Page 242 of Power Play

Then I saw the message he had sent twenty minutes earlier.

Ryan: About to go on. Still mad at you. Still yours. Call me after dinner.

I read it twice.

A shaky laugh slipped through my tears because the message was exactly Ryan. He could be angry with me and still make sure I understood I wasn’t being abandoned over it. He could hold his ground without making me wonder whether one bad conversation had cost me everything.

I pressed the phone against my chest and stopped fighting the tears. For the first time all night, I let myself fall apart because even with Ryan hundreds of miles away and skating through a game while he was angry with me, I knew exactly where I stood with him.

16

Ryan

By late October, Charm had gotten so good at looking fine that somebody who didn’t know her might have believed it.

She was killing Klein’s class. She wasn’t barely surviving or fighting to keep her head above water anymore. She sat near the top of the class and got comments back on papers that made her send me screenshots covered in smug little hearts. Klein continued denying she had ever called me one of her favorite students, which Charm took great pleasure in reminding me about every chance she got.

Her design work was caught up. She made it to class, showed up for her friends, answered my calls, and sent Spanish voice notes that were getting good enough that I had to find harder shit to give her. From the outside, Charm looked like she had finally taken control of every part of her life that used to control her.

She played the part beautifully.

The problem was that I knew her too fucking well now.

I knew she had stopped answering most of her mother’s calls because I watched her screen light up with Mom when we were together or on FaceTime. Charm would ignore the call without glancing at it, as though refusing to look made it less important.

I knew her father texted because she would read something, lose the smile she had been wearing a second earlier, and insist it was nothing when I asked. She hadn’t seen either parent since the birthday dinner. Every time I asked what happened that night, she gave me some edited version about them being surprised, needing time, and eventually coming around.

She lied through her fucking teeth.

Charm had gotten better about telling me other things. She admitted when Klein was riding her ass, when Aura and Easton were driving her insane, or when the pressure became too much for her to concentrate. Sometimes she asked me to stay on FaceTime while she worked because hearing me in the background helped quiet her head.

When it came to her parents, she gave me nothing.

It was starting to grate on me.

I had let it go because things between us had been good. Really fucking good.

My schedule was brutal. Six days gone, one day home whenever the rotation allowed it, four games most weeks, along with practices, film, travel, and every other obligation Flint could cram between puck drops. I kept the promise I had made her anyway. If I had enough time to get back to Kimball Falls, I came.

Sometimes that meant driving in late, sleeping five hours with Charm wrapped around me, and leaving again before lunch. Sometimes all I got was breakfast and an hour with her on my couch before I had to head back.

I never regretted the drive.

For the first time in my life, coming home meant somebody.

For three weeks, every visit had been fucked by whatever disaster Easton and Aura created next. A late-night call would come in before I got Charm alone, or one of them would show up furious and drag the entire group into their relationship. Aura needed Charm, Easton called me, Bliss tried to referee, and Cade pretended he wasn’t helping while quietly doing exactly that.

Apparently, everyone in Kimball Falls had collectively decided boundaries were decorative.

This four-day break had been circled on both our calendars for weeks. Four fucking days with no bus waiting at the curb, no hotel room, and no alarm telling me I had forty minutes before I needed to disappear again. I had spent half the last road trip thinking about what I wanted to do with Charm when I finally had her alone long enough to remember what normal people did together.

The universe found that idea hilarious.

The first night I got back, Easton got into it with somebody tied to shit from Aura’s past, and the entire group combusted. Before I could get Charm back to my apartment, Aura called her. Then Easton called me. One of them was pissed, the other was even more pissed, and Charm eventually asked me to drop her at Easton’s apartment because Aura needed her.

Now I sat alone on my couch, staring at a television I hadn’t watched in twenty minutes and getting progressively more irritated.

Most of it wasn’t aimed at Charm. I was mad as fuck at Aura and Easton for flinging their lack of communication and desperate need to draw blood onto everybody around them. Underneath that irritation lived something quieter and a hell of a lot more personal.