Bliss moved first.
She shoved past Cade, her face pale and furious as she reached for her phone. Charm followed, tight-lipped and shaking in a way she would never admit to, her perfect posture barely holding. Neither of them looked at me on the way out.
It should have been fine—exactly what I deserved—but it still stung like another blade between my ribs.
Cade said my name from somewhere too close. “East.”
I turned on him so fast the room blurred. “Fuck you.”
He didn’t flinch, which pissed me off more. Cade rarely flinched. He got quiet and controlled, dangerous in a way that made people listen without realizing they had lowered their voices first.
Ryan came in from the hallway, his jaw locked and his gaze sweeping over me, then the door, then the kitchen where half the team pretended not to watch. Briggs was right behindhim, his hair shoved back and his face stripped of every joke he usually carried like armor. Rider stood near the edge of the living room, quiet as hell, hands in his pockets, eyes moving over everything like he was already collecting evidence for a trial nobody wanted.
“Upstairs,” Ryan said.
I laughed beneath my breath, and it came out wrong. “You giving orders now?”
“I’m giving you one.”
“Cute.”
Briggs stepped into my line of sight. “East, come on.”
That made my teeth grind.
Normally, Briggs made jokes, talked shit, and turned every disaster into a story with terrible timing and worse metaphors. He didn’t look at me like I was something cracked open in the middle of the house and bleeding onto the floor.
Tonight, he looked worried.
Briggs was the heart of us all, whether any of us said it out loud or not. If one of us hurt, he felt it. He might wrap that feeling in bullshit and bad jokes, but he would stand for it every time.
I hated him for seeing mine.
“I’m good,” I said.
“You’re standing in the middle of the living room looking like you’re deciding whether to chase her or put your fist through something,” Rider said, calm enough to make me want to turn on him too. “So, no, you’re not.”
Every muscle in my body reacted before I gave it permission because I wanted to fight her until she relented. I wanted to keep going until she finally admitted losing me mattered.
Ryan saw it. His expression hardened. “That’s exactly why you’re going upstairs.”
“She left,” I said, like saying it might make it smaller.
“She got in an Uber,” Cade said. “Bliss and Charm went after her.”
I smiled, but there wasn’t a damn thing alive in it. “Congratulations to everyone on surviving the threat.”
“Don’t do that,” Cade said.
“Do what?”
“Act like the only reason anyone cares where she went is to protect her from you.”
My jaw flexed. “Isn’t it?”
The silence answered before anyone else did, and something hot and ugly rolled beneath my skin.
Ryan stepped closer, his voice low. “Move.”
