21
Ryan
The door closed, and I turned the deadbolt before Charm reached the stairs. My hand stayed wrapped around the lock as her sob broke apart in the hallway, muffled by the door and the blood pounding inside my ears.
For one second, my body forgot the decision my mind had already made.
Every instinct I had turned toward that sound.
I wanted to open the door, catch her before she fell, and pull her against my chest. I wanted to say the Spanish softly this time, tell her I was pissed and that she had fucking gutted me, but let her cry against my skin while I figured out how to forgive her.
I tightened my grip until the metal dug into my palm.
Her footsteps retreated toward the stairs until my apartment fell silent. I stood inside it listening as the woman I loved walked out of my life, and some vicious, ruined part of me waited for her to come back.
I wanted another knock and another plea. I wanted her to pound on the door until the hinges shook because holding it closed would prove I meant what I said.
She didn’t come back.
The outer stairwell door slammed below me. I lowered my forehead against the wood and closed my eyes.
“Chale,” I whispered, the word barely leaving my mouth.
My chest refused to expand. I dragged in a breath that caught halfway down and tried again, but the apartment felt too small to hold enough oxygen.
Her perfume still hung in the air. I could smell the cold she had brought inside and the sweetness that always clung to her hair. The books I had bought for the cabin remained stacked on the coffee table, the velvet-bound copy of Wuthering Heights catching the light from the lamp.
I stared at them until the edges blurred.
Then I slammed the side of my fist into the door.
Pain tore through my hand. It wasn’t enough, so I hit the door again with the front of my fist, harder this time, rattling the frame beneath the impact.
“Fuck!”
I turned away before I put my hand through something I would have to explain to management.
My duffel waited beside the couch, half-packed because I had been too busy cutting Charm out of my life to finish. Her apartment key remained trapped inside my fist.
I opened my hand and found a red line crossing my palm where the teeth of the key had pressed into my skin. It looked exactly the same as it had when I gave it to her. The same cheap silver metal and shallow grooves remained, but my hand shook beneath its weight.
Giving Charm access to my apartment had meant I had finally stopped keeping one foot outside my own life. She could walk in whenever she wanted, leave books on my counters, hang dresses beside my clothes, steal my shower, and cover my bathroom with products I couldn’t pronounce.
She could exist inside my space when I wasn’t there. Instead of feeling invaded, I had liked finding evidence that I was no longer alone.
I had built room for her without realizing how much of myself I moved to make it. Now I had the key back, and none of the space around me felt like it belonged to me anymore.
I threw the key onto the counter. It struck the laminate, skidded into the wall, and dropped behind the toaster.
After opening the group chat, I typed the only explanation I was willing to give them.
Ryan: Leaving this chat. Leaving Kimball. Headed to Flint. Charm and I had a thing for a minute. It’s dead. I’m out.
I added one more message.
Ryan: Signed, El Cuchillo.
I left the conversation, closing another path people could use to reach me, and dropped my phone onto the table.
I grabbed the duffel and tossed it onto the couch to finish loading it. My phone began ringing before I had shoved the last shirts inside, and I knew who it was without looking.
Cade’s name filled the screen.
I let it ring while I closed the bag. The call ended, only to start again three seconds later.
“Persistent motherfucker,” I muttered.
I slung the duffel over my shoulder, answered on my way out, and pressed the speaker button. “I’m driving.”
“Then put me through the truck.”
Cade’s voice sounded controlled. Too controlled. The motherfucker only sounded like that when he was furious enough to start making careful decisions, the kind that benefited the people he loved more than himself.
“I’m not in the truck yet.”
“Where are you?”
“Leaving my apartment.”
A door closed on his end of the call. Bliss said something I couldn’t understand, followed by rustling and the unmistakable sound of Briggs complaining about his knees.
“Why is Briggs with you?”
“Because your dramatic group-chat exit interrupted pie.”
Briggs’s voice came from farther away. “I didn’t even get pie.”
“You had two pieces,” Bliss said.
“One was experimental.”
“Briggs,” Cade warned.
The car fell quiet because they knew his tone as well as they knew mine when I had reached the end of somebody’s shit.
I locked the apartment behind me and stared at the door. The deadbolt slid smoothly into place, indifferent to the fact that I had just removed the only other person who possessed a key.
Cade waited until I reached the stairs. “Did Charm come to your apartment?”
My grip tightened around the phone. “You know she did.”
