20
Charm
Ryan’s taillights disappeared around the curve, and my body moved before my mind caught up.
I spun toward the house and nearly slipped on the frozen driveway, catching myself against the hood of my mother’s car before running for the porch. My father said my name somewhere behind me, but his voice barely registered over the blood pounding inside my ears.
The front door stood open, warm light spilling across the stone beneath my boots as I rushed inside and headed for the narrow table beside the staircase.
“Charmagne, where are you going?” my father demanded.
My purse sat exactly where I’d left it when Ryan and I arrived, back when I believed bringing him here meant something. Back when he was still mine and I hadn’t stood beside him while my father carved pieces from him with a smile.
I grabbed the strap with both hands because they were shaking too hard to manage it with one.
“Charmagne, your father asked you a question.”
“Not right now, Mother.”
The words came out louder than anything I had ever said to her. My mother stopped behind me, but I didn’t turn to see what my defiance had done to her face.
I couldn’t care about her expression, my father’s guests, the dinner still sitting on the table, or the humiliation they would claim I had caused by allowing my life to become visible inside their perfect house.
Ryan was leaving.
My father stepped into my path before I reached the side door. “You are in no condition to drive.”
“Move.”
“Running after him while he’s behaving this irrationally will only make the situation worse.”
“He isn’t behaving irrationally.” The strap of my purse cut into my palm as I tightened my fist around it. “You humiliated him, and I let you.”
“I told him the truth.”
“You told him what you needed him to believe so he would leave me.”
My father’s expression hardened. “If one difficult conversation was enough to make that man abandon you, then I have proven my point.”
The accusation entered me so easily that I almost absorbed it.
That was what my father did. He found the fear already living inside me and fed it until it sounded like reason.
Ryan wasn’t abandoning me. I had abandoned him first.
“Move, Daddy.”
“You need to calm down.”
“I need to get to Ryan before he leaves.”
My father remained in front of the door. “And if he refuses to listen?”
The terror behind that possibility nearly brought me to my knees, but I shoved it down and stepped around him.
“Then I’ll make him listen.”
My mother followed me into the mudroom. “Charm, darling, wait. We should discuss this before you do something impulsive.”
I dragged my coat from the hook. “Not right now, Mother!”
My voice cracked through the room hard enough to make her recoil. I shoved my arms into my coat, grabbed my keys, and pushed through the door before either of them could stop me.
The cold struck my wet face as I ran toward my car.
Ryan couldn’t be gone yet. His apartment was twenty minutes away, and he had left only minutes before me. If I drove fast enough, I could catch him.
I could explain that I had frozen. I could tell him my silence didn’t mean he mattered less than my father. I would say every word I should have said inside the study, and once Ryan heard them, he would understand.
He had to understand.
I fumbled the key twice before getting the car started. My tires spun against the thin layer of ice before catching, and I backed out so quickly that the rear of the car fishtailed toward the stone wall lining the driveway.
My mother appeared beneath the porch light. My father stood several feet behind her with one hand braced against the open door.
I drove away without looking back.
I called Ryan before reaching the gates. The call rang once before dropping into voicemail. I ended it and called again, only to hear his recorded voice.
“Please answer,” I whispered.
The streets blurred around me as I drove. I kept one hand clamped around the steering wheel while the other held my phone, calling him repeatedly until the sound of his voice became another form of torture.
He didn’t answer.
My thoughts raced faster than the car as I rehearsed everything I would tell him once I reached the apartment.
Ryan was my person, and I loved him. I wasn’t ashamed of him.
I would stand in front of my father and say it until Lance finally understood that Ryan belonged in my life because I had chosen him.
The words sounded so easy now.
They had been easy in the driveway too, once Ryan was no longer standing in front of me asking for them.
His truck sat crooked in its usual space when I pulled into the apartment complex. Relief struck so violently that my vision blackened around the edges. I barely managed to park before climbing out and running toward the stairs.
He was still here. I hadn’t lost him yet.
My boots struck the metal steps too loudly as I climbed. The cold railing burned beneath my palm, but I used it to drag myself faster, taking the final steps so recklessly that I stumbled onto the landing.
Ryan’s apartment door was open.
He stood inside with his back to me, shoving clothes into the black duffel stretched across the couch.
