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Charm follows me. “Please don’t leave me like this.”

I look at the woman I love more than anything I have ever allowed myself to keep. Tears cover her face. Her hands shake. Every part of me hurts badly enough that staying would be easier.

That is why I open the door.

“I love you without conditions, boundaries, or limits,” I tell her. “Even at your worst, I loved every part of you. You love me inside the places you can control. Until you understand the difference, anything less isn’t worth my fucking time.”

I step into the corridor.

“Ryan, please!”

The sound of her voice follows me when I slam the door.

22

Charm

All hell breaks loose at breakfast before I finish pouring coffee.

Ryan is halfway out of his chair when I enter the private dining room. Easton has one arm locked across his chest while Rider grips the back of his shirt, and Cade stands between them and Briggs with both hands raised.

Briggs sits at the table beneath a chandelier far too elegant for whatever happened to his face.

His left eye is swollen nearly shut. A dark bruise spreads from his eyebrow to the top of his cheek, and a thin cut follows the curve above it beneath three narrow strips of medical tape. His hands remain wrapped around a coffee mug while he stares into it like the answer to every terrible decision he made last night might be floating between the cream and sugar.

Aura stands beside him with an open first-aid kit. Temple occupies the farthest chair from everyone, pale and furious beneath yesterday’s makeup.

“What happened?” I abandon my coffee and hurry toward the table. “Briggs, what the fuck happened to your face?”

“Lyric threw a wine bottle at him,” Ryan says.

His voice carries enough violence to stop me. He hasn’t looked at me since I entered the room but his voice did.

I stare at Briggs. “She did what?”

“It sounds worse when he says it.”

“It was a bottle,” Rider says. “She threw it at your head. There isn’t a flattering version.”

Ryan jerks against the hands restraining him. “Let me go.”

“So, you can do what?” Cade demands.

“Have a conversation.”

Aura snorts. “Your conversational face looks homicidal.”

“She is already gone,” Briggs says.

Ryan stops fighting long enough to look at him. “Where?”

“I sent her home.”

“You sent her?”

“Security helped.”

“Then why are we still holding him?” Easton asks.