Page 212 of Break Away
“Aura.”
“Don’t say it like that.”
I forced my mouth shut.
She looked at the window, at the rain sliding black and silver against the glass. “The first time, I thought if I watched it, I’d know. I thought my body would recognize what my brain couldn’t. I thought maybe there would be a moment where Icould say, see, there, that proves it. That proves I didn’t want this.”
I couldn’t move.
“I watched my own face under those lights,” she said, her voice trembling now but still steady enough to cut. “I watched myself look wrong. Heavy. Gone. I watched Darian say my name over and over like he was making a record for everyone who would need proof later. And the worst part was the others.”
My jaw locked so hard it hurt.
She wrapped her arms tighter around herself. “No faces. That was the point. Shadows. Angles. Voices low enough to make doubt useful. Hands that came in and out of the frame. Laughing behind the camera. Someone saying something I couldn’t make out. Someone else answering. Enough to know Darian wasn’t acting alone. Not enough to prove who stood where or did what.”
“Maddox,” I said.
Her eyes flicked to mine. “Maddox. Iver. Darian. Jerod. They were his boys. They were at the party. They all took turns with me, took pieces of me. Maddox used to lean against my locker and ask if my memory had come back yet.”
Something moved through me so violent I had to get out of bed.
Aura reached for my wrist before I made it one step off the mattress. “Easton.”
I stopped because her hand was on me and shaking.
“I’m right here,” she said.
I looked down at her fingers wrapped around my wrist. “I want to kill them.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.” My voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. “I want to find them. I want names, addresses, jobs, wives, mothers, everyone who thinks they’re men now. Iwant to put them in a room and make them understand what faceless feels like.”
Her face shifted, pain and fear and something softer all moving at once. “That is exactly why I didn’t want to tell you when you were bleeding and furious.”
“I’m still furious.”
“I noticed.”
“I’m always going to be furious about this.”
She let go of my wrist slowly. “I can live with that if you don’t make me live inside it.”
That landed.
I sat back down, farther from her than I wanted, closer than I probably should have been. “I won’t.”
“You say that now.”
“I mean it now.”
Her eyes searched mine. “Easton.”
“I mean it,” I said, holding her stare. “I won’t turn your worst night into my revenge hobby. I want to. Holy fuck, I want to. But I won’t make you watch me become another man making choices with your trauma in his mouth.”
Her lips parted, and for a second she looked young. Too young. The age she had been when it happened, maybe. The age none of those bastards had let her remain.
“That was…” She swallowed. “That was a good sentence.”
