Page 362 of Power Play

“She forbade me from coming to your apartment.”

I lowered the bottle. “She fucking what?”

“Exactly.”

Rider pointed his beer toward him. “He handled it with the emotional intelligence of a grenade.”

“She told me I wasn’t allowed to support my friend.”

“She said she didn’t want you turning it into sides.”

“There are sides.”

Rider looked at me and waved toward Easton. “See what I mean? Grenade.”

Easton gave him the middle finger, and Cade shook his head.

“Bliss and I got into it too,” Cade said.

“Over what?”

“She didn’t want to sleep without me.”

The words pulled unexpectedly at my chest. Cade and Bliss were attached in a way that should’ve been unhealthy, but it worked because neither of them had ever pretended to want anything different. Bliss didn’t hide how much she loved him, and Cade didn’t make her guess whether she mattered when someone else was watching.

“You should stay with her,” I said.

“I’m staying with you.”

“Cade.”

“I told her I wasn’t leaving you in hell because she couldn’t sleep alone.”

I stared at him. “You actually said that?”

“Yeah.”

“That was fucking brutal.”

“I know.”

“Did she cry?”

His jaw flexed. “Yeah.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“I know that too.”

I took a long drink to force down whatever tried to rise through my throat. “You didn’t need to do that. I had Briggs.”

“You have all of us.”

The sentence landed with more weight than Cade gave it. Rider closed the cooler and sat on top of it, saving me from having to find an answer.

“Then I had to break ass on everybody because none of them know how to conduct a productive disagreement.”

“You called the women dumb fucks,” Easton reminded him.