Of course she wanted the reasonable middle. Ryan had spent months teaching her that Easton’s pain deserved equal space.
Easton locked his eyes on mine. “What wound?”
I didn’t answer.
“Tell me.”
“No.”
His jaw flexed. “Tell me whose mistakes I’ve been paying for.”
The sentence hit so hard the room disappeared.
Whose mistakes.
My throat tightened, and for one horrible second, I was no longer in Hockey House.
I was beneath lights too bright to hide from, seeing myself on that bed from a distance I had never asked for. My face was the only face anyone could see.
Mine. Always mine.
The rest of them remained shadows, hands, and voices beyond the frame, laughing softly, mocking me, and saying my name like it was the punch line. They repeated it until the name stopped sounding like mine, until it became proof and a vulgar image I could never peel from my head no matter how many years I spent dressing it in lip gloss, grades, rules, and rage.
Aura. Aura. Aura.
Then I was back.
Easton stood in front of me, breathing hard, furious, broken, and so fucking blind I wanted to scream.
“You don’t get to ask me that.”
“I do when you made me suffer inside it.”
“No.” I stepped toward him before anyone could stop me. “You lived inside your version of it. You took every rule I had and decided it was about you. You took every locked door and made yourself the poor man standing outside it.”
My hands had started shaking, but I no longer cared.
“Now you want answers because my damage inconvenienced your heartbreak, and you refuse to see that I will never hand you the worst thing that happened to me just so you can feel better about being hurt.”
His face tightened. “I respected you in every way. Do not act like I didn’t.”
“Then respect this one.”
“What one? What rule?”
I leaned closer. “The one that says you don’t get to know.”
The room went dead silent.
Easton looked like I had slapped him. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do.”
“No.” His voice broke roughly around the edge. “You don’t get to keep doing this. You don’t get to keep me in the dark over shit that hurts you, then turn around and make me the villain every time I get too close to the nerve.”
“You are cruel.”
“I am destroyed!”
