Page 175 of Break Away
Just her.
Just me.
Just everything we had done to survive each other.
Ryan rested both hands across the top of his stick. “What happened after she took you home?”
I almost told him to mind his business.
The words were right there. Mean. Easy. Familiar.
But Cade was watching me like he already knew I was about to choose the same old exit, and Briggs looked less like he wanted gossip and more like he was ready to be useful if I gave him even one honest thing to hold. Rider had gone still near the boards, giving me enough space to pretend he wasn’t listening.
I hated all of them a little for being decent.
“We fought.”
Briggs snorted. “Shocking development.”
I looked at him, and he lifted both padded hands. “Respectfully.”
“We fought,” I repeated, my voice rougher. “And then we fucked on my coffee table like two people trying to make pain louder than the truth.”
Ryan looked away first, his jaw tight. Cade’s expression didn’t change, but his grip on his stick did. Briggs went still in full goalie gear, which should have looked ridiculous but didn’t.
“Was she okay?” he asked.
I looked at him.
He didn’t flinch. “I’m not asking for details. I’m asking because after what happened at the bar, after what Maddox said, that matters.”
The question hit harder than I expected. Maybe because he asked without accusation. Maybe because I had been asking myself the same thing since the second she walked out my door.
“She wanted it,” I said, and my voice sounded scraped raw. “We both did. That’s part of the problem. It wasn’t clean. It wasn’t sweet. It wasn’t me comforting her. It was anger and hurt and everything we never said turning into hands and teeth because apparently we’re both too damaged to use words before we burn the room down.”
Ryan nodded once, slowly. “And after?”
I dragged a hand through my damp hair, then hissed when my ribs caught. “After, she asked me to forgive her.”
The rink felt colder.
Cade skated closer until he stood beside Ryan, both of them in front of me now. Briggs drifted in from the crease like an armored emotional-support menace while Rider coasted closer from the boards.
I laughed once, and it didn’t sound human.
“That’s the part I can’t stop hearing. She asked me to forgive her, and I told her I couldn’t.”
Briggs’s face changed. “Couldn’t, or wouldn’t?”
I looked at him.
He shrugged, but there was nothing lazy in it. “Different things, bro.”
“She broke me,” I said, and the words came out before I could make them less pathetic. “She made me feel like a joke for loving her. Like everything that felt real to me was something she was embarrassed by once the sun came up. I spent a year thinking I was reading her wrong or wanting too much or turning sex into something bigger because I couldn’t handle being casual.”
Ryan’s gaze sharpened, but I kept going because stopping now felt like bleeding halfway and calling it done.
“Then she tells me everything. She was raped by four dudes who drugged her and videoed the whole thing. She tells me I was safe, and it’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard because I knew it. I knew she trusted me in bed. I knew she let me have parts of her no one else got near. I knew that meant something, and she still made me feel insane for wanting it to matter outside the dark.”
