Page 41 of Power Play

Her eyes snapped up, sharper now. “You don’t get to talk to me like my father.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re giving orders.”

“Your father tells you what to think. I’m telling you to stop being scared of what you already think.”

The anger in her face shifted.

She picked up the pen but didn’t write.

“You’re very annoying.”

“You’re very trained.”

Charm’s jaw tightened.

I reached across the table and hooked one finger beneath her chin before she could disappear into the notebook.

Her eyes widened at the touch.

“Don’t take that as an insult.” I kept my voice lower now. “They taught you to doubt yourself before anybody else gets the chance. That doesn’t make you weak.”

The coffee shop moved around us in low conversation, pages turning somewhere nearby while the espresso machine hissed behind the counter.

Charm held my gaze.

“What does it make me?”

“Someone who has to decide whether she wants to stay trained.”

Her breath left slowly.

My finger remained beneath her chin a second longer than necessary. Her skin was warm, and she didn’t pull away.

I wanted to slide my thumb across her bottom lip.

Instead, I released her.

Something flickered across her expression before she looked down and wrote the sentence about conditional love.

I hated that I noticed.

We stayed at the table for another two hours.

Charm argued that Jane Eyre’s restraint was power. I told her restraint was still a cage when everybody else had built it for her. She accused Byron of being the original toxic celebrity, and I agreed before explaining that half the Romantic poets would’ve been unbearable on social media.

“What would Byron post?” she asked.

“Shirtless pictures with captions about suffering.”

Charm laughed. “You just described half the hockey team.”

“Briggs would absolutely quote Byron without knowing it was Byron.”

“Briggs would spell Byron wrong.”

“He’d tag Byron.”