8 #3
“You think I’m going to break your heart?”
“I think you keep acting like you’re the only person here who can get hurt.”
That stopped her.
I swallowed past the pressure in my throat. Admitting fear had never felt safe. Fear gave people a map to the places that mattered, and I spent most of my life making sure nobody held one.
Charm already did.
“I’m not trying to get my heart broken either, hada.”
Her expression shifted when I dropped the mi. I saw her notice, and I hated that she noticed, but anger belonged to me as much as fear belonged to her.
“I grew up knowing exactly what it felt like when people wanted a piece of me and didn’t want the rest. Foster families wanted the check and not the kid.
Coaches wanted the player and didn’t give a fuck what happened after practice.
Women wanted whatever part of me they decided was exciting without giving a shit whether they actually knew me. ”
Charm shook her head quickly. “I know you.”
“You’re getting there.”
“That is such bullshit.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“I asked about your mother when nobody else did. I learned Spanish because I wanted to understand you. I know which books you won’t loan people and what you drink when you’re too tired to pretend coffee is enough.
I know you hate sleeping with your back to a door, and you always check the exits before you sit down somewhere.
Don’t stand there and tell me I don’t know you. ”
The anger cracked around something softer.
She was right.
Charm knew me better than most people ever bothered to. She noticed the things I spent years making invisible, and instead of stepping around them, she asked questions. I had given her answers because some reckless part of me trusted the care behind the way she listened.
That was why this hurt so much.
A stranger couldn’t make me feel hidden. Charm could because I wanted her recognition to mean she would choose what she saw.
I lowered my voice. “I didn’t say you don’t know me. I said I don’t know whether you’ll choose what you know when somebody whose opinion scares you tells you I’m wrong for you.”
Her tears spilled.
I wanted to wipe them away, but my hands remained at my sides because comforting her couldn’t come at the price of abandoning myself.
Charm laughed once, broken and bitter. “Fine. Maybe you should go to Flint and fuck your puck bunnies, then. You can stop worrying about whether I’m brave enough for you and go do whatever you normally do in every city.”
Every muscle in my body went still.
She knew it immediately. Regret flashed across her face while I stared at her.
“That’s what you think of me?”
Her lips parted. “I didn’t mean—”
“You did.”
“I’m pissed.”
“That doesn’t make the words disappear.”
She rubbed both hands over her face. “Ryan, I’m trying to understand what the fuck you want. You tell me you want me, act like we’re together, tell me there’s nobody else, but you won’t sleep with me, and now you’re leaving. What am I supposed to think?”
“You’re supposed to believe what I’ve been telling you from the fucking beginning.”
“How do I know that stays true when you’re gone?”
That hurt worse than the puck-bunny comment.
I laughed once because the alternative was saying something I couldn’t take back.
Every private thing I had given her shifted beneath the question.
My mother’s dictionary. The Spanish notebook.
The promise that I wouldn’t disappear. The certainty I handed her every time she asked whether another woman could change my mind.
Charm trusted my attention when it reassured her. The moment fear became louder, my character turned negotiable.
Her eyes widened. “Then what the fuck are we doing?”
“I trust you.”
“No, you want to trust me.”
Her face crumpled. “I do trust you.”
“You just told me you think I might get on a bus tomorrow and fuck whatever woman knows my jersey number.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“It came out of your mouth.”
“I’m scared!”
“And I’m angry.”
My voice rose for the first time, and Charm stepped back.
I hated the distance immediately, but I kept going because loving her couldn’t mean swallowing everything that hurt me until she felt safe again.
“I’m allowed to be angry when you decide my character is negotiable because you’re scared.”
She stared at me.
I dragged both hands over my face and turned away long enough to get control of myself.
When I looked back, she had wrapped the jacket around her body again and crossed her arms beneath her breasts.
Her eyes were glassy, her breathing uneven, and the determination she carried through my door had tipped into panic.
I knew she was spiraling.
I cared enough to want to catch her.
I cared about myself enough to hold the boundary that started this fight.
“I don’t give a fuck what your father thinks about me,” I said more quietly. “I don’t care if your mother thinks my tattoos are trashy or your friends decide I’m bad news. I don’t need their approval.”
Charm wiped beneath one eye. “I know.”
“No. Listen to me.”
Her gaze lifted.
