“It is the only one I have.” Charm leaned back against the counter, her perfect posture dropping for once. “He isn’t a boyfriend guy. He’s always gone. Flint practices, road games, the hockey chaos his life currently is. He has that big rivalry game with NHL scouts watching, and he needs to focus on that, not whatever this is.”
Bliss’s brows pulled together. “Cee.”
“No, don’t do the voice.” Charm adjusted the bracelet on her wrist, her eyes down. “You saw how everyone looked at him out there. This game matters. It could change his life. He could get called up, moved, signed, sent anywhere. Ryan is standing at the edge of everything he has worked for, and I’m not going to become some pretty little complication with family baggage and expectations he never asked for.”
My chest tightened. “That’s a very fancy way of pretending you aren’t scared.”
Her eyes lifted to mine.
I held her stare.
Charm Harlen was polished in a way that made people underestimate how much steel lived under all that grace. But right then, with her sunglasses on the sink and worry slipping through the cracks, she looked less like the girl who could level a room with a look and more like our Cee, terrified of wanting the wrong man loudly enough for her whole life to hear it.
“My parents would never accept him,” she said softly.
The bathroom quieted.
Bliss stepped closer. “Charm.”
“No, really. You know my parents. A man with no family name, no money, no ties they can brag about at a charitydinner, and a foster history they would discuss in whispers like a contagious disease?” Her mouth tightened, but her eyes shone. “They would smile in public and skin me alive in private.”
“Ryan deserves better than being treated like a scandal,” I said.
“I know that.”
“And you deserve better than having your life approved like a merger.”
“I know that too.” She looked away, swallowing hard. “That’s why it has to stay fun.”
Bliss’s lips pressed together.
Charm pointed at her. “Do not Bennett me.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were loading it.”
Bliss deflated. “Fine. I was loading it.”
I reached for Charm’s hand. “We’ll leave it alone.”
Her fingers squeezed mine once. “Thank you.”
“For now,” Bliss added.
Charm groaned. “B.”
“What? I said for now. That is growth.”
I looked between them in the mirror, at Bliss’s soft, worried face and Charm’s sunglasses on the counter and my own hair slightly frizzed from Easton’s hands and the shower steam. For the first time in what felt like forever, the reflection didn’t look like three girls bracing for impact.
Bliss leaned into my side. “Are you happy?”
I stared at my reflection, then at the bathroom door beyond it, where Easton waited somewhere on the other side with his hand on my thigh still burned into my skin.
“I’m scared,” I said.
Charm nodded. “That tracks.”
