Page 285 of Power Play

That gutted her the way I wanted it to. Maybe that made me cruel. Maybe I didn’t care.

“Don’t say that.”

“Why?” I asked. “Because it sounds ugly? It is ugly. You made it ugly when you let me stand there and find out my place in your life depends on who’s watching.”

“That’s not true.”

“Then tell me what I am.”

She stared at me, her lips parted, tears freezing on her cheeks.

I waited. One second passed, then two.

The house door opened behind her, spilling warm light across the snow.

“Charm,” Lance called, calm and cold. “Inside.”

Her whole body locked when the command hit her spine. I saw the little girl in the grown woman as the choice split her open.

And still, even after all of it, some stupid part of me waited.

Her eyes moved from me to the house, then back.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

I nodded once because anything more would’ve broken me open in front of her, and fuck that.

“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”

I pulled the truck door out of her hand and got in.

She stumbled back, one hand pressed over her mouth, sobbing now, but I didn’t look long enough to let it ruin me. I started the engine, and the sound cut through the driveway while Lance stood in the doorway behind her like a man who’d won something he hadn’t earned.

My hands closed around the steering wheel.

Charm stepped toward the truck. “Ryan.”

I looked at her through the open window, and every soft thing I had left went still.

“Cállate la boca, mi hada. Ya terminamos.”

Her face shattered. “I don’t know what that means,” she cried.

I put the truck in reverse. “It means goodbye.”

The gates opened for me like the house was happy to spit me out.

I backed down the driveway, turned hard, and drove through them without looking at Lance Harlen, without looking at the warm windows, without looking at the girl standing beneath the security lights with my name breaking in her mouth.

I made it to the curve in the road before I checked the mirror, and for half a second, I saw her standing there beneath the security lights, small and pale and frozen between the house that owned her and the man she hadn’t chosen fast enough.

Then the road bent, the Harlens’ perfect driveway disappeared behind the trees, and I gripped the wheel harder as the dark swallowed her out of sight.

My life had always been simple. Cut and dry. If staying meant begging to be chosen, I left, and if losing her hurt, I’d survive that too.

20

Charm