“So do not stand there and talk to me like I built these walls because I’m dramatic,” I said. “Do not ask me to care about Easton’s pride before you remember what it cost me to let any man touch me without rules.”
I swallowed against the pressure in my throat.
“I know I hurt him. I know I handled it like shit. I know he deserved better than the way I treated him. He was the most alpha motherfucker I knew, and I cut him down to weakness because I was scared. I know that. I hate that.”
My eyes moved between them.
“But you two do not get to act like my reasons are an inconvenience I should’ve outgrown by now.”
Charm whispered, “We would never.”
“Then don’t,” I shot back. “Don’t make me smaller so he can save face after everything he has put me through. Don’t make me the villain alone when how he treated me deserves my anger too.”
Bliss opened her mouth, but I was already moving again, already past the point where standing in that bedroom with my chest cracked open and my best friends looking at me like they wanted to love me and correct me at the same time was something I could survive.
“I have more than paid the price for what I did to Easton,” I said, turning back to the bag with my voice shaking. “And no part of me cares that I rubbed his nose in it tonight.”
Charm came closer because she always followed quietly when she thought loud would make me bolt. “Ay, where are you going?”
“To my parents’.”
Bliss came all the way into the room. “Tonight?”
“Yes, tonight.” I shoved a makeup bag into the overnight bag. “I’m leaving before I start saying things I mean in a way I can’t take back.”
Charm’s expression went careful. “You don’t have to leave.”
I laughed as I dragged out a sweatshirt. “Oh, I absolutely do.”
Bliss wrung the sleeves of her hoodie between her hands. “We’re sorry. We didn’t see it that way.”
The laugh that came out of me was awful and too close to something broken. “Bullshit.”
Bliss flinched.
“No, don’t do that.” I shoved the sweatshirt into the bag without folding it because folding required a version of calm I did not possess. “Don’t make the wounded face when I’m finally saying the thing both of you know is true.”
Charm’s spine straightened. “We’re trying to understand.”
“You do understand.” I turned on her, one hand braced against the dresser while my clothes hung crooked around me and my whole body shook with everything I had swallowed for seven months. “You see it as messy, and it is messy. It’s ugly, humiliating, and inconvenient as hell for the whole shiny little found-family hockey ecosystem, but you see it.”
Bliss’s lips trembled. “That isn’t fair.”
“What part?” I threw another shirt onto the bed. “The part where you love Easton too, so watching him hurt makes me easier to blame because you know the why? The part where your life is tied to the team now and you hate that all of this makes everything awkward?”
I looked directly at Bliss.
“Your fiancé stands beside Easton, and somehow that means you have to find the middle even when the middle cuts through me.”
Her face folded.
“The boys are upset, your fiancé is upset, the whole friend group has a crack running through it, and I’m the bitch with the attitude who called the wounded golden boy dramatic and a beggar.”
Charm’s eyes flashed. “You are not some bitch with an attitude.”
“I know that,” I snapped. “That is why I’m so fucking furious that my best friends keep talking like you forgot.”
Bliss took a careful step closer. “We didn’t forget.”
