Page 35 of Break Away
My stomach tightens before I can stop it.
Bliss:Too soft? Too wedding cupcake? Be honest but not felony honest.
Charm replies immediately, which means she has absolutely been awake.
Charm:It is beautiful, but Aura will call it haunted lingerie.
I type my first reaction.
Me:It looks like a ghost got invited to prom.
Then I delete it because Bliss is emotional and I’m trying to be supportive without lying under oath.
Instead, I send something with more of a happy-for-you vibe.
Me:Pretty. Maybe too pale for me unless you want me looking like the dress and I are fighting for custody of my undertones.
Bliss sends back three laughing emojis.
Bliss:Okay, rude but useful.
I drop the phone against my chest and stare at the ceiling.
The room is dark except for the glow of my screen and the thin blue wash from the streetlight sneaking through my curtains. My own reflection stares back from the black laptop screen, my hair wrapped for the night, face bare, eyes sharper than I feel.
My phone lights again. This time, it’s another dress, champagne silk with a slit high enough to start family drama.
The color hits first, although it isn’t champagne exactly.
Gold.
Warm, wet-looking gold under firelight.
Bare skin. Sand. Music. Lake air. Easton in swim trunks with his hair damp and his eyes on me like he had already decided the night was going to end badly for both of us.
My throat goes dry.
I close my eyes, but memory is a rude bitch and has never once asked permission before entering the room.
Eighteen months ago, the first time I let Easton put his hands on me, I was wearing a bikini that should have come with a warning label, and he was standing in the sand like a man who had no idea he was about to become a problem.
The lake party was not supposed to matter, and that is important for the record. It was supposed to be another reckless summer night before campus swallowed us whole again, one of those late-August parties where everyone pretended the semester hadn’t started because technically it was still warm enough to make bad decisions near water.
Somebody from the team knew somebody whose family had a lake house twenty minutes outside Kimball Falls. Somehow, that turned into half the Fury, three houses’ worth of friends, two bonfires, a speaker system that deserved criminal charges, and enough beer to make the shoreline smell like hops, sunscreen, and future regret.
Bliss dragged me there because Bliss believed fresh air solved things. Charm came because Bliss asked, and Charm could make a gas-station bathroom look like a society event if she stood in it with the right posture. I came because my red bikini arrived in the mail that morning, and I am not a womanwho wastes good fabric or the opportunity to remind men they are not in charge just because they can see skin.
The bikini was ridiculous—deep red, high-cut, tiny gold rings at the hips, and a top that did exactly enough to keep things legal while making eye contact feel like a test most men failed immediately. I wore oversized sunglasses, gold hoops, and my braids loose down my back because if I was going to walk into a lake party full of athletes, I preferred to look like temptation with excellent boundaries.
Getting dressed like this had become a ritual, proof that I had fought my way back to feeling sexy without surrendering control. I kept my rule book close whenever a man caught my eye because I would never become that powerless version of myself again.
Bliss took one look at me when I stepped out of the bathroom and pressed both hands to her heart.
“Oh, she came to ruin lives.”
“I came to tan.”
Charm lifted her drink from the kitchen island without looking up from her phone. “You came to emotionally destabilize men with a family history of poor impulse control.”
