Page 271 of Face Off

“I needed air.”

“Did you fuck him?”

Her jaw tightens and Briggs stumbles backward as though the silence physically moves him. Temple takes an instinctive step forward, but she stops herself before reaching him.

Bliss catches Briggs’s arm. “I’ve got you.”

He pulls free and points at Lyric with a hand that shakes violently. “You looked me in the face the next morning and told me I was paranoid.”

“You were interrogating me before I had coffee.”

“Because I knew!”

“You always think you know something.”

“I was right!”

“And what would you like me to say?” Lyric throws both hands into the air. “You smother me. You text constantly. You show up without asking, need reassurance every five minutes, and turn every friendship I have with a man into evidence that I’m betraying you.”

“You were betraying me!”

“Because being with you is exhausting!”

The words hit hard enough that Briggs becomes completely still.

Lyric keeps going because she sees the pain in his face and mistakes it for a way back into control.

“You make everything enormous. Every disagreement becomes a crisis. Every time I want space, you follow me around asking whether I’m angry. You need everyone to laugh at every joke and constantly tell you that you matter.”

Briggs’s mouth opens, but nothing comes out.

And I have heard e-fucking-nough and I step between them. “Stop talking.”

Lyric glares at me. “Move.”

“No.”

“This is between us.”

“Not anymore.”

Briggs grabs my shoulder. “Ryan.”

I knock his hand away and turn toward him. “Don’t defend her.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re about to tell me she doesn’t mean it. Then you’ll make another joke, take responsibility for being too much, and apologize until she agrees to forgive you for catching her with other men.”

His face twists.

I hate the pain I’m causing him, but I know what it looks like when someone stands in front of the truth and reaches for any explanation that makes it survivable.

I also know what it costs when nobody stops them.

“She cheated on you,” I say. “Repeatedly. Then she made your love the reason she did it.”

“Fuck you.”