Epilogue
Thanksgiving…
Ryan Decker
Charm’s family didn’t threaten people with raised voices.
They did it with linen napkins, crystal glasses, and smiles sharp enough to open skin without leaving fingerprints.
I figured that out ten minutes into Thanksgiving dinner, right around the time her mother looked at my hands for the fourth time and her father asked me about hockey like he was asking how long I planned on entertaining myself before real life started.
I could’ve respected the insult more if he’d had the balls to say it plain.
Instead, Lance Harlen sat at the head of a table that looked like it needed its own zip code, carving turkey in a charcoal sweater and a watch that cost more than the first car I ever slept in, smiling like every question he asked came from harmless curiosity.
His wife sat across from him with pearls at her throat and a mouth made for polite disappointment, tracking every tattoo that peeked from beneath my cuffs like the ink might spread if she looked away too long.
Charm sat beside me in a cream sweater with pearl buttons and her strawberry-blonde hair tucked behind one ear, so damn beautiful it should’ve been illegal and so stiff with nerves it made my back teeth grind.
Her posture was perfect. Her smile was perfect.
Every inch of her belonged in this cold, expensive house with its polished floors, framed family photos, and dining room full of people who knew how to use manners like a weapon.
Except her knee wouldn’t stop bouncing under the table.
I let it go for the first few minutes because she was trying. I could feel it in every careful breath she took beside me. She wanted this to matter. She wanted me here. She wanted to believe bringing me home was the same as choosing me in front of them.
Then her father asked me if Flint Frost had a “realistic path forward” for players who came from “less traditional backgrounds,” and Charm’s knee knocked mine hard enough to make her silverware whisper against the plate.
I set my hand over her thigh under the table.
She went still immediately when her mother’s eyes dropped.
It lasted half a second, maybe less, but I caught it. Charm caught it too, because she moved her leg away from my hand like my touch had burned her instead of steadied her.
That was the first thing in that house that pissed me off enough to make me smile.
Not because I was embarrassed. Fuck that.
I’d been looked at worse by people with less money and heavier hands.
I’d been sized up by foster fathers deciding if I was too much trouble, by cops who saw tattoos and barrio before they saw a man, by coaches trying to decide if my temper outweighed my talent.
Lance and Crystal Harlen didn’t scare me.
Their money didn’t scare me. Their house didn’t impress me.
A big table and a gated driveway didn’t turn a man into a king.
The problem was Charm.
The problem was the girl beside me pulling away from my hand because her mother looked. Because Charm had never denied me. Not once.
I leaned back in my chair and let my arm rest against the edge of the table, loose enough to look bored, controlled enough to keep from dragging Charm’s hand into mine where everyone could see it.
She felt my shift beside her. I knew she did because her eyes flicked to my face, soft and nervous and begging me without saying a word.
Behave.
That was what she wanted, so I did.
For her.
Lance lifted his wineglass and looked at me with the lazy confidence of a man who’d never had to wonder whether a room was safe before walking into it. “Charm tells us you’re doing very well with Flint.”
“I am.”
“Semi-pro can be a difficult world,” he said, turning the stem of his glass between his fingers. “There’s a great deal of uncertainty. Constant travel, tougher injuries, limited guarantees, and not much financial security.”
“Sounds like most jobs if you’re not born with one waiting.” I held his gaze. “Financially, I do more than fine.”
Charm’s fork paused halfway to her mouth.
Across the table, her mother blinked once.
Lance didn’t. I gave him that. He took the hit clean, still smiling like he admired a man who didn’t duck. “That’s one way to look at it.”
“It’s the way men look at it when they’ve had to earn the right to be in the room they’re standing in.”
Charm’s hand found the edge of my sleeve beneath the table. Her fingers barely touched me, a whisper of pressure against my wrist, but I knew what she meant.
Stop.
I turned my hand just enough to brush my knuckles against hers.
Not a surrender. Not an apology, but a promise that I was still in control.
Lance watched that too. He didn’t look down, but his eyes sharpened, and I knew then he hadn’t missed a damn thing happening under his table.
He saw his daughter reaching for me. He saw me letting her.
He saw that whatever fantasy he had about me being some rough little phase Charm would outgrow didn’t match the way her body leaned toward mine when she was scared.
