Page 363 of Face Off

His comments were veiled because men like Lance rarely announce their ugliness when they can dress it in concern, standards, and tradition. He spoke about Hispanic families, neighborhoods, education, names, and worth. He made cruelty sound like observation. I heard him. I accepted the veil because pulling it away would have forced me to examine the comfort and privilege his money gave me.

I was controlled, but I was also spoiled.

I was conditioned to obey, but I benefited from the power I was too afraid to question.

Both things are true, and I won’t use one to erase the other.

If I had opened my eyes, I would never have taken you to Thanksgiving. I wouldn’t have asked you to walk willingly into a house where Lance had already decided your blood made you beneath me. I should have recognized every coded insult before he sharpened them against you.

I knew enough to be afraid of choosing you in front of him. I refused to examine why.

That was one of my greatest failures.

I grip the page hard enough to wrinkle it.

Briggs looks toward my hand but doesn’t move.

Charm has spent her entire life protecting the image of the people who taught her to hate herself. Naming Lance doesn’t undo Thanksgiving or the study. It doesn’t remove my mother’s name from his mouth.

It removes the lie that she never saw enough to know better.

The admission hurts more than an excuse would have.

I force my fingers to loosen and continue.

I also need to tell you the truth about Temple because apologizing for what I said without explaining where it came from would be another way of hiding from you.

You didn’t betray me.

We weren’t together, you didn’t know Temple would become part of my life, and neither of you owed me loyalty. You have nothing to be ashamed of, especially when Temple is one of the most extraordinary women I know. I love her, and I refuse to turn something neither of you did wrong into something ugly simply because knowing about it hurts me.

It does hurt, Ryan. It fucking destroys me if I let myself remain inside it too long.

Temple has seen your tattoos without clothing between her eyes and your skin. She knows what your mouth tastes like, the pressure of your hand against the small of her back, and the sound you make when you come. Those were the details my mind found that night while you were standing in front of me already flayed open.

I stop.

Briggs glances at me. “Still good?”

“That depends on your definition.”

“Has she murdered anyone?”

“Not yet.”

“Then we’re operating inside a flexible range.”

Despite everything pressing against my chest, a laugh escapes me.

Briggs settles against the wall again. “There he is.”

I look down at the page.

The jealousy threaded through Charm’s words is so unmistakably hers that I can see her writing them with her jaw locked and color high across her cheeks. I should resent the implication of ownership after everything between us.

Instead, heat and affection move through the grief until neither feels survivable.

I return to her letter.