Page 354 of Power Play

None of us spoke for several minutes. The quiet felt different from the silence inside my father’s study because nobody waited for me to produce the correct answer.

They waited for the truth.

“What happened at Ryan’s apartment?” Bliss asked.

I closed my eyes. “I told you.”

“You said he took the key and made you leave.”

Aura’s shoulder pressed against mine. “Tell us all of it.”

I forced myself back into the apartment.

Ryan packing. The books beneath his duffel. His red-rimmed eyes. The coldness that replaced every version of him I knew.

“He said I wanted his thick Chicano cock and a prop for my rebellion against my parents.”

Bliss inhaled sharply.

Aura’s face hardened. “He said that?”

“He was trying to make everything ugly.”

“He succeeded,” she muttered.

“He wasn’t wrong.”

Both women looked at me.

“I did call him my boyfriend,” I continued. “I said it to him and my parents, but I never told either of you. I slept in his bed, took his key, let him buy me books, teach me Spanish, and love me in every way I needed. Then I kept the truth away from the two people who should have known what he meant to me.”

“That doesn’t mean you used him for sex,” Bliss said.

“It feels like I did because I took every private part of himself he made me earn, including his body, and still gave him reasons to believe sex was all I wanted from him.”

Aura studied my face. “What else?”

“I grabbed his arm when he tried to leave.”

Bliss’s hand closed around mine.

“He ripped away and yelled at me to get my hands off him. Then he held out his palm and demanded the key.”

The empty place on my ring returned against my skin.

“I couldn’t remove it because my hands were shaking. Ryan took the entire ring, ripped his key free, and dropped the rest back into my hand.”

“Did he hurt you?” Aura asked.

“No. He made sure he didn’t touch me.”

The answer quieted something inside both women.

“He opened the door and told me to leave in Spanish.”

“What did he say?” Bliss asked.

I spoke the words carefully, hearing them in Ryan’s voice as I translated them into English. My tears started again anyway.