate cars are our friend.”
“I’m taking him,” I said.
Cade stepped forward, his voice even. “Aura, tonight might not be the best time for you two to be alone.”
Something inside me snapped tight.
I looked at him, then Bliss, then Briggs and Rider, then Ryan still holding Charm like he had no intention of letting her go until she could breathe correctly again.
“No,” I said. “Everyone is going to butt the fuck out of this.”
The room stilled.
I didn’t raise my voice. I didn’t need to. The words came out clean and sharp enough to make space around me.
“All night, everyone has had something to say. Don’t fight. Don’t react. Don’t go outside. Don’t be alone. Don’t do this now. Don’t do that tonight. I’m done. I am very grateful you all came. I’m grateful you care. I’m grateful you didn’t let him finish rearranging Maddox’s face into abstract art. But this thing between Easton and me is not a group project.”
Bliss inhaled, but she didn’t interrupt.
