Page 345 of Power Play

“I love you.”

The words hung between us while my hands settled around the steering wheel.

“I love you,” she said again, her voice breaking harder. “Please believe me.”

I looked at her then.

Charm’s breath caught as our eyes finally met through the dark lenses of my sunglasses. Hope flashed across her ruined face, instinctive and desperate, because she still believed my attention meant there was something left to save.

I gave her the only thing I had come outside willing to say.

“Begging someone to trust you feels like shit, don’t it, mami?”

Her fingers fell from the door.

I pulled it shut.

Charm stepped back as the engine turned over. She stood beside my truck crying, her arms wrapped around herself while I slid my sunglasses lower on my nose, straightened my backward cap, and looked at Briggs over the top of the frames.

He nodded.

He had me.

I pushed the sunglasses back into place, shifted the truck into reverse, and left Charm standing in the snow with every word I refused to hear.

25

Charm

Ryan’s truck disappeared between the pines.

I remained in the middle of the driveway long after the sound of his engine faded. Snow soaked through my boots, and the cold worked beneath my coat, but my body refused to move.

Begging someone to trust you feels like shit, don’t it, mami?

I heard the words in his destroyed voice and saw the way he looked at me over the top of his sunglasses before pushing them back into place. Even that brief glimpse of his eyes had given me more than he intended.

Ryan had left his own trip to get away from me.

The lodge behind me was filled with our friends. Every detail visible through its enormous windows had been chosen and paid for by Ryan, designed around the people he loved.

I was the only person he no longer wanted inside it.

Boots crossed the porch and descended the steps before stopping behind me. The silence identified Briggs before he spoke. Nobody else could stand that close and make me feel small without trying.

“You planning to freeze out here?”

My throat tightened. “Maybe.”

“Seems dramatic.”

“I don’t know where I’m supposed to go.”

“The second cabin.”

“He doesn’t want me here.”

“He doesn’t want you near him.”