Page 15 of Cross Checked
I nodded because we had done this before.
We had done versions of this plan so many times it had become almost boring, which was probably the saddest part. Stay together at parties. Text when I got to work and when I was leaving. Park under lights. Don’t leave drinks unattended. Don’t let Luke corner me in hallways, driveways, kitchens, garages, side yards, or anywhere with a closed door because he had a tendency to show up in places I was. If I went to my dad’s Sunday barbecue, I stayed attached to Ryker because Luke respected my oldest brother’s temper more than he respected my no.
That should have been enough for them to understand.
It wasn’t.
Because I had made sure it wasn’t.
I had told Aura and Charm just enough to explain the rules, but not enough to reveal the war. They knew Luke harassed me. They knew he acted possessive. They knew he made me uncomfortable. They knew he had never fully accepted that whatever had happened between us when I was younger was over.
They did not know how bad it was.
They did not know about the continued threats, or the bruises I learned how to hide, or the way my body went coldwhen my phone lit up with his name. They did not know the full truth of what he had taken and kept taking, piece by piece, year by year, until the story became so tangled with shame and time and family loyalty that I couldn’t find the beginning anymore.
At one point, I could have told.
Maybe.
When I was younger. When the lines were still blurry enough that an adult might have grabbed my hand and pulled me out before I understood what I needed saving from. Before I learned how easily people rewrote girls into willing participants when the boy was charming enough and trusted enough and already sitting at the table. Before Luke became part of the Bennett family orbit in a way that made accusing him feel like throwing a match into the center of everyone I loved.
Now it felt too late.
Too much had happened. Too much time had passed. Too many Sundays. Too many smiles. Too many moments where I had stood in the kitchen while my dad clapped Luke on the shoulder, while my brothers laughed with him, while everyone treated him like one of ours and I stood there with my heartbeat in my throat, hiding bruises and trauma while wondering how a person could be a monster to one girl and a good guy to everyone else.
Nobody would understand why I waited. Some days, I didn’t understand it either.
So, I smiled. I deflected. I let Aura make plans and Charm threaten murder in a voice bright enough to pass for joking. I let them believe they knew the danger because the truth was too ugly to bring into rooms where we were still trying to curl hair and pick boots and pretend we were twenty-one-year-old girls doing normal twenty-one-year-old girl things.
Charm touched my shoulder, softer now. “Hey.”
I looked at her through the mirror.
Her expression had gentled, but her eyes had not. Charm got that from her mother, I thought. That expensive softness with steel underneath. “We’ll be with you tonight. And Sunday, if you want us to come before or after, we will.”
“We’re celebrating Mom’s birthday this weekend. Graveyard, home videos, Dad pretending he isn’t crying while he absolutely cries into ribs. Save yourselves from the depression.”
“Aura is basically family, and I’ve been attempting to eat your dad’s ribs since middle school. Legally, I think that makes us dependents.”
Aura nodded. “I’ll draft the paperwork.”
I laughed, but it came out thinner than I wanted.
Aura noticed. Of course she noticed. “We loved Cindy, Bliss. We love celebrating her.”
She thought I was thinking of my mom and missing her.
And I was. I was always missing her. Missing Mom was the background music of my life, playing so constantly I sometimes forgot other people couldn’t hear it.
But the thing tightening my chest now wasn’t only grief.
It was the thought of Luke seeing Aura and Charm at the barbecue and knowing exactly why they were there. The thought of him accusing me of bringing buffers. The thought of him deciding they needed to learn something because of me.
No fucking way.
Aura came closer and tipped my chin up with two fingers like she had been bossing me around since kindergarten, because she had. “Tonight, we stay together. We go in together, we leave together. If one of us pees, all of us pee.”
Charm lifted a hand. “The sacred law of womanhood.”
