Page 315 of Face Off

His face folds around the words. “I love you too, mi hada.”

Ryan pulls the door closed.

I stand beneath the castle lights while the Corolla circles the drive. Through the rear window, I can barely make out the shape of his backward hat. The brake lights flare once at the gate before the car turns onto the road.

Red taillights carry him farther away while the world keeps moving around me. The music inside the castle continues. The Uber driver follows the road. Somewhere beyond these grounds, people laugh, sleep, argue, and live as though the distance opening between Ryan and me has not changed the shape of anything.

The words leave me before the taillights disappear completely.

“‘When I go away from you, the world beats dead like a slackened drum.’”

The final red light disappears beyond the trees, and my body folds beneath the weight of everything Ryan carried away with him.

Briggs catches me before my knees strike the stone. Easton reaches us a second later, gripping one of my arms while Rider closes both hands around my shoulders. I cry between them until breathing becomes impossible and the empty road blurs into darkness.

None of them tells me Ryan will come back. They don’t turn his love into a promise he never made or assure me I can repair something none of us fully understands. Briggs presses his cheek against the top of my head. Easton keeps one hand firm between my shoulders, and Rider anchors me from the other side while grief tears through every place Ryan’s confession opened.

Cade doesn’t touch me.

He stands several feet away beneath the portico with both hands buried inside his pockets of his dark suit. His posture is unnaturally still, his expression stripped of every trace of the man who spent tonight laughing beside his new wife. Anger sits inside his silence with nowhere to go because the person who caused it is crying in front of him and the man he wants to protect is already gone.

Eventually, there are no tears left. My body continues shaking, but the worst of the sobs weaken into painful breaths. I lift my head and realize none of them returned to the reception.

“You should’ve gone inside.” My voice is raw enough that every word scrapes. “I deserve to cry alone.”

Cade answers before the others can. “We were here for you, not Ry.” His hands remain in his pockets. “Briggs is handling him tomorrow.”

The distinction hurts, but I deserve that too. I wipe my face and look directly at Cade. “You don’t want to be here, so why did you come?”

Cade glances toward the road where the Uber’s taillights have already disappeared. When he looks at me again, the anger remains perfectly controlled.

“Because he needs my logic and their compassion to help you through this.” He tips his head toward Briggs, Easton, and Rider. “Ryan asked us to make sure you understood why he left without letting you use it to destroy yourself. We gave him our word, and there is no version of this where I refuse to honor it because I’m pissed at you.”

My throat closes again.

“But if it were up to me, Charm, I would tell you to let him go.”

Briggs’s hold tightens around me, but Cade doesn’t look away.

“I don’t mean that to be cruel, and I’m not trying to hurt you. I love you.” His jaw shifts before he continues. “But I’m sick of watching Ryan lose pieces of himself when he deserves more than what life keeps giving him. He is one of the best people I know, and tomorrow morning, he will be ready to pick Briggs off the ground when Briggs finally breaks.”

Briggs lowers his face. Pain moves through his expression, but he doesn’t argue.

“He will break,” Cade says. “Briggs knows it, and Ryan knows it. Those two understand each other on a level East, Rider, and I never will. They operate exactly the same way beneath two completely different personalities.”

“The same way how?” I ask.

“They take everything life does to them, Briggs makes sure everyone else survives it first and Ry stays locked in survival mode and everyone can fuck off. Ryan falls apart somewhere nobody can see and Briggs will break in a place he knows he is safe with who sees.” Cade shrugs, but nothing about the movement is careless. “Different wounds, different reasons. Same world.”

Briggs stares toward the road while Cade continues.

“Ryan will be there in whatever capacity Briggs needs. He’ll stay until Briggs can breathe without Lyric in the room with him. Then he’ll go home, drink too much mezcal, open Wuthering Heights because that battered fucking book is his security blanket, and wait for sleep to come. Eventually, it will. He’ll wake up to the same old shit tomorrow and do it again the day after because that’s what Ryan does.”

Cade finally pulls one hand from his pocket and gestures toward the road.

“He fights. He survives. He takes whatever hurts and builds his entire life around carrying it until Briggs forces him to put it down long enough to process what it did to him. Because only Briggs can reach him once he is in that state. That doesn’t mean he’s okay, Charm. It means Ryan learned how to suffer without inconveniencing anyone and he trusts Briggs because he is the exact same.”

Every word finds somewhere new to hurt.