8 #2
I kept my hands at her waist because taking them away would feel like rejection. Despite whatever the fuck was happening, I didn’t want her confusing my stopping with a lack of desire.
“Why did you say that?”
Her brows drew together. “Say what?”
“Don’t think about tomorrow.”
“Because you’re leaving tomorrow.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
Her expression changed, and the nervous energy she brought through my door sharpened.
“You’re doing it again.”
I knew exactly what she meant, and my jaw tightened. “Charm.”
“No. What the fuck?”
She pushed lightly against my chest, so I stepped back enough to give her room.
That seemed to piss her off more. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
Her tone set mine. “Watch where you take this.”
“I am standing in your apartment wearing lingerie.”
“I noticed.”
“Apparently not enough.”
The words hit hard enough to make anger stir beneath the frustration.
I dragged one hand over my jaw. “You think this has anything to do with whether I want you?”
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to think anymore.”
“I’ve told you.”
“No, you keep telling me you want me and then stopping every time we get close enough for it to mean something.”
“It already means something.”
“Then why are we still doing this?”
Her voice climbed with the question, and I watched the spiral take hold of her in real time.
Charm had a way of getting trapped inside her thoughts. I had seen it with school, clothes, her mother, and restaurants. She started with one question, found three possible answers, then turned every one against herself before anyone else knew there was a problem.
Tonight, it was happening faster.
Her hands trembled when she gestured toward herself. “What else do you need me to do, Ryan? I came here. I put this on because I wanted you to see me in it. I kissed you first. I’m literally telling you I want to fuck you, and somehow that still isn’t enough.”
I moved closer. “Wanting to fuck me isn’t what I’m waiting on.”
Her eyes flashed. “That makes no sense.”
“It does to me.”
“Then explain it, because right now it feels like you like sitting around reading poetry with me and talking about all my damaged little thoughts, but when I actually try to give you something physical, you decide you’re above it.”
My anger sharpened. “I have never acted above wanting your body.”
“You keep stopping.”
“Because I want more than your body.”
“I’m offering you more.”
“Are you?”
The question hurt her. I saw it happen when her chin pulled back like I had physically struck her.
I wanted to take it back immediately.
I held my ground because an easier lie would let us walk straight into the exact thing I was afraid of.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
I took a breath through my nose.
Charm slid down from the counter, and I stepped back so she could stand. She yanked the jacket from the floor and pulled it around herself, covering the lingerie like my words had made her ashamed of it.
That nearly broke me.
“Don’t cover yourself because you think I don’t want what I’m looking at.”
“Then make this make sense.”
“I know the difference between being wanted and being desired.”
She stared at me. “Those are the same thing.”
“No, they fucking aren’t.”
Her mouth parted.
I hated how angry I sounded, but I had spent my whole life learning that distinction. I couldn’t soften it into something prettier because hearing the truth hurt.
“I’ve been desired by women since hockey started putting my name on things. They want the tattoos, the jersey, or the story they get to tell their friends about fucking El Cuchillo. Some want whatever fantasy they built about the barrio kid who made it out and plays hockey now.”
Charm’s face tightened.
“Desire is easy,” I continued. “It asks for whatever part of a person is exciting and leaves the rest untouched.”
“I’m not some puck bunny.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“You’re putting me in the same category.”
“No. I’m telling you why wanting me means something different.”
Her arms folded across herself, and I could almost see every defense rising.
“You desire me,” I said. “I know that. I feel it every time you kiss me, and I knew it before you showed up dressed like every bad decision I have ever wanted to make.”
She didn’t smile, and neither did I.
“But I need you to want me when wanting me costs you something.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’m not wondering whether you want me alone in my apartment. I know you do.”
“Then what are you wondering?”
“Whether you’ll still choose me when somebody you care about doesn’t like it.”
Silence filled the apartment.
Charm’s face went blank in the particular way people did when they had been hit too close to the truth and needed a few seconds to decide whether to deny it or attack.
She chose attack.
“This is about my parents?”
“It’s about you.”
“That’s convenient.”
“It’s fucking true.”
She shook her head and turned away.
I followed her toward the living room. “I’m not asking you to call your father tonight and tell him you’re sleeping with me.
I’m not asking you to post a fucking announcement.
