Page 375 of Power Play

“No. That’s what you become when you’re wounded enough to need someone else bleeding beside you.”

“Sounds like me.”

“You hated it afterward.”

I thought about waking with Charm’s mouth inside my memory. “Yeah, but only because it fucked me up too.”

Bliss nodded like that mattered.

“It doesn’t mean I’m taking it back,” I said.

“I’m not asking you to.”

“I meant what I told her.”

“All of it?”

“Fuck no.”

Her eyes searched mine, and I hated that answering required showing her how much of me Charm still owned.

“I don’t believe she used me just for sex, and I don’t believe I was only a rebellion against her parents. Parts of what happened between us aren’t your business, but there were real things inside it.” My voice hardened around the next truth. “I said those things because I wanted to drag the part of our relationship she was most ashamed of into the open.”

“She wasn’t ashamed of you.”

“She hid me from everyone.”

“She was ashamed of herself.”

I laughed once. “Convenient distinction.”

“It isn’t convenient. It’s destroying her.”

“Good.”

“Ryan.”

The warning came from Cade. I looked toward him. He didn’t appear angry, but the line had been drawn clearly enough for me to recognize when I crossed it.

I lifted one shoulder. “You told me to hear her out.”

“You can hear her without becoming an asshole.”

“I’m still working on that.”

Bliss’s eyes glistened, but she didn’t cry. “Charm told us why she hid you.”

“I don’t want to know.”

“I think you already do.”

“Then save us both some time.”

“She said if she told us, your relationship became real outside your apartment. It became something her father could reach.”

“He reached it anyway.”

“Yes.”