Page 408 of Power Play

Thin streaks of blood burned across my back where her nails had broken the skin. I felt every one of them now that the heat was leaving my body, some cutting directly through the ink covering my barrio and carving tiny wounds across the streets and scripture I carried there.

When I turned around, she was crying.

There was no screaming, collapsing, or begging. Tears slid silently down her face while she stared at the marks she’d left on me, and that quiet wrecked me worse than anything she’d screamed during the fight.

“I hurt you,” she whispered.

I swallowed my regret before answering. “We hurt each other.”

“No.” She shook her head and looked at my back again when I turned to find the rest of my clothes. “Ryan, I—”

“Don’t.”

Her breath broke. I couldn’t listen to another apology. I couldn’t survive watching her turn the damage between us into another reason to hate herself, and I had nothing left capable of telling her it wasn’t all hers to carry.

Charm climbed carefully from the counter. Her bare feet touched the cold tile before she knelt to gather her clothes. Her hands shook as she retrieved her bra from beside the island and straightened the twisted strap before slipping it on beneath my jersey. Her underwear disappeared into the pocket of her coat. She found one boot near the refrigerator and the other beneath a chair, but she didn’t put them on.

She stood holding everything against her chest, wrapped in my name while tears moved silently down her face.

“Ryan, please.”

I bent to retrieve my pants and pulled them on. “Don’t.”

“Please don’t end it like this.”

“It was already over.”

“Then what was that?”

I fastened my pants with hands that barely worked. “Goodbye.”

Her face crumpled. “No.”

I looked away.

“No.” Her clothes fell from her arms as she crossed the kitchen. “You don’t get to call that goodbye. You don’t get to touch me like that and decide it means nothing.”

“I didn’t say it meant nothing.”

“Then say it meant something.”

“It meant everything!” My voice tore through the lodge, and tears burned my eyes too quickly to hide. “That’s the fucking problem.”

She stopped in front of me. I dragged one hand over my face and turned away, but she caught my arm.

“Then we don’t have to do this.”

“Yes, we do.”

“No, we don’t. Ryan, look at me.”

I stared at the window because I couldn’t look at her. Our reflection waited inside the dark glass. Charm stood behind me wearing my jersey while I remained half-dressed and bleeding, the kitchen destroyed around us by a celebration I hadn’t attended.

“We can figure this out,” she said. “We can be angry. You can hate me for a while, and I’ll take it. I’ll take all of it if you stop telling me there’s no chance.”

“That isn’t love.”

“What?”