Epilogue #4
“That’s it,” I said. “That’s the only reason I sat there.
That’s the only reason I walked into that study instead of telling Lance Harlen to go fuck himself in front of his expensive whiskey.
I showed up because you asked me to. I behaved because you mattered to me.
I let them look because I thought you were bringing me there as your man, not as some test you weren’t ready to pass. ”
“I wasn’t testing you.”
“No, you were letting them test you, and you failed spectacularly.”
She flinched.
I leaned closer, and the cold air between us didn’t do a damn thing to cool me down. “That’s worse.”
Her tears came harder. “I’m scared of him.”
“I know,” I said, my voice sharpening.
She went still.
“Yeah.” I nodded once. “Both can be true. I can know he raised you in that house like love was something you had to earn with obedience, and I can still be furious that you let him use that shit on me. I can understand why you froze and still be standing here asking how the fuck you could treat me like that. Let them treat me like that.”
“Ryan,” she whispered.
“No.” I stepped back before the sound of my name in her mouth did what it always did. “No, princesa. You don’t get to soften me. I want to shake reality into your fucking skeleton. Pinche madre, you failed me, and now you’re asking me to be gentle with the explanation?”
She sobbed once, sharp and broken.
I didn’t cave. Not this time.
“I’m not him,” I said. “I’m not Lance. I’m not scared of losing some pretty seat at his table. They don’t like me with you? Then my line is there. Fuck that table. Fuck that house. Fuck every door he thinks he can close. I don’t need any of it.”
Her arms wrapped around her middle.
“My life is simple,” I said, my voice low and brutal now. “Cut and dry. I don’t beg people to keep me. I don’t stand in rooms where I’m not wanted and hope they learn to see me differently. I have never let myself believe I’m safe anywhere long enough to be surprised when I have to move on.”
Her face changed like the words had reached into her and twisted.
“Moving on is nothing to me,” I said. “Nothing. You know why? Because that skill was beaten into me before I was old enough to shave. New house. New school. New bed. New rules. New people pretending they might keep me until they didn’t.
I know how to pack a bag. I know how to shut the door.
I know how to leave before wanting something could make me weak. That is a skill I perfected.”
“Don’t,” she breathed.
I laughed beneath my breath, empty and cruel. “Now you’re making me prove that skill to you.”
Her hand flew to her chest.
“I’m going to Flint,” I said.
Her eyes widened.
“And if Saturday’s game puts one real offer in front of me, I’m taking whatever gets me the fuck out of Michigan and away from this shit.”
“No.”
“Yes.” I stepped closer again, forcing her to hear every word. “Because if I have to survive walking away from you, then I’m going to do it far enough away that I don’t keep driving past places where I remember what your mouth felt like when you weren’t ashamed of me.”
She cried harder, but I kept going because if I stopped, she’d pull me under with her tears, and I would hate both of us for it.
“I’ll go anywhere,” I said. “Flint. Toledo. Idaho. Some city I’ve never seen with a rink cold enough to numb this out of me. I’ll play for whoever puts paper in front of me. I’ll rebuild because that’s what I do. I survive. I leave. I become someone new before the old hurt has time to rot.”
“You can’t just leave me.”
My smile felt like a wound. “Watch me.”
Her mouth trembled. “Ryan, please.”
“You need to decide something, Charm.” My voice dropped until it was almost calm, and that scared me more than yelling. “Not tonight in the study. Not with him standing there. Not with your mother watching your face like she could shame you back into place. Right now. Here. With me.”
She stared at me, shaking.
“You need to decide if me being your man is something you can survive out loud,” I said. “Because I already know I can survive leaving. I’ve survived worse things.”
That gutted her the way I wanted it to. Maybe that made me cruel. Maybe I didn’t care.
“Don’t say that.”
“Why?” I asked. “Because it sounds ugly? It is ugly. You made it ugly when you let me stand there and find out my place in your life depends on who’s watching.”
“That’s not true.”
“Then tell me what I am.”
She stared at me, her lips parted, tears freezing on her cheeks.
I waited.
One second.
Two.
The house door opened behind her, spilling warm light across the snow.
“Charm,” Lance called, calm and cold. “Inside.”
Her whole body locked when the command hit her spine. I saw the little girl in the grown woman as the choice split her open.
And still, even after all of it, some stupid part of me waited.
Her eyes moved from me to the house.
Then back.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
I nodded once because anything more would’ve broken me open in front of her, and fuck that.
“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”
I pulled the truck door out of her hand and got in.
She stumbled back, one hand pressed over her mouth, sobbing now, but I didn’t look long enough to let it ruin me. I started the engine, and the sound cut through the driveway while Lance stood in the doorway behind her like a man who’d won something he hadn’t earned.
My hands closed around the steering wheel.
Charm stepped toward the truck. “Ryan.”
I looked at her through the open window, and every soft thing I had left went still.
“Cállate la boca, mi hada. Ya terminamos.”
Her face shattered. “I don’t know what that means,” she cried.
I put the truck in reverse. “It means goodbye.”
The gates opened for me like the house was happy to spit me out.
I backed down the driveway, turned hard, and drove through them without looking at Lance Harlen, without looking at the warm windows, without looking at the girl standing beneath the security lights with my name breaking in her mouth.
I made it to the curve in the road before I checked the mirror, and for half a second, I saw her standing there beneath the security lights, small and pale and frozen between the house that owned her and the man she hadn’t chosen fast enough.
Then the road bent, the Harlens’ perfect driveway disappeared behind the trees, and I gripped the wheel harder as the dark swallowed her out of sight.
My life had always been simple. Cut and dry. If staying meant begging to be chosen, I left.
And if losing her hurt?
I’d survive that too