“I’m trying.”
His eyes held mine. “You’re handing it to her and daring her to use it so you can hate her more when she does.”
My head turned slowly toward him, but Ryan didn’t back down.
“That what we’re doing now?” I asked. “Therapy in the hallway while everyone picks a side?”
“No,” he said. “I’m saying you looked wrecked downstairs, and it wasn’t the kind of wrecked that comes from not caring.”
Briggs exhaled hard. “Nobody thinks he doesn’t care.”
“That’s the problem,” Cade said.
Ryan looked at him sharply. “The problem is Aura knows he cares and keeps pressing on the nerve.”
“The problem,” Cade returned, his voice still controlled but edged now, “is that he’s letting anger drive because it feels better than hurt.”
“Maybe pain earned a turn,” Briggs muttered.
Cade’s eyes cut toward him. “That’s not helping.”
“Neither is pretending he’s the only one with work to do.”
“I’m not pretending that.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
Rider’s gaze stayed on me instead of joining Briggs’s defense, like his loyalty meant stopping me before I made another mistake.
The air tightened as I watched my boys divide. Not boys against girls yet, but the shape of it was there in the hallway. Ryan and Briggs stood nearer to me without meaning to, both of them too loyal and angry on my behalf to care much about fairness. Cade and Rider remained across from them, not against me, never that, but trying to drag me back from the edge before I mistook revenge for healing.
I hated all of them for being right in different directions.
Ryan stepped between the argument before it became another fire. “Enough. We’re not doing this up here.”
“Then go downstairs,” I said.
“I’m not leaving you like this.”
“I didn’t ask for a fucking intervention.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t ask to watch you come apart in front of half the team and a girl you were using as emotional shrapnel.”
Briggs made a sound. “That was vivid.”
“It was true,” Ryan said.
Cade kept his eyes on me. “You need to leave.”
I smiled without humor. “Already did that. Remember?”
Something flickered across his face. Regret, maybe.
I didn’t want his regret or anything else from anyone right then except a way to peel Aura out from beneath my skin without taking half of myself with her.
“I’m not going back downstairs,” I said.
“You’re coming with me,” Ryan said.
