Page 31 of Power Play

“I can multitask.”

“You’re very confident for a man surrounded by dead women and philosophers.”

“Half these dead women would’ve liked me.”

“Emily Brontë would’ve thrown you into a storm.”

“She wrote Heathcliff. She liked dangerous men.”

“She wrote him as a warning.”

“She understood him.”

“That is exactly the kind of interpretation Klein would make you defend for twenty pages.”

“I already did.”

I pulled an old essay from the folder and slid it across the table.

Charm looked at the title before lifting her eyes to mine. “You wrote twenty-two pages about Heathcliff as a product of class violence and abandonment.”

“Twenty-four with citations.”

Her lips parted slightly. “You’re deeply confusing.”

“You thought I only knew how to hit a puck?”

“I knew you read, but not like this.” Her fingers moved carefully over the first page. “This feels passionate.”

“That’s generous.”

“I’m serious.” She glanced at the stacks around us. “I didn’t know you were the kind of person who kept annotated essays from old classes.”

“I keep most of my academic work.”

“Why?”

The answer sitting behind my teeth was heavier than the question deserved.

Because I remembered being a kid who owned almost nothing.

Because classrooms and libraries had been some of the only places where nobody could decide I didn’t belong based on which foster home had signed the permission slip that month.

Because earning something with my own brain had always felt permanent in a way most of my childhood hadn’t.

I gave her the simpler version.

“I’ve loved reading since I was little. I knew if hockey got me into college, books were the other thing I wanted.”

Her expression changed slightly. “You already knew that?”

“Yeah.”

“How little?”

I looked at her over the edge of my coffee. “You’re getting nosy.”

“You brought me twenty-four pages of your opinions. Privacy has already had a difficult morning.”