Page 81 of Break Away
The words tore out of him, and no one moved.
Easton looked like he hated that he had said them. His chest rose hard, his eyes bright with rage and humiliation as the whole room stared while the truth he had tried to freeze for seven months burned through what remained of his control.
“I am destroyed,” he said again, quieter and meaner because softness embarrassed him now. “And you keep standing there like I did that to myself.”
My eyes burned, but I smiled through it because if I let the hurt show, everyone in the kitchen would know exactly how close he had gotten to something I could not afford to hand him. “Maybe you did.”
His face went blank.
Bliss whispered my name like she could stop the damage after it had already left my mouth.
I didn’t stop.
I couldn’t.
He had dragged me to the edge, and if I was going over it, I was taking the entire room with me.
“You want to know whose mistakes you paid for?” I asked.
Easton didn’t blink.
I let the silence stretch until it shook. “Yours. Because you were stupid enough to think being good to me meant I owed you anything.”
The words landed exactly where I aimed them.
I watched him absorb the hit. The last open thing in his face folded shut as the pain disappeared and something colder took its place.
Cade muttered, “Fuck, Aura.”
Bliss made a broken sound beside Charm, who looked straight shook by my coldness.
Easton nodded once, slow and empty. “Right.”
I wanted to take it back the second I saw it land. I wanted to reach across the space between us and shove the words back into my mouth before they found another weapon, before they carved that look into his face and made it permanent.
I wanted him to yell so I could yell back because yelling would have been easier than watching him go quiet.
He didn’t.
Easton looked at me with a coldness I had earned, every open part of him disappearing behind it, and said, “Message received, Clarke.”
The name hit harder than it should have.
Clarke was the wall he built when Aura started costing too much. Hearing it now felt like watching him lock the last door from the other side.
Not Aura.
Not after that.
Maybe never again.
The thought nearly bent me in half, so I turned away before anyone could see it.
Bliss moved immediately. “Ay—”
“Do not call me that right now.”
She stopped like I had shoved her.
