The answer sat beneath my ribs and pulsed.
“Yes.”
Neither of them spoke.
I looked down at our hands. Bliss held one of mine. Charm had taken the other, her fingers cool from the rain and steady around mine.
“I told him I loved him, and it didn’t fix anything.”
Bliss swallowed. “Love doesn’t always fix it right away.”
“No, B. It didn’t matter.”
Charm squeezed my hand. “That isn’t the same thing.”
“It felt the same.”
“I know,” she said. “But it isn’t.”
My eyes burned again, and I was so tired of crying I could have screamed. “He didn’t say my trauma didn’t matter. He didn’t. I need to be fair about that before my hurt turns him into a villain inside my head. He listened. He looked sick. He looked like every word was cutting him. But then he said love wasn’t enough to save the part of him I ruined.”
Bliss made a small, wounded sound.
“And he’s right.” I forced the words out because they were ugly, true, and mine. “I can be traumatized and still have hurt him. I can have reasons and still have done damage. He can love me and still not forgive me tonight.”
Charm stepped closer until her shoulder pressed against mine. “That is a very emotionally mature sentence, and I hate it for all of us.”
“I’d like to return it.”
“Receipt denied,” Bliss whispered.
I laughed again, and this time it broke into a sob halfway through.
Both of them moved at once.
Bliss wrapped herself around my front. Charm folded around my back. I stood pinned between them in the rain, my cheek against Bliss’s hoodie and Charm’s hand smoothing over my braids, and for the first time since Hockey House, I let myself be held without trying to earn it by being funny first.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
Bliss shook her head against mine. “We are too.”
“I shouldn’t have thrown Cade and Ryan in your faces.”
Charm’s laugh was wet against my shoulder. “Ryan deserved a little collateral damage for existing that hot and inconvenient.”
Bliss sniffed. “Cade didn’t, but he would accept friendly fire for me.”
“Cade would accept a bullet for you and then apologize for bleeding on your shoes,” I muttered.
“That’s romance,” Bliss said.
“That’s a sanitation issue,” Charm replied.
I squeezed them both because the banter hurt in the best way. It felt like finding a light on inside a house I thought I had burned down.
Bliss pulled back just enough to cup my face. “Listen to me, and don’t make a joke until I’m done or I’ll bite you.”
“That is aggressive affection.”
