Page 243 of Power Play

Her parents.

I was also pissed at myself for waiting this long to force a conversation I knew we needed. The time I got with Charm was so limited that I hadn’t wanted to ruin any of it by dragging Lance and Crystal into the room with us.

Something had changed in her after the dinner.

Charm would tell me she was fine, smile like she meant it, and then spend the next hour wound so fucking tight that I could feel her anxiety from across the room. She had gotten quieter about her parents and far too careful whenever I asked what her mother said or whether Lance had called.

Every answer came polished and reasonable, as though she had gone through it ten times before giving it to me and removed anything that might make me worry.

I knew that version of her.

Charm had spent most of her life learning how to bury whatever hurt until nobody could see it. Lately, she had been doing it right in front of me.

She was thinner. I noticed every time I returned from Flint after being gone several days. Her eyes looked dark and exhausted even beneath makeup, and I had caught her hands shaking more than once before she tucked them beneath a table or found something to do with them.

She blamed school, stress, too much coffee, and not enough sleep. Charm always had an answer, and each one sounded reasonable by itself.

Together, the excuses were starting to piss me off.

I had already pushed her about eating. I understood how quickly concern could turn into another voice inside her head judging her body, so I tried not to watch every bite or turn food into another fucking test she could fail.

I knew anxiety could tear through her until something small became catastrophic. I knew she looked at herself and saw things I would never understand because whatever mirror she used showed her a completely different woman from the one standing in front of me.

What I couldn’t figure out was why all of it had suddenly gotten worse.

Whenever I came close enough to ask, Charm smiled, kissed me, changed the subject, or found somebody else who needed her more.

She made herself useful, pretty, agreeable, and whatever else the room required until nobody thought to ask whether she was okay underneath any of it.

Apparently, I had let her do it to me too.

My immediate problem was that I had four days in town and still sat in my apartment without my girlfriend.

Girlfriend.

Charm had called me that in bed. She had said it again in front of her parents, or at least she claimed she had. The entire Frost team had watched her straighten my cap and kiss me beside the bus.

I knew Mateo understood. Half the fucking team probably knew after he spent the ride making fairy jokes at my expense.

I didn’t know whether Bliss and Aura knew Charm had officially called me her boyfriend.

They knew we were involved. Bliss had known Charm wanted me years before Charm admitted it to herself. Aura had eyes and no respect for privacy. Neither woman could have missed the sex, the sleepovers, the key to my apartment, or the fact that half of Charm’s school shit now lived on my kitchen table.

Knowing we were together wasn’t the same as hearing Charm claim me.

I didn’t know if she had told them.

I couldn’t ask without sounding like I needed her friends’ approval, and that wasn’t the point. I needed to know whether boyfriend was a word Charm used only in my bed, on my sidewalk, and during one confrontation with her parents.

She had a key to my apartment. Three bottles of wine I would never drink sat in my refrigerator. A pink toothbrush stood beside mine in the bathroom, and one of my hoodies had apparently become permanent property of the ABC apartment.

I was in every corner of her private life, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that outside the small circle where she felt safe, I remained a secret with better access.

The thought had been easier to ignore when everything between us was new. By late October, it was starting to piss me off.

At some point during this break, I was taking my girlfriend back. If I had to tell Aura to deal with her own relationship and Easton to get his head out of his ass long enough to stop making everybody else referee it, I would.

I had my own shit to deal with. Charm’s behavior, her parents, Thanksgiving, and the Saturday game afterward had all been sitting in the back of my head for weeks.