Page 92 of Power Play

Nobody answered immediately, which was why I’d asked them. Cade usually told me what he actually thought even when I didn’t want to hear it. Briggs had spent years hiding serious instincts under enough bullshit that people forgot he had them. Rider watched more than he spoke, and Easton could smell emotional cowardice because he specialized in it.

I trusted all of them differently.

Briggs spoke first. “Stop making her prove shit.”

“I don’t.”

“I know you don’t. I’m saying keep it that way.”

His humor disappeared again as he glanced toward the pocket where his phone sat turned off.

“When you spend your childhood wanting somebody’s approval badly enough, you start assuming every relationship has requirements. You don’t even know you’re doing it.” He rubbed his hand against his jaw. “You think if I called my parents right now and they said all the right things, some part of me wouldn’t immediately start trying to become whatever version makes them keep calling?”

Nobody answered.

Briggs shrugged. “That wiring is fucked.”

I nodded, and Cade spoke next.

“Make sure she knows your interest isn’t based on performance.”

I frowned. “I tell her she’s beautiful.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

He said it so simply that I went quiet.

Briggs nodded. “Everybody tells her she’s beautiful.”

“She probably knows that,” Rider added.

I thought about Charm standing in her apartment wearing one of my shirts, her hair piled badly on top of her head while she insulted a sewing machine and I laughed at her.

“I tell her I like the version she hides.”

Cade nodded. “Keep telling her.”

Easton leaned forward. “Maybe tell her what you actually want too.”

“I have.”

“Have you?”

I looked at him as Briggs pointed at me again.

“You told us you’re seeing what happens,” Briggs said. “Does Charm know what that means?”

“I told her we’d keep doing what we were doing.”

“That means nothing.”

“It means exactly what it says.”

“To you.”

I stared at him, but Briggs shrugged.

“You’re worried everybody else decides shit for her, but you might be deciding that vague is safer without asking whether vague makes her crazy.”