Page 165 of Face Off

“No.”

Briggs’s brows lifted.

“No?” he repeated.

“No.”

“Not even if she stands beside you and tells Lance to go fuck himself?”

“That would be entertaining.”

“Ryan.”

I turned toward him. “What do you want me to say? That one successful interaction erases six months of lies? That she keeps her hand in mine tonight and suddenly the study doesn’t exist? Or what happened after when all her shit came out and I was left standing in the mess? I left and this shit followed me and I suffered every day for it. Nothing can erase what I’ve been through and you fuckers know it.”

“No one said erase it.”

“Then what are you saying?”

Easton straightened. “Whether you’d reconsider.”

“No.”

The certainty in my voice shut them up.

I set the empty glass against the bar. “Charm spent months hiding me. She lied about her illness, her family, her friends. She lied when she convinced me I wasn’t a secret, all because the truth scared her. She let me fight for a relationship she was only one foot in the entire time while convincing me I was everything. I told her exactly what I needed. I told her exactly what would happen if she left me standing alone again, if she lied again and then she did it anyway.”

Briggs looked down.

“She was sick,” Rider said quietly.

“I know.”

Nobody in that room needed the correction because I had never confused the two, but apparently the world wanted to keep offering it anyway.

“I know how sick she was now. I know more than I knew then. It explains a lot of shit. It does not change what happened. Charm did not betray me because getting healthy required it. She didn’t have to make me a secret to survive. She didn’t have to promise she would stand beside me and then let me take every hit alone.”

Easton rubbed a hand along his jaw.

“I love her,” I said, because none of them needed me to lie about that either. “That isn’t the issue.”

Briggs’s gaze came up.

“I already know we would have been fucking incredible without everything that buried us. This weekend is settling that question, not reopening the relationship. If she stands beside me tonight, I get to leave knowing the woman I loved eventually became capable of doing the thing I begged her to do. Maybe that finally puts the fucking what-if to bed.”

Rider’s expression stayed carefully neutral. “And if it doesn’t go to sleep?”

“Then that becomes my problem in Milwaukee.”

Easton laughed once without humor. “Sounds healthy.”

“I’m not taking wellness advice from a man who threatened three strangers because they looked at Aura in a swimsuit.”

“They stared.”

“They had eyes.”

“They abused them.”