Page 301 of Power Play

The exit for the interstate appeared ahead. Cade told me to call when I reached Flint. Bliss told me again to slow down. Briggs didn’t say anything else before the call ended.

The silence that replaced them was worse.

I turned on the radio, but the first song was one I had played in my kitchen while Charm danced barefoot with me between the counter and stove. I shut it off before the second line.

Her absence filled the truck anyway.

She remained beside me through the darkness, wrapped in rose-blonde hair and the blue dress she had worn to Thanksgiving. I felt the phantom weight of her hand on my thigh. I heard her laugh when I corrected her Spanish and the soft voice she used when she read poetry aloud because she knew I liked listening more than I admitted.

I hated every memory.

I loved every version of her inside them.

By the time the first sign for Flint caught in my headlights, the grief had settled beneath my anger. It hurt every time I breathed, and it would keep hurting whether I admitted it or not.

I had survived hunger, concrete floors, fists, foster homes, rape, and graves. I knew how to build a life from whatever remained after somebody tore the first one apart.

Charm couldn’t be different.

I needed to believe she wasn’t.

I had warned her that I wouldn’t keep playing by the Harlens’ rules. I warned her not to test whether I meant it. She tested me, and I severed every piece of her I could reach before loving her turned me into a man willing to crawl back into that corner.

The parts buried beneath my skin would take longer.

For now, I kept driving.

22

Charm

The empty place on my key ring cut into my palm.

I hadn’t loosened my fist since Easton pulled me into his arms. The keys remained trapped inside it, their jagged edges buried so deeply that my fingers had gone numb, but I could still feel the missing one. Ryan’s key had been small and silver, nearly identical to the key to the ABC apartment, yet I had always known which one belonged to him without looking.

Now there was nothing where it used to be.

Aura sat beside me on the couch with one hand moving slowly across my back while Easton paced between the living room and kitchen, unable to remain still for more than a few seconds. He hadn’t said much since he caught me, but his anger occupied the room with us. He controlled it well enough that he hadn’t turned it against me, yet it was too large to hide.

My phone lay facedown on the coffee table with Ryan’s messages waiting beneath the dark screen.

Charm and I had a thing for a minute. It’s dead.

Six months reduced to two words because I failed him when he asked me for four.

Dile que importo.

Tell him I matter.

My throat closed again. I folded forward and pressed my fist against my stomach as another sob tore through me.

Aura moved closer. “Breathe, Cee.”

“I can’t breathe.”

“You are breathing. Stay with me.”

“It hurts.”