Page 42 of Power Play

“He’d look for him.”

That got me laughing hard enough that Charm joined in, and somewhere between Jane Eyre and Briggs trying to friend-request a dead poet, she snorted.

The sound escaped before she could stop it.

Charm slapped one hand over her mouth.

I stared at her.

Her eyes widened. “Forget that happened.”

“Never.”

“I will leave.”

“You’ll come back. Your notes are here.”

“You’re holding my education hostage.”

“I’m protecting my investment.”

“You refused payment.”

“Still invested.”

Her hand lowered slowly from her mouth, and the smile behind it stayed.

By the time the lunch crowd started thinning, Charm’s neat notes had spread into arrows, underlines, circles, arguments, and questions written sideways in the margins. Her hair had fallen forward around her face, one sandal was abandoned beneath the table, and the careful posture she’d arrived with had disappeared somewhere during Mary Wollstonecraft.

That was the Charm I liked.

The one who forgot to arrange herself before taking up space.

She capped her pen and flexed her fingers. “I hate to admit this.”

“You had fun.”

“I learned something.”

“That too.”

She looked across the pages between us. “I thought interpretation meant finding the hidden answer.”

“It means building one strong enough to survive questions.”

“Professor Klein is still going to hate me.”

“Klein hates everyone.”

“That’s comforting.”

“She’ll respect you if you stop giving her safe work.”

Charm’s smile faded slightly. “Safe has worked for me.”

I watched her.

“Has it?”