Page 425 of Power Play

My mouth twisted through the pain. “I hate losing.”

“So do I.”

“I’ll answer the door.”

“You better.”

Cade looked at everyone gathered around us before returning his attention to me. “We’ll find Ryan.”

The promise tightened my chest.

“He might not be there anymore.”

“He is.” Cade touched two fingers to the center of my chest, directly above the hidden tattoo none of them knew existed. “I’m looking at him.”

My hand covered his before he could feel the raised ink beneath my shirt.

“Ten toes down,” he said.

“Always.”

Cade opened the door.

Cold air moved through the bar as I stepped outside with my brothers and the women they loved behind me. Kimball Falls waited beneath the night, holding every version of the life I’d built after Cade brought me here and told me I didn’t have to be alone.

This city gave me KFU, the Furnace, the Sin Bin, and the family standing behind me. It gave me a future in hockey and the woman whose name I’d carved into my skin because leaving her didn’t mean I knew how to live without carrying her.

Milwaukee didn’t contain a version of Charm and me. It offered unfamiliar streets, professional ice, and enough distance for both of us to discover who we were when loving each other no longer decided whether we survived.

I didn’t know whether the road between us had ended or only disappeared beneath everything we needed to heal. I couldn’t promise forgiveness, reconciliation, or anything waiting beyond the pain I carried tonight.

I felt broken, lost, and dead in every place Charm once made alive. I will always feel that, but El Cuchillo kept me walking.

Maybe Milwaukee would quiet him long enough for the man beneath him to breathe again. Maybe I would discover they were never separate men at all. One was created out of love, the other forged by everything that tried to kill him, and both carried Encanto beside the same beating heart.

I adjusted the backward Inferno cap with my good hand and walked toward Cade’s truck. My scarred hand remained protected inside its brace, my family followed behind me, and Milwaukee waited beyond.

For the first time since my mother died, leaving didn’t mean I had been abandoned.

This time, I was choosing where I went next.

Epilogue 2

Charm

Three weeks into treatment

They weighed me this morning.

I stood backward on the scale because I’m not supposed to see the number yet. My dietitian says blind weights keep me from turning recovery into another measurement I can control, but knowing the reasoning doesn’t stop my mind from trying to calculate it.

The number follows me whether I see it or not.

I know what I weighed when I arrived. I know how much they expect me to gain each week, how many meals I’ve completed, and how many supplemental drinks I’ve needed when I couldn’t finish what was placed in front of me. My brain collects every detail and builds a number from it because numbers have always felt safer than hunger, mirrors, photographs, or the expression on my mother’s face when she looked at my body.

Today, I asked.

My dietitian hesitated before telling me I weighed 101 pounds.