Page 257 of Power Play

I still meant it.

“Hold your ground, or I’m done, Charm. I won’t take any more edited versions of their bullshit. I won’t watch you protect everybody from the consequences of what they say, and I won’t keep guessing whether I’m human enough to sit at their fucking table.”

I walked toward my bedroom.

“Ryan.”

My hand closed around the doorframe. I looked at her one last time.

“I love what we have too much to keep pretending this isn’t destroying it.”

Then I went into my room and slammed the door, leaving Charm alone in the living room.

17

Charm

I stayed on Ryan’s couch for several minutes after his bedroom door slammed, staring at the dark television while rain crawled down the windows and every word he had thrown at me settled somewhere painful.

If it isn’t me, I’ll get over you. I’ve lost much worse.

That one hurt enough that part of me wanted to stay angry. I wanted to convince myself he had gone too far and had no right to force a decision when he knew better than anyone how badly pressure affected me.

Underneath my anger, I understood what he had actually asked me to give him.

The truth.

Ryan didn’t expect perfection or permission from my parents. He wasn’t demanding a guarantee that everyone I loved would suddenly love him too. He wanted me to stop protecting people from the consequences of their behavior while expecting him to quietly absorb those consequences for me.

My phone sat inside my purse with more than a hundred messages and missed calls from my mother. I had read enough previews to know the tone changed after the birthday dinner, but every time her name appeared, I found a reason not to answer.

I told myself I needed space and was finally setting boundaries. I told myself she and Daddy needed time to understand what they had done.

Some of that was true.

The rest was cowardice dressed in therapy language.

I pulled out my phone and opened her messages. There were apologies, long and short, along with voice mails I had never listened to. She had asked me to come home, offered to take me to lunch, and repeatedly asked whether I was okay.

More than once, she had written some version of the same thing.

We were wrong to react the way we did.

Farther down, the language shifted.

Mom: I’m not asking you to forgive us tonight. I’m asking you to let us try.

Mom: Your father is angry because he is frightened, and he has never understood the difference as well as he thinks he does.

I swallowed and kept scrolling.

Mom: If Ryan matters to you, then we need to meet him as the man you know instead of the assumptions we made.

Another message had come later.

Mom: I mean that, Charmagne. We want to give him a chance.

Her last message hurt the most.