Page 225 of Power Play

I closed my fingers around Ryan’s key and looked up at his apartment window. For the first time, him leaving didn’t mean losing access to the part of my life where I could breathe.

He had left the door open for me.

I unlocked my phone and looked again at the three lines he had given me.

Estoy pensando en ti.

Te extraño.

Vuelve a mí.

The second and third phrases pulled at something I almost remembered. Smiling to myself, I slipped his spare key onto my ring beside my own and headed toward my car with Wednesday waiting and Ryan only one call away.

15

Charm

By nine that night, I had already broken one of Ryan’s rules, although it was one he had created solely because he enjoyed giving me assignments and watching me pretend I hated them.

I was curled sideways on the couch with Klein’s comments open across my laptop, my feet tucked beneath one of Aura’s blankets while she talked shit to her friend Liv about her latest fight with Easton at Hockey House. Bliss had gone home an hour earlier with Cade, and the apartment had finally settled into the sort of background noise I could work through without wanting to crawl out of my skin.

Ryan’s three Spanish lines remained open in the notes app on my phone.

Estoy pensando en ti.

Te extraño.

Vuelve a mí.

I knew all three now. I also knew he had told me to send the first one tonight and save the others until I needed them.

That instruction had lasted approximately thirty minutes.

I opened our messages.

Charm: I cheated.

His response came almost immediately.

Ryan: Shocking.

Charm: I translated all three.

The typing dots appeared.

Ryan: That wasn’t the assignment.

Charm: I’m an overachiever.

Ryan: You’re impatient.

Charm: Also true.

Smiling, I typed the words carefully.

Charm: Estoy pensando en ti. Te extraño. Vuelve a mí.

I watched the message deliver and became far more aware of what I had told him than I had been while sitting alone with a translator.