Briggs frowned. “To the hostage-lamp apartment?”
“To my apartment.”
Ryan stood too. “I’ll walk out.”
“I don’t need a babysitter.”
“I know.”
He said it in a way that made arguing pointless.
Cade reached for Bliss’s hand when she came back toward us, and she looked from him to me with too much worry in her eyes.
“Easton.”
I stopped.
She didn’t come closer or soften what she was about to say. “You hurt her tonight.”
“I know.”
“She hurt you too.”
“I know that too.”
Bliss nodded, and her mouth trembled once before she pulled it together. “Then maybe both of you could stop trying to win long enough to remember you loved each other.”
Nobody made a sound. Even Briggs had the survival instinct to shut up.
I looked away first because there were some hits I still didn’t know how to take standing.
Ryan clapped a hand once against my shoulder and steered me toward the door before I could say something stupid. The cold air outside hit my face, and I dragged it into my lungs like it could scrape her voice out of my head.
The cold air didn’t scrape her voice out of my head, and nothing else did either.
3
Aura
Bliss sends thirteen photos of bridesmaid dresses in six minutes, which feels less like wedding planning and more like an organized attack on my peace.
I’m in bed at the ABC apartment with my laptop open beside me, a half-eaten bag of kettle corn on my nightstand, and my phone lighting up every few seconds with another satin, chiffon, or silk option proving Bliss has lost her mind to love and Pinterest. Charm is asleep across the hall—or pretending to be asleep in that elegant way she does when she wants plausible deniability for ignoring us so she can sext Ryan while thinking we don’t know.
I should be asleep. I have a reading assignment for Cartright that will absolutely require caffeine and legal rage tomorrow morning, but Bliss labeled the group chat Bride Tribe But Make It Hot, so now I’m trapped in the ninth circle of supportive-best-friend hell.
The latest dress loads slowly, the image sharpening from a blur into something pale gold and backless, all delicate straps and soft drape, the kind of dress designed for women who have healthy relationships with vulnerability and upper-body exposure.
I stare at it for too long.
My thumb hovers over the screen.
A backless dress should not be a threat. Fabric is fabric. Skin is skin. I know this. I own mirrors, bikinis, and dresses so short my father would need a rosary and a blood pressure cuff if he ever saw them. I can be half-naked in public and feel nothingbut control because public is performance. Public is lighting, posture, attitude, and choosing where people look.
Private is different.
Private is where a man can destroy your life with one decision.
Another photo pops up, this one from the back. The model’s hair is lifted off her neck, her spine bare, her body turned slightly as if she has never once worried about what surrender looked like from behind.
