Page 155 of Power Play

Instead, it hurt.

“Because I want everything attached to it.”

Her face crumpled before she caught it. “You have everything.”

“No, I don’t.”

“What more do you want from me?”

“I want you to want me outside this apartment as much as you want me inside it.”

“That’s so fucking unfair.”

“No. Me expecting you to become someone else would be unfair. Me knowing what I can survive isn’t.”

“You think I’m going to break your heart?”

“I think you keep acting like you’re the only person here who can get hurt.”

That stopped her.

I swallowed past the pressure in my throat. Admitting fear had never felt safe. Fear gave people a map to the places that mattered, and I spent most of my life making sure nobody held one.

Charm already did.

“I’m not trying to get my heart broken either, hada.”

Her expression shifted when I dropped the mi. I saw her notice, and I hated that she noticed, but anger belonged to me as much as fear belonged to her.

“I grew up knowing exactly what it felt like when people wanted a piece of me and didn’t want the rest. Foster families wanted the check and not the kid. Coaches wanted the player and didn’t give a fuck what happened after practice. Women wanted whatever part of me they decided was exciting without giving a shit whether they actually knew me.”

Charm shook her head quickly. “I know you.”

“You’re getting there.”

“That is such bullshit.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“I asked about your mother when nobody else did. I learned Spanish because I wanted to understand you. I know which books you won’t loan people and what you drink when you’re too tired to pretend coffee is enough. I know you hate sleeping with your back to a door, and you always check the exits before you sit down somewhere. Don’t stand there and tell me I don’t know you.”

The anger cracked around something softer.

She was right.

Charm knew me better than most people ever bothered to. She noticed the things I spent years making invisible, and instead of stepping around them, she asked questions. I had given her answers because some reckless part of me trusted the care behind the way she listened.

That was why this hurt so much.

A stranger couldn’t make me feel hidden. Charm could because I wanted her recognition to mean she would choose what she saw.

I lowered my voice. “I didn’t say you don’t know me. I said I don’t know whether you’ll choose what you know when somebody whose opinion scares you tells you I’m wrong for you.”

Her tears spilled.

I wanted to wipe them away, but my hands remained at my sides because comforting her couldn’t come at the price of abandoning myself.

Charm laughed once, broken and bitter. “Fine. Maybe you should go to Flint and fuck your puck bunnies, then. You can stop worrying about whether I’m brave enough for you and go do whatever you normally do in every city.”