Page 327 of Power Play

“Keep going.”

Briggs studied my face. “You sure?”

“No.” I lifted my gaze to his. “Tell me anyway.”

“Bliss asked what she had done. Charm kept saying she didn’t mean it and that she was awful.”

My fingers tightened around the mug.

Briggs stayed in the doorway, giving me the information without decorating it. “Then Cade told her he talked to you.”

“What did she ask?”

“If you were okay.”

A dry laugh left me. “Little late for that.”

“Cade told her no.”

“Good.”

“He didn’t soften it.”

“Good.”

Briggs looked down into his coffee.

“What else?”

“I asked what she thought was going to happen.”

My eyes lifted sharply. “You went after her?”

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t need to do that.”

“Probably not.”

“Then why did you?”

“Because I was pissed.”

“At her?”

Briggs nodded.

The answer should have satisfied me, but an old instinct rose anyway, demanding that I tell him Charm was scared. Her parents knew how to force her back inside herself, and nobody got to make her cry unless it was me, which was a fucked-up distinction I no longer had the right to claim.

I pressed the feeling down because Charm wasn’t mine to defend anymore.

“She tried to explain,” Briggs continued. “Easton wanted to know how serious you were. That’s when everything else came out.”

My stomach tightened. “What everything?”

“Bliss and Aura didn’t know.”

“Know what?”