Good. I hoped the pendejo saw it.
“So,” Lance said, setting his glass down with a soft click, “what comes next for you if hockey doesn’t develop the way you hope?”
Charm’s breath caught beside me.
I smiled at him, slow and mean enough that the room cooled around us. “It develops.”
Her mother gave a light laugh that didn’t reach her eyes. “Confidence is certainly important.”
“It is when people keep mistaking it for luck.”
Lance’s mouth tightened for the first time all night. Tiny movement. Barely anything. Enough.
I picked up my water and took a drink because I wanted him to wait on me.
Men like Lance loved controlling pace. They loved making people squirm through pauses and polite little traps.
I’d learned a long time ago that nothing irritated powerful men more than refusing to be impressed by their silence.
Charm shifted beside me. “Ryan works harder than anyone I know.”
Her voice came out soft, but it was the first thing she’d said in my defense all night, and the sound of it went through me harder than I wanted it to.
Lance looked at her. “I don’t doubt that, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart.
The word landed soft and paternal, but the warning underneath it was clear. Stay in your lane. Let me handle this. Don’t embarrass yourself over him.
Charm’s shoulders drew in a fraction.
My hand curled around my glass.
Lance turned back to me. “Work ethic is admirable. However, long-term stability matters. Especially when other people’s futures become involved.”
I set the glass down carefully. “Other people?”
His smile returned, polished and insulting. “Charm has plans. Design school. Internships. People willing to open very important doors for her if she proves she has the discipline to walk through them.”
“She’s told me.”
“Then you understand why distractions can be costly.”
Charm’s face went pale.
That was the line. Not for me. I’d heard men call me worse than a distraction and mean it with less cologne.
But Charm heard it too, and the way she went still beside me told me this wasn’t new language in this house.
This was the river of horseshit she’d been raised in, the kind that sounded calm enough to drink until it got in your blood and made you believe love had to be approved before it counted.
I looked at Lance and gave him the smile I saved for defensemen who thought chirping about my past would make me sloppy.
“Careful,” I said.
The room went still around the word. Her mother’s fork touched her plate with the smallest sound. Charm’s fingers tightened on my sleeve under the table, but I didn’t look away from her father.
Lance’s brows lifted. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” My voice stayed even. “You’re sitting at a table with your daughter beside me and calling her choices distractions. That’s a dangerous way to talk about a woman who’s smart enough to know her own mind.”
Charm stopped breathing for half a second.
Lance leaned back in his chair, studying me like I’d finally become interesting. “I would never suggest Charm doesn’t know her own mind.”
“You just did it with better grammar.”
Her mother made a soft sound under her breath. Charm whispered my name, but it wasn’t panic this time. It had heat in it. Fear too, maybe, but heat lived under it, and that was the part I felt crawl down my spine.
Lance rested his forearms on the table. “You’re very direct.”
“I’m being polite.”
His eyes cooled.
I smiled wider. “For her.”
The silence after that had weight.
Charm’s fingers slid from my sleeve to my wrist beneath the table. She held on this time. Her grip was small, hidden by the tablecloth, but it was there. I wanted to drag it into the open. I wanted to lace our fingers together beside the china and watch every Harlen in the room choke on it.
I didn’t.
I let her hold me where she was brave enough to hold me.
Dinner kept moving after that because rich people were impressive performers.
Her mother asked about dessert. Her aunt made a comment about the weather.
Someone down the table said something about winter travel and flight delays, and the room latched onto it like none of us had just watched Lance Harlen try to slide a knife between me and his daughter with a salad fork still beside his plate.
Charm didn’t eat much after that, and neither did I.
I stayed because she’d asked me to come.
I answered questions because walking out would’ve let Lance feel righteous.
I laughed when I needed to. I kept my hands clean and my temper leashed, even when her cousin asked if my tattoos all “meant something” in the same tone people used when they thought poverty was a Netflix documentary.
By the time the plates were cleared, Charm looked like she’d been holding her breath for an hour.
Her mother stood and smiled at her. “Come help me in the kitchen, darling.”
Charm’s fingers tightened around mine under the table before she let go.
I hated that she let go. I hated more that she looked sorry when she did.