Page 244 of Face Off

Charm covers my hand where it rests against her stomach, and I turn my palm beneath hers until our fingers weave together. Her breathing gradually settles against my chest while mine remains trapped beneath everything tonight carved open.

I don’t regret what happened in front of the mirror. I watched Charm remain inside a body she once tried to destroy. I felt her fight the instinct to hide, and for one fragile moment, she looked at herself without searching for something to hate. Whatever happens between us after tonight, nobody can take that moment from her or from me.

The beauty of it exists beside a resentment I can already feel taking shape.

I came to Charm after her father dragged my murdered mother, my childhood, my skin, and every home I survived across a terrace filled with people in a humiliating display. I came to her with blood drying on my mouth and asked her to walk with me because I needed the one woman I have never known how to stop needing. She folded her arms, made my pain about being excluded from the fight, and told me to go fuck myself when I refused to prove she was allowed the same anger.

Then she came here and forced open everything I told her I couldn’t survive tonight.

I understand why she broke. Her father used photographs of her sick body to destroy my future, and everyone she trusted decided she couldn’t handle knowing. She entered this room already drowning beneath humiliation, betrayal, and the discovery that even her recovery had been turned into something men could pass across a conference table. Her mind was too far inside that pain to recognize what I had asked from her.

Understanding it doesn’t make the cost disappear.

She has changed so fucking much. The woman in my arms told the truth when it made her look selfish, ashamed, manipulative, and cruel. She stood inside my anger without running, accepted that I may never forgive her, and remained in front of a mirror while every damaged part of her begged to hide. I see every inch she fought to recover.

I also see the part of her that still cannot hear me when my voice finally admits I am weak.

Tonight fucked me up. Lance’s fists were the easiest part to survive. I can understand Charm’s pain without pretending it didn’t consume the room until mine became something I was expected to carry alone again. She sprayed every piece of her trauma across us, and I stepped over my own wounds to pull her out because watching her disappear will always reach me faster than protecting myself.

I should’ve kept the door closed. I should’ve let her knock until she understood that needing access to me didn’t mean she was entitled to have it. Instead, I opened the door because Charm has always been the one weakness strong enough to make me betray myself.

Her body shifts against mine as though she is preparing to move. The loss of her warmth reaches me before reason can remind me why letting her go would be smarter.

My arm tightens around her waist. “Stay with me tonight.”

Charm becomes still inside my hold. Her fingers squeeze mine before she looks toward the mirror, though our faces have disappeared from its reflection.

“Are you sure that’s what you want?”

I don’t answer immediately.

Charm lifts her face, and for one stupid second, I believe she finally sees me. I wait for her attention to catch on the blood still dried near my mouth, the humiliation I haven’t managed to swallow, or the exhaustion dragging against every breath. I wait for her to ask what I need after her father ripped my life open in front of two hundred people and she came into this room to tear through whatever he left standing.

Her eyes move over my face, but she is searching for rejection. She wants to know whether I regret touching her, whether I am about to send her away, and whether what happened in front of the mirror changed anything between us.

She is looking directly at me and still only sees what my pain might mean for her.

The realization settles inside the resentment already taking shape. I could tell her. I could ask her to hold me, explain what Lance did tonight, and hand her every vulnerable piece she failed to notice. I already gave her that opportunity when I came to her room and asked her to walk with me. I cannot survive asking twice and watching her miss me again.

“I don’t want to be alone.”

Relief softens her face before she turns carefully inside my arms and presses her cheek against my chest. Her lips touch the skin above my heart while I pull the blankets over us and hold her closer than I should.

Charm hears that I want her to stay.

She never hears everything I stop myself from asking her to see.

Taking this comfort is selfish. I know what tomorrow will do to it, and I know I am using the love she still carries for me to survive a night when that same love failed to see me. I cannot absorb another loss before morning, though, so I let her warmth quiet what her words could not and close my eyes with her body wrapped around mine.

Charm loves me. I believe that now in ways I couldn’t when I left the study.

She still doesn’t know how to love me the way I need when I am the one falling apart. Tonight, I am too fucking tired to leave her for it, so I hold her and take every piece of comfort she gives me while pretending I cannot already feel what it will cost when morning comes.

19

Charm

I woke with Ryan in bed beside me.