“Is she still there?”
“Hell fucking no.”
“What happened?”
“I ended it.”
The silence on the line changed. Bliss drew a sharp breath, but she didn’t speak. Tires hummed beneath them, confirming they were already on the road.
Cade kept his voice steady. “Where is she now?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care.”
“Ryan.”
“What the fuck do you want from me? I told her to leave, and she left. I didn’t put a tracker on her car before I ripped my key off her ring.”
Briggs cursed beneath his breath.
I took the stairs too quickly and struck the landing hard enough to send pain through my knees. Cold air cut through my open collar when I shoved through the outer door.
“You took your key back?” Cade asked.
I looked both ways before crossing the lot. “Sure as fuck did.”
His next pause told me he understood.
A fight left room for tomorrow. Taking back the key told Charm she no longer had a tomorrow inside my home.
“How bad was it?” Cade asked.
“Bad enough.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
I threw my duffel behind the seat in my truck. “I made sure she understood.”
“Understood what?”
“That there’s nothing left of us.”
My voice sounded normal. Low and controlled. Maybe a little irritated, but nothing close to the wreckage tearing through my chest.
I had moved through foster homes with my belongings in garbage bags and learned how to keep my face empty while strangers decided whether I was worth the trouble. I knew how to speak while something inside me was dying.
I slid behind the wheel and started the truck.
Cade heard something anyway. “What did you say to her?”
“I told her what she was to me.”
Bliss spoke for the first time. “Ryan—”
“I’m not giving you the details, B. I know you’re going to hear this shit, but it stays between the four of us. You’re a bystander.”
“I understand, Ry. I wasn’t asking for them.”
“Good.”
I connected the call to my truck and dropped my phone into the center console. Cade’s voice filled the cab while I backed out of the space.
“We’re headed to the ABC apartment,” he said. “Aura called Bliss. Charm’s there.”
“Then she has somewhere to go.”
“That’s all I needed to know.”
He didn’t tell me to turn around. He didn’t remind me that Charm loved me, explain why she froze, or ask me to be patient with wounds her parents had spent a lifetime creating.
Cade was the only person who had known me during my life on the streets. He understood what loving Charm had cost me.
“I defended us and defended her,” I said as I pulled onto the street. “She kept her eyes on the ground while her daddy cut me off at the knees in front of her. She didn’t make a sound, so I bounced. Then she followed me and came into my apartment thinking she could apologize and make it disappear.”
“You warned her.”
“I fucking warned her, Cade.”
“I know.”
“I told her I was done fucking around. I told her I’d had enough and wasn’t playing by the Harlen rules anymore. I was going to play by mine, and she better not test me.” My hands tightened around the wheel. “She looked me in the fucking eye and promised she was mine.”
Cade’s silence gave me room to continue.
“She knew what that dinner could become. I told her before we ever walked inside that house. I told her I wasn’t going to sit there while her father decided whether I was good enough to touch his daughter.”
“He never intended to give you a chance,” Briggs said.
“No shit.”
“I’m saying Charm should have known that too.”
The certainty in his voice caught me off guard. Briggs usually found humor in a funeral procession, but none of it touched his voice now. He sat in Cade’s back seat, listened to me bleed, and made sure I knew he saw who had caused the wound.
I turned onto the highway toward Flint.
“The worst part is that I didn’t need her to fight him,” I said. “I didn’t need a big fucking speech. I never asked her to throw wine in his face or burn down the house on our way out. I asked her for one sentence. Dile que importo.”
Briggs translated for them. “Tell him I matter.”
Cade exhaled as Bliss whispered, “Fucking hell, Charm.”
Their reaction nearly made me miss the entrance ramp. I wrenched the wheel harder than necessary and forced my truck through the curve.
“Yeah.”
“She should’ve said it,” Briggs said.
Bliss remained quiet, and her silence meant more than if she defended me. She loved Charm. She should have been the first person explaining the fear, conditioning, and every reason Charm’s mouth stopped working in that room.
Instead, she allowed the truth to remain ugly.
Charm should have said it.
“She looked at the floor,” I told them. “I watched something inside her shut down, and I knew before she said a pinche word. She chose the version of herself that could still walk back into that house and be their daughter.”
Cade’s voice hardened. “She left you standing alone?”
“I’ve stood alone before.”
“I know.”
“I’ve survived worse.”
“I know that too.”