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I wasn’t thinking about your right to have lived after me or the pain you were trying to survive. I was thinking about another woman touching the man I had spent years believing belonged to me. I couldn’t bear what I felt, so I attacked you for making me feel it.

I understand now that pain isn’t proof of betrayal.

You had every right to seek comfort, sex, distraction, or anything else that helped you survive the wreckage I left behind. Temple had every right to be with a single man she wanted, and the fact that she later became my friend doesn’t rewrite a night either of you had before she knew me.

What hurt was knowing someone else had touched something I cherished.

It would have hurt no matter who the woman was because some possessive, irrational part of me believes every intimate piece of you should have always been mine. Your mouth, your hands, your body, and every sound you make should exist inside memories that only we share.

I also know why they don’t.

I surrendered any right to expect loyalty from you when I let you walk away. You didn’t owe me celibacy while I learned how to become someone capable of loving you without hiding.

My feelings were real, and I am allowed to admit they gutted me. What I wasn’t allowed to do was turn them into an accusation against you.

I made you defend yourself for surviving me after you had already spent the night defending yourself against Lance. I took something that hurt me and used it to hurt you because anger felt safer than admitting I was jealous, devastated, and still so completely in love with you that the thought of another woman knowing any part of you made me sick.

I am sorry I attacked you for feelings you didn’t create by betraying me.

You deserved compassion that night. I made you carry my jealousy instead.

I can’t promise knowing about Temple will ever stop hurting, but I can stop pretending my agony gives me the right to punish either of you for it.

I close my eyes.

She finally understands.

Charm isn’t apologizing for caring. She isn’t pretending another woman knowing my body no longer tears at something territorial inside her. She has separated pain from guilt and stopped requiring someone else to become wrong before she allows herself to feel wounded.

That difference is everything we never had.

Briggs rests his head against the wall. “You’ve been quiet too long.”

“She apologized for Temple.”

His eyebrows rise. “Honestly?”

“Painfully.”

“That sounds like her preferred method.”

“She said she wants to pull women’s tongues through their assholes.”

“There she is.”

The laugh comes easier this time.

I turn the page.

A few additional things should be disclosed before you decide whether hearing my voice remains a good idea.

It turns out all that panic about you wanting other women wasn’t entirely my illness. Some of it was jealousy, and an alarming amount appears to be my personality.

I spent three years wanting you before you touched me.

I attended parties where women hung from your arms. I watched you sit a girl on your lap beside a fire, kiss her like the rest of us weren’t there, and leave with her before the night ended. I saw women waiting in hallways after games and watched the revolving door surrounding you because that was what men in college sports did.

Once we were together, my mind kept forcing those images over the man in front of me, even when you weren’t behaving that way. Every woman became evidence that the old Ryan would return, and I punished you for memories you couldn’t change.