I’m telling you I’m not giving you every vulnerable piece of me while I’m still wondering whether you’ll act like I’m nothing if the wrong person walks into the room. ”
The words left me rougher than I intended because I could already picture it.
Lance entering a room. Charm’s hand slipping from mine. Her posture changing while she found the version of herself he approved of. Me standing there like a mistake she hoped nobody would notice long enough for her to explain it away.
The image reached every place I spent years teaching myself nobody could touch.
Charm spun around. “I have never acted like you’re nothing.”
“At the fair last night, Evan asked if we were together, and you said we were hanging out.”
“We are!”
“Then why did you say it like you needed him to know it wasn’t serious?”
“I didn’t.”
“You did.”
“I got nervous.”
“I know.”
Her eyes filled.
That should’ve shut me up. It didn’t because this mattered too much, and I was already too deep to pretend her fear only belonged to her.
“I know you get nervous,” I said, lowering my voice. “I know people looking at you fucks with your head. I felt you pull your hand away when those girls looked at us yesterday.”
Her face changed again. “You noticed that?”
“I notice everything you do.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“I’m not punishing you for having anxiety, Charm.”
“It sounds like it.”
“Don’t do that.”
She flinched at my tone.
I closed the distance but stopped before touching her. “Don’t turn what I’m saying into something uglier because that version is easier to fight. I don’t care that you get scared. I care that fear still gets a vote in every fucking decision you make.”
Her breathing became faster. “You don’t understand.”
“Then help me.”
“You think I like being like this?”
“I never said that.”
“You think I don’t know I care too much what people think?”
“I think you know it and keep giving them the power anyway.”
The tears gathering in her eyes made my chest hurt, but the frustration had been building for weeks. I watched Charm begin to step outside herself with me, then disappear back inside the second somebody else entered the equation.
“You went shopping with your mother and came home unable to tell me whether you liked your own dress.”
Her mouth tightened. “Don’t bring my mother into this.”
“She’s already in it.”
“No, she isn’t.”
“She is when you can tell me what Crystal thinks before you can tell me what you think.”
Charm looked away, and I kept going because stopping now would leave us exactly where we had been.
“You order shit you think people expect you to order. You change clothes because you’re worried somebody might think the first thing was wrong.
You apologize before you disagree. You’re constantly watching everybody else for signs that you fucked something up, and half the time I ask what you want, you look at me like I handed you an exam. ”
“That’s who I am.”
“No, it isn’t.”
Her eyes came back to mine.
“That’s who you were trained to be.”
She went still.
We had talked about this before in bookstores, at her table, and over Victorian literature. Every earlier conversation involved something small enough that she could laugh when I called her out.
This wasn’t low stakes anymore.
“You want to know who I think you are?” I asked.
“I think you’re the woman who argues with me until two in the morning because she thinks Heathcliff gets too much sympathy.
You’re funny as hell when you forget to be polite.
You’re mean when you’re comfortable, you swear at your sewing machine, and you snort when you laugh hard enough. ”
“I do not snort.”
“You absolutely fucking do.”
Her mouth almost moved.
I stepped closer. “I see you when you forget everybody else exists. I see it with Bliss, Aura, and me.”
My voice roughened before I could stop it because the truth was already breaking through every boundary I thought I had control of.
“That’s the woman I’m falling for.”
Charm’s breath caught.
I heard the words after they left me.
So did she.
For a second, all the fight went out of her face.
“You’re what?”
I should’ve walked it back. Saying it gave her more than I knew how to protect, but pretending I hadn’t meant it would’ve been another kind of cowardice.
“I said I’m falling for you.”
Her eyes flooded completely. “Then why won’t you let me give you this?”
She grabbed the edges of her jacket and pulled them apart, standing in front of me in lace while tears threatened to ruin makeup she probably spent an hour perfecting.
The sight should’ve turned my brain off again.
Instead, it hurt.
“Because I want everything attached to it.”
Her face crumpled before she caught it. “You have everything.”
“No, I don’t.”
“What more do you want from me?”
“I want you to want me outside this apartment as much as you want me inside it.”
“That’s so fucking unfair.”
“No. Me expecting you to become someone else would be unfair. Me knowing what I can survive isn’t.”