Page 259 of Face Off

“That gives you hope,” Cade says.

“More than I want.”

Hope is the part I don’t know how to survive.

If Charm had arrived unchanged, leaving would be easy. I could fuck her, remember what we were, and return to Milwaukee knowing I had escaped the same woman who destroyed me. Instead, she has become enough of everything I begged her to be that I can see the life waiting if we get this right.

Last night also showed me the distance still between us.

“I don’t know whether I stay and fight beside her while we fix what treatment couldn’t reach or leave because she isn’t ready to meet me in the middle,” I say. “If I stay, I could spend the rest of my life waiting for fear to make her pain more important than mine again. If I leave, I might be walking away from a woman who finally has the strength to learn how to love me without disappearing inside herself.”

Rider studies the amber liquid in his glass. “Staying doesn’t have to mean saving her.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” Easton asks. “Last night, you stepped into the same role you said you refused to take again.”

“I know exactly what I did.”

“Then staying only works if she fights beside you,” he says. “You can’t carry her toward the center and call it meeting there.”

The truth lands hard enough to make my jaw tighten.

Briggs moves closer to the bar. “She also can’t repair something she doesn’t know is broken.”

“I told her.”

“You told her before the fight. She may believe coming to your room and staying with you fixed the part where she sent you away.”

“That doesn’t make it true.”

“No, but it means the next choice belongs to both of you. You tell her what last night cost, and then you see whether she listens or turns it back toward herself.”

I stare at him. “You make that sound easy.”

“It sounds fucking terrible. I’m describing the process, not endorsing the experience.”

Rider lifts his glass. “A licensed counselor would probably use better terminology.”

Briggs nods. “We’re extremely invested for sure, but I am the only qualified one to give the opinion.”

“You’re also invasive.”

“And correct.”

Cade slides my drink toward me. “Counseling wouldn’t mean you decided to stay. It would give both of you somewhere to tell the truth without sex, fear, Sunday, or the study deciding which one gets heard.”

“She wants the gory details of what happened after I left.”

“Do you want to give them to her?”

“No.”

“Then don’t until you’re ready.”

“What if I’m never ready?”

Easton’s gaze moves toward Charm. “Then she decides whether she can live without knowing. That choice belongs to her. I don’t know why she needs it. It’s been hell watching you suffer. She won’t find redemption in the truth.”