His suit jacket was gone. The sleeves of his white dress shirt were rolled above his forearms, his tie hung loose around his neck, and the tattoos I had watched my family judge shifted across his skin as he ripped open a drawer and dragged everything inside it into the bag.
“Ryan.”
He stopped.
For one hopeful second, I believed hearing my voice had reached him. His shoulders lifted beneath a slow breath, and I stepped across the threshold before he turned around.
The man who looked at me wasn’t my Ryan.
His eyes were red-rimmed, and his jaw was locked so tightly that the muscles jumped beneath his skin. The fury I expected remained, but it had gone cold. Every warm and complicated thing I knew how to find inside his expression had disappeared behind something lethal.
This was El Cuchillo, the man whose nickname people lowered their voices to say after watching him fight or drive someone into the boards.
This was the kid who had survived foster homes, slept wherever he could find shelter, and learned that being harder than everyone around him was sometimes the only way to stay alive.
“Get out.”
His voice was so quiet that I almost convinced myself I’d heard him wrong.
“Ryan, please let me explain.”
“There’s nothing to explain.”
“There is.” I stepped closer. “I froze. I know that doesn’t make it okay, but everything happened so quickly, and my father knew exactly what he was doing. He knew if he kept pushing—”
“Yeah.” Ryan’s laugh held no humor. “Lance knew exactly what he was doing.”
“He wanted to separate us.”
“And you helped him.”
The words cut cleanly through mine.
“I didn’t mean to.”
“That’s supposed to matter?”
“No, but—”
“Intent doesn’t mean shit when the result is the same.”
He turned toward the couch and jerked the zipper closed on his duffel. The sound tore through the apartment, final and violent.
When he lifted the bag, I saw the books stacked on the coffee table beneath it. Poetry collections. The Bronte novel I had teased him about replacing because his copy was falling apart.
He had packed them for the cabin.
For me.
The realization crushed the air from my lungs. “Ryan, stop.”
He slung the duffel over his shoulder and headed for the door. I stepped into his path.
“Move, Charm.”
“I love you.”
His expression didn’t change.
“I should have said it in there. I should have told my father exactly what you are to me, but I was scared and froze.” Tears blurred the brutal stillness in his face. “I’m here now. I followed you because I’m choosing you.”
“You’re chasing me because I left.”
“No.”
“Yes.” His voice remained quiet, but the destroyed sound beneath it made me ache. “You had the chance to choose me when it cost you something. You didn’t.”
“I made a mistake.”
“You made a choice.”
“My father cornered me.”
“Your father cornered me.” Ryan stepped closer, forcing me to lift my face to keep looking at him. “He looked me dead in the eye and told me I was beneath you while you stood beside him. Don’t come into my apartment and pretend you were the one trapped in that room.”
“I’m not pretending.”
“Then what the fuck are you doing here?”
“I’m trying to fix this.”
“You can’t.”
The certainty in his voice terrified me more than his anger could have.
“Ryan, please don’t say that.”
“You want me to make this easier for you?” His mouth curved into something too sharp to be a smile. “Fine. Let’s make it real fucking simple.”
He gripped his cock over his slacks and tugged.
“You wanted my thick Chicano cock and a little rebellion against Mommy and Daddy. You got both. Congratulations, mamacita. I hope it was worth the trouble.”
The vulgarity struck hard enough to make me flinch. “That isn’t what you were to me.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“You know me better than that.”
“I thought I did.”
A sob broke through my lips. “You don’t mean this.”
His eyes flashed. “Don’t tell me what the fuck I mean.”
“I know you’re hurt.”
“You don’t know shit about what I am right now.”
“You love me.”
“Yeah, I fucking love you.” His voice cracked before rising through the apartment.
“That was the whole fucking problem. I loved you enough to walk into that house after telling you exactly what would happen. I loved you enough to stand in front of your father and hand you every ugly piece of me he tried to use against us.”
His chest heaved as he stared at me.
“I told you who the fuck I am when I’m done, and you thought what? That you were different? That I would keep backing myself into a corner and begging you to choose me?”
“I never wanted you to beg.”
“You let me.”
The accusation stopped my breath.
Ryan’s eyes shone, but he refused to look away. “I stood in that room and asked you to tell him I mattered. You stared at the fucking floor.”
“I was afraid.”
“Chale, so was I.”