Page 283 of Face Off

“I’m so sorry,” she sobs.

“You wanted the truth, so shut up and fucking listen to it!”

Charm presses one hand over her mouth while I pace away from her. I make it three steps before the memories turn me around and send me straight back.

“I moved to a city where I knew almost no one and joined a team I had never played with while my hand still wouldn’t close properly. I was barely settled in an apartment—nicer than anything I ever slept in and spent every night wasted just to sleep—when management called me into a conference room filled with executives, attorneys, and medical staff. They put photographs of you on a table and told me I had been accused of hurting you, starving you, neglecting you, and leaving you sick enough to need residential treatment. Ten months spent defending myself because I refused to rat you out or show our personal texts, texts about our sex life, fucking sexts, naked pics and a shit fuck ton of me talking you off the fucking ledge daily!”

Her other hand closes around her stomach.

“Go ahead and hold your fucking stomach, Charm, because I had to sit there while strangers passed pictures of your body around and discussed whether I was the reason you nearly died. I had to look at you reduced to skin stretched over bone while your father told Milwaukee I caused it.”

“I didn’t know,” she cries. “Ryan, I swear I didn’t—”

“I know you didn’t know! I made damn sure you never knew anything that happened to me after I left and you think you have the right to know what my fight was like now because you changed, got help and rebuilt?”

The accusation strikes hard enough to make her recoil.

“I was already living inside a place so fucking dark that the guys couldn’t reach me, not even Cade. Who flew in every free night he had to sit outside the door to my place I refused to even open for him! I hated every person who tried because feeling nothing was the only way I knew how to survive another day without you.”

My chest heaves as I point toward the door, though the distance between us disappeared several breaths ago.

“Do you know why Briggs came to Flint that Thanksgiving? Do you know why he followed me to Milwaukee when Pittsburgh offered him more money? He took a fraction of what he could’ve made because he understands what my life has been like because his has similarities and he knows what losing everything feels like. He knew I was disappearing, and he told the boys he was coming to the Inferno to bring me back to life!”

Charm’s crying becomes louder, but I refuse to lower my voice around it.

“He showed up that Thanksgiving and I did everything I could to make him leave. I fought him, insulted him, hit him, and gave him every reason to decide I wasn’t worth saving. He followed me anyway. Then I finally collapsed in the hallway of The Furnace and sobbed so fucking hard I couldn’t stand while he held me together.”

I step close enough that Charm has to tip her face back to keep looking at me.

“And you have the fucking audacity to turn Temple into another betrayal?”

Her expression crumples.

“You heard that I slept with one woman more than a year after I left you, and every truth I gave you disappeared. My right to have a life disappeared. Every boundary I set this weekend disappeared. You decided I used you because making me guilty felt better than accepting I survived without belonging to you.”

“I was hurt,” she manages through the sob tearing apart her voice.

“So was I!” My roar crashes through the room. “I was hurt every fucking day for fifteen months, and nobody allowed me to turn that pain into permission to punish you!”

She folds farther around the arm pressed against her stomach.

“You want the rest?” I ask. “I fucked a different chick almost every night for six months because no amount of sex could get you out from under my skin. I tried different women, different beds, different bars or bunnies, and every morning I woke up carrying the same empty place you left behind.”

Charm shakes her head as though the movement can stop the words from reaching her.

“No, you fucking wanted this.” I point between us. “You pushed, begged, demanded, and accused me of hiding things because I am selfish right? Now you get to stand here and hear every piece.”

“Please stop.”

“I asked you to stop last night!”

Her sob catches hard enough to steal her breath.

“I told you I couldn’t carry your apology. I told you I needed one night where loving you didn’t tear me open again, and you kept pushing until your pain swallowed the fucking room. Then I put mine down and pulled you out because that is what I have always done for you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Nothing hurt me the way losing you did, and now you want me to open every wound so you can feel terrible about it. You think knowing what happened makes us equal? You think enough guilt will balance what you did and give you another chance to ask me to forgive you?”