Page 148 of Power Play

Ryan: Sleep, mi hada.

The second text came that morning.

Charm: Drive safe today.

Nothing followed it.

There was no complaint about Professor Brown, no picture of her coffee, no dramatic report about Walter taking up too much of her couch, and no argument over whether vuelve sounded better when she said it now.

That bothered me more than I wanted it to.

Last night bothered me too.

I had replayed the parking lot enough times to know exactly when she changed beneath my hands. One second, Charm had been kissing me like she wanted to climb inside my skin. Then a pair of headlights crossed us, and her entire body tightened.

It lasted maybe a second.

She kissed me harder afterward like she could erase the reaction if she gave me enough enthusiasm, but I felt it. I felt her fingers loosen when the girls looked at us too. I heard the distance she forced between us when Evan asked whether we were together and she reduced the night to hanging out.

Then, upstairs, she did it again in a different way. Nobody had been watching that time, but something inside her went somewhere I couldn’t reach. She smiled too carefully, told me I should leave, then looked almost panicked when I agreed.

I understood fear and instinctive reactions better than most people. What I didn’t understand was where I fit inside hers.

That question had followed me home and stayed beside me all night.

Charm wanted me when we were alone. I had no doubts about that. I felt it every time she kissed me, every time her hands slid beneath my shirt, and every time her body softened against mine before I forced myself to stop.

Being desired had never scared me.

Desire was easy. It lasted as long as the fantasy did.

Being chosen required someone to see the entire man and stay once the exciting pieces became inconvenient. Charm’s hesitation in that parking lot had reached the place inside me that remembered foster families smiling during introductions and changing their minds once I became too much work. It touched every room where I had learned to keep my belongings packed because wanting me temporarily never meant anyone planned to keep me.

Charm was already deeper than anyone had been allowed to get in years. I had put my mother’s words in her notebook, given her a dictionary that survived foster care with me, and let pieces of her spread through my apartment until the space no longer looked like it belonged entirely to me.

I had done all of it before realizing how badly she could hurt me.

I folded another shirt and laid it inside the suitcase before reaching for the Frost hoodie tossed over the back of the desk chair. My apartment looked like Charm had spent half the summer slowly invading it. One of her hair ties lived around the base of my lamp. A fashion magazine sat beneath a copy of Tennyson because she apparently decided my coffee table required cultural balance. Her favorite mug was drying beside the sink, and a pale pink pen had somehow ended up inside the ceramic cup where I kept black ones.

I was going to miss all of it.

The admission irritated me enough that I shoved the hoodie into the suitcase harder than necessary.

A knock sounded from the front door. I looked toward the bedroom as another came immediately after the first.

Nobody I knew knocked twice like the building was on fire unless they were pissed, drunk, or Briggs.

I crossed the apartment and opened the door.

Charm stood on the other side, and for half a second, I forgot how language worked.

Her hair fell loose over her shoulders, softer than she usually wore it when she planned to go anywhere. She had put on enough makeup to make it obvious she wanted me looking at her without crossing into the polished version she wore around her parents.

A cropped black jacket covered most of whatever she had underneath, but her bare legs disappeared into heeled boots that violated every complaint I had made about her practical footwear the night before.

Her eyes were bright with something she was holding too tightly, and her breathing came faster than it should have. She watched me like she spent the drive rehearsing something and lost every prepared word when I opened the door.

“Hey.”