Her face changed then.
Finally.
The smallest crack split through all that beautiful armor, and I almost hated how badly it hurt to see it.
“Easton,” she whispered, her eyes widening. “Easton.”
I shook my head because if she said my name like that again, I might ruin everything I had just survived and prove her right.
Stay.
One more kiss and she would understand. One more intense fuck and she would look at me and see the truth. One more moment where she woke the fuck up and called this anything but a hook-up.
Wishes like that were for fools, and so was I.
“What does that mean?” she asked, her voice smaller than before.
I laughed once, low and empty, because she really had no idea what she had just done. Maybe that was the worst part. Maybe the girl standing in my shirt genuinely believed she could keep cutting me open and still find me waiting with my hands out.
“It means I’ll give you one better.”
I grabbed my hat from the dresser and pulled it on, taking an extra second to smooth the bill because I needed something to do with my hands that wasn’t reaching for her.
She watched the movement like it confused her, like she was finally beginning to understand this wasn’t another one of our fights. This wasn’t me pushing until she snapped back.
This was my worst quality. My cut-off game was vicious.
I could love someone with every fucked-up, loyal, bleeding part of me, but if I reached done, I was done. I could wish them the best, hope they healed and thrived, and still want them to stay the fuck out of my life.
I looked at the girl in my shirt one last time.
“You can experience what casual means to me.”
Then I opened my bedroom door and walked out without another word, leaving her in my shirt, in my room, and in the wreckage of the secret she never believed I would be strong enough to end.
It took several months for Aura to learn exactly what casual meant to me, and I made sure she felt every second of it.
I didn’t call or text her. I didn’t return the messages asking if we could talk or telling me she was sorry. When she asked to talk, my reply was simple. No. Her apology stayed on read.
I didn’t show up outside her apartment when I knew Bliss and Charm were gone and she was alone with whatever the fuck she felt after I left my bedroom that night. I didn’t ask whether she was okay, missed me, or regretted standing there in my shirt with my confession hanging between us and saying nothing until it was too late.
Instead, I became every ugly thing she never knew I could be.
I took girls home from parties while she watched from across the room. Not because I needed them or because any of them meant a single fucking thing. Most of the time, I barely remembered their names by morning. Sometimes I didn’t let them make it to morning at all.
It was cruel and empty and exactly the kind of shit I would have called another man pathetic for doing, but I did it anyway because Aura’s face went still every time some pretty girl laughed against my shoulder.
I wanted her to see it and understand she wasn’t welcome near me anymore—not in my room, my bed, or the hallway outside my life, waiting until she got lonely enough to knock.
At parties, I made her feel it. I cut through rooms without looking at her, or worse, looked directly through her like she was furniture somebody had dragged in and forgotten to move. If she got sharp with me, I got sharper. Ifshe threw attitude, I threw it back meaner.
If some guy put his hands near her waist, I smiled like I didn’t care while something black and violent twisted behind my ribs.
The only place I mostly left her alone was the Sin Bin.
Even I had enough decency not to fuck with her while she worked for tips, carrying trays and smiling at drunk alumni and idiot freshmen who thought her flirting for a bigger tip meant she might actually take them seriously.
Like hell I would ever stand for her moving on.
