Page 192 of Power Play

“Do what?”

“Say shit like that while I’m trying to keep my dignity.”

She gave me the smallest smile. “You’re holding me around the waist after drinking for emotional courage. I think your dignity survived.”

A rough laugh dragged out of me despite everything. Charm stayed between my knees while I rested my forehead against her stomach for another moment before looking up again.

“Hockey happened before most of the people in my life who stayed.”

She touched my face. “I know.”

“You know I love hockey.” I caught her wrist gently. “You don’t know what it was.”

Her eyes held mine while I looked toward the dark apartment behind her.

“It was the first thing I could trust. The rink opened at the same time every day. The boards stayed in the same place. The ice didn’t give a shit if I had slept in a bed or behind a laundromat. Nobody asked who my parents were before the puck dropped.”

My thumb moved against the inside of her wrist.

“If I worked, I got better. If I sucked, I knew why, and if I lost, there was a score telling me I lost.” I laughed quietly. “That probably sounds fucked up.”

“It sounds simple.”

“Exactly.”

She understood, and that was the problem with Charm. She understood things I had spent years hoping nobody would look closely enough to see.

“Hockey was the first thing I put before everything, and nothing ever beat it. Women, parties, friends, and even school came after the ice, and I knew school was my way to hockey and out of that life. Sleep was less important than the ice because I could lose anybody and know the rink would still be there in the morning.”

Her eyes went glossy again as I drew in a breath.

“Then you happened.”

Charm went still, and I almost stopped. I could’ve pulled the words back, made a filthy joke, kissed her until neither of us could think, and kept the most dangerous part of me where it had always belonged. Her showing up on my steps had taken that choice away from me. If she wanted all of me, she needed to know what she could do to me.

“For six fucking days, I couldn’t think straight. I played good hockey. I practiced, watched film, and did every damn thing I was supposed to do.” I touched my chest. “You were here the entire time.”

A tear slipped over her cheek.

“I kept checking my phone and wondering if you were pulling away for good.”

“I wasn’t.”

“I know that now.”

“Ryan—”

“I was fucking terrified.”

She fell silent, and I needed that. I needed her to hear me without trying to fix what she couldn’t fix.

“I wasn’t scared you were going to fuck somebody else. I wasn’t scared you were going to stop wanting me.” I stood, and Charm stepped back enough to give me room, but I kept my hands around her waist. “I was scared I had finally found the one person who could make me put something before hockey, and the woman I picked might only want me when nobody important was looking.”

Her face broke, but I kept going because she had asked for the truth.

“That’s what you didn’t understand in Chicago.” My voice roughened. “When you pulled away from me, I wasn’t some guy getting his feelings hurt because a girl didn’t want people thinking we were fucking. I was eleven again, wondering why being wanted always seemed to have conditions attached to it.”

Charm’s hands came up against my face. “I didn’t know.”