Page 299 of Face Off

“He is your friend.”

“So is Aura.”

The correction lands harder than it should.

“I didn’t take a side,” Ryan continues. “I loved both of them, so I told both of them when they were wrong. You stopped talking to Aura for weeks because you thought loyalty required choosing the person attached to me when she called you on that very thing.”

“I was angry with her.”

“You were terrified that supporting Aura would look disloyal to me.”

I open my mouth and find nothing waiting behind it.

“You chose the side you believed would keep my approval instead of looking at the truth,” he says. “You never asked me what I needed. You decided for me.”

“I thought I was protecting you.”

“That is what everyone said when they kept your father’s attack from you.”

The comparison cuts deeply enough that I step backward.

Ryan allows me the distance.

“You were furious because everyone called protection when you called it control,” he says. “You told Bliss and Aura that their fear didn’t give them the right to decide what you could survive. Then you turned around and did the same thing to me the second Lyric said something you couldn’t control.”

“I didn’t think I was protecting you last night.”

“No. You were protecting yourself. You needed me to be guilty because anger felt safer than accepting I had a life after you.”

Tears slip over my lashes.

Ryan doesn’t comfort me. “You have no loyalty where love is concerned,” he says. “That is what’s broken.”

The accusation tears through me. “I have always been loyal to the people I love.”

“Only when loyalty doesn’t require you to risk anything.”

“That isn’t true.”

“You kept Luke’s secrets because risking Bliss’s trust terrified you. You abandoned Aura because you believed disagreeing with me might cost you my approval. You hid me because standing beside me threatened your family, friends, reputation, and the version of yourself everyone accepted.”

“I stood beside you this weekend.”

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t that matter?”

“It matters. It also happened inside a castle where almost everyone surrounding you wanted us together—minus one.”

“Lance didn’t.”

“You finally stopped giving him control after his opinion had already cost you everything. There was bravery in it but you risked nothing to find your autonomy.”

My tears fall faster. “Nothing I do will ever be enough for you.”

Ryan’s expression hardens. “That right there.”

“What?”