Page 318 of Power Play

Briggs’s free hand closed around the back of my neck. “You asked her.”

“I fucking begged her to tell him I mattered.”

“You asked the woman you loved to tell him.”

“She couldn’t.”

“No.”

The answer came immediately. It didn’t excuse her, tell me she tried, or remind me that she was afraid. Briggs gave me the truth because anything softer would have destroyed what little remained of me.

“She couldn’t do it.”

My knees hit the ice, and Briggs went down with me. I landed hard enough for pain to shoot through my legs, but I barely felt it.

My hands released his jersey and pressed against the ice between us. Tears struck the surface beneath my face, melting tiny dark circles into the frost.

I hadn’t cried like this since I was a kid.

I had cried quietly in bathrooms, inside cars, and with my face buried in pillows belonging to people whose last names I had forgotten. I learned young how to contain grief because crying made adults uncomfortable, and uncomfortable adults sent foster kids somewhere else.

There was nothing quiet about what Charm had done to me.

My breath dragged in and came out broken. I clenched my teeth against the sounds, but my body forced them through. My shoulders shook beneath my practice jersey while my lungs seized around air that tasted like ice and blood.

Briggs stayed on his knees in front of me. His hand remained wrapped around the back of my neck, heavy and steady, while I came apart between the blue line and the boards.

He didn’t tell me to breathe or promise I would be okay. He didn’t remind me that Charm loved me as though love had ever stopped anyone from leaving.

“I hate her.”

“I know.”

“I fucking hate her.”

“I know.”

“I want her out of me.”

Briggs’s fingers tightened.

“I want her out of my apartment, my head, and my fucking skin. I want to take every place she touched and cut it away because I can’t breathe without feeling her there.”

“I know.”

“I love her.”

“I know that too.”

The words tore another sob from me.

Briggs lowered himself fully onto the ice with one leg bent beneath him. He sat close enough to hold me upright without pulling me into an embrace I hadn’t asked for.

“She was everything.” My voice scraped against my throat. “I didn’t know she was everything until I tried to make her nothing.”

Briggs looked down.

“I took the key.”