Page 377 of Power Play

Briggs nodded. “That doesn’t mean it gets to make every decision now.”

“No, but it made the right one.”

“Ending it?” Cade asked.

“Yes.”

Cade’s hand moved slowly across Bliss’s shoulder. “I agree.”

She looked up at him, but he didn’t take it back.

“Ryan doesn’t owe Charm a relationship because she has trauma,” Cade said. “He doesn’t owe her access to him while she figures out how to stop hurting him.”

“I never said he did,” Bliss replied.

“I know, but he needs to hear that from us too.”

Easton left the kitchen and lowered himself into the chair beside mine. “Aura’s going to hate me for saying this, but love isn’t enough.”

Bliss released a breath. “I know.”

“Charm’s reasons explain why she froze,” Easton continued. “They don’t make Ryan feel less abandoned. We can understand her and still recognize that he can’t survive being the person she practices courage on.”

The sentence cut deeply because it put words to everything I’d been trying to say.

“I am not her recovery plan,” I told Bliss. “I’m not the safe man she gets to destroy while learning how to stand up to the unsafe ones.”

“No, you aren’t.”

“I can’t love her through this.”

“I know.”

“And I won’t try.”

Bliss’s tears finally spilled. Cade drew her closer, but she kept looking at me.

“She thinks she lost you forever.”

“She did.”

Her lips trembled, and I forced myself not to soften the answer. False hope would be another version of last night’s kiss.

“She needs help,” Bliss said.

“Then help her.”

“She needs all of us.”

“She has all of you.”

“She needs you.”

“No, B. She doesn’t get to need me now.”

The words filled the room, and my voice roughened as I continued.

“I was the person she needed before Thanksgiving. I was the man telling her what her parents were doing. I held her while she shook after their calls and reminded her she wasn’t weak. I gave her every version of me I knew how to give, and it wasn’t enough to make me safe when standing beside me cost her something.”