Page 417 of Power Play

“Then I’ll hold them until you are.”

“I’m never going to be sure.” My good hand tightened around the back of the empty chair. “Just take them to her.”

Cade glanced toward the bar. “There will always be a trace of you here.”

“I know.”

Bliss reached across the table and placed her hand near my brace without touching it. Six weeks earlier, she’d looked at the fingerprints darkening Charm’s skin and believed I hurt her. I saw it in her face before Charm ran into the second cabin.

Aura believed it too.

I didn’t blame either of them. Charm left barefoot in my jersey, carrying her clothes, with bruises shaped like my hands darkening her thighs. Then they watched me destroy everything I could reach.

Charm told them what happened before sunrise. She told them she slapped me, beat her fists against my chest, clawed my back, and begged me to let her keep fighting after I’d already decided we were finished. She told them the marks on her body didn’t come from me assaulting her. They were the wreckage left by two people who used each other to finish an argument neither of us knew how to survive.

Bliss and Aura no longer believed I’d physically attacked Charm. That understanding didn’t absolve what happened in the kitchen, and none of us pretended it did.

I wasn’t sure I would ever forgive myself for that night.

“Ryan,” Bliss said quietly. “There’s something you should know before you leave.”

Every muscle in my body locked. “What?”

“Charm is safe.”

The room narrowed around the words. I kept my good hand flat against the table and fought the instinct to demand every detail.

“What does safe mean?”

“She entered a residential treatment program for her eating disorder, body dysmorphia, anxiety, and panic attacks. It reached a point where she knew she couldn’t manage it alone.”

My lungs stopped working properly. “When?”

“Recently.”

“Where?”

Bliss hesitated, and the urge to know became so violent that my chair shifted when I struck it with my leg.

“Don’t.” I pressed my palm against the table. “Don’t tell me where.”

Her eyes filled. “She gave me permission if you wanted to know.”

“I don’t.”

The answer tasted like a lie and a boundary at the same time.

“She wanted you to know she was getting help,” Bliss said. “She didn’t want you to think she was doing it to convince you to come back.”

“Is she?”

“What?”

“Doing it to get me back.”

“No.” Bliss’s voice was gentle enough to hurt. “She knows her treatment can’t depend on whether you forgive her.”

“Make sure she remembers that.”