“I only care if you approve.”
“I do.”
“You don’t even approve of yourself half the time.”
The words landed exactly as hard as I feared they would.
Charm recoiled, and my stomach dropped.
“That’s what you think of me?”
The hurt in her voice made the entire fight feel too sharp, but it was true. I watched her tear herself apart over clothes, grades, opinions, food, conversations, and every fucking decision she made. Pretending I hadn’t seen it wouldn’t protect either of us.
“I think you’re harder on yourself than anybody else could ever manage to be.”
Her tears spilled again.
“I think you are constantly waiting to find out what everybody wants from you so you can become it before they have the chance to decide you failed. I think you’re so fucking close to seeing you don’t have to live that way anymore.”
Her lower lip trembled. “So close isn’t enough for you.”
My throat tightened. “Close can still break my heart.”
That stopped everything.
Charm stared at me, and I watched the words reach her. The fight fell apart beneath the realization that I wasn’t standing across from her judging whether she was good enough for me.
I was scared too.
My fear had different roots, but the same stakes waited beneath it.
I had let her into the place that still expected every person I loved to become temporary.
I was already imagining her inside ordinary parts of my life that no longer felt ordinary without her.
Six weeks had been enough for her mug beside my sink and her pen in my cup to feel like evidence of something I wanted to keep.
If she chose Lance’s approval over me later, she wouldn’t only end a relationship. She would confirm the ugliest thing I had spent my entire life trying not to believe—that I could be loved privately and still remain too wrong to claim in the light.
“I want all of you,” I said, “or none of you.”
“That sounds like an ultimatum.”
“It isn’t.”
“It feels like one.”
“I’m not asking you to fix yourself before I care about you. I already care about you. I’m telling you I won’t take the part you’re offering because you think sex is going to prove I want the rest.”
Her face went white. “I don’t think that.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No.”
“Every time I stop, you look at me like I rejected you.”
She looked away, and that answered me.
I stepped closer slowly enough that she had time to move if she wanted. She didn’t.
“You think I don’t notice? Your whole face changes. You start pulling at your clothes, stop looking at me, and ask whether I’m sure about shit I’ve already answered.”
Charm’s eyes closed. “It feels like rejection.”
The confession was barely audible, and my anger softened around the edges.
“I know.”
Her eyes opened.
I wanted to kiss her. Instead, I touched one finger beneath her chin.
“But I’m not fucking you to fix a fear I didn’t create.”
She inhaled sharply. “Then what am I supposed to do?”
“Figure out what you actually want from me.”
“I know what I want.”
“You know what you want tonight.”
“That’s insulting.”
“It’s honest.”
She stepped away from my hand. “Then go.”
My chest tightened. “Charm.”
“No. Go to Flint. Play hockey. Do whatever you need to do.”
“I am.”
Her face changed because she hadn’t expected me to agree.
“You’re just going to leave?”
“I have a job.”
“So hockey comes first.”
“Right now? Yeah.”
The answer hurt her, and I let it because I worked too fucking hard to lie about what hockey required from me.
“Hockey has to come first right now. I leave in the morning. I have practice, games, and people depending on me to show up ready to do the thing I have spent my whole life building.”
Charm nodded too quickly. “Fine.”
“Stop saying fine when nothing is fine.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to take six days and decide whether you actually believe the shit you just said about me.”
She stared while I walked back toward the bedroom and picked up the shirt she had thrown onto the floor.
“If you think I’m the kind of man who tells you there’s nobody else and then fucks women on the road the second you can’t see me, I don’t know why you came here tonight.”
“That’s not what I think.”
“Then figure out why you said it.”
“I was scared.”
“I know.”
“Why isn’t that enough?”
“Because fear explains why you hurt somebody. It doesn’t make the hurt disappear.”
Charm went silent.
I pulled the shirt over my head. Her eyes followed the movement, and for one miserable second, I remembered how the night started.
Her legs had been wrapped around my waist. Lace warmed beneath my hands, and her mouth tasted like the future I had spent six weeks refusing to rush.
I would have sold a kidney to go back twenty minutes.
I wouldn’t go back by lying to either of us.
“I guess we’ll talk when I get back.”
Her eyes snapped to mine. “You guess?”
“Yeah.”
“Ryan.”
“Maybe you need this.”
“What?”
“Time away from me.”