21 #3
A few people knew the name existed before hockey, back when I learned that the cleanest way out of anything was to sever it before it dragged me under.
Charm knew the name. She had never understood the man who earned it.
“I told her I was done, and then I told her to get the fuck out.” The Spanish tore from my throat again, every word carrying the same pain it had inside my apartment. “Vete. Ya terminé contigo. Sal de mi vida, de mi corazón y de mi puta alma. Me mataste. Ahora déjame descansar sin tu recuerdo.”
Cade lowered his voice. “What the fuck does that mean?”
I didn’t know whether he asked me or Briggs, but Briggs answered in a tone I had never heard from him before. His voice sounded sad and hollow, and I hoped the same depth had reached Charm even if she hadn’t understood every word.
“Leave. I’m done with you. Get out of my life, my heart, and my fucking soul. You killed me. Now let me rest without your memory.”
All three of them cursed.
“And now?” Cade asked.
“Now I drive to Flint.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“It’s the only answer I have.”
The tires continued humming beneath me. Mile markers appeared inside my headlights and disappeared behind the truck, each one putting more distance between Charm and me.
None of it helped.
She remained lodged beneath my ribs, crying in the hallway.
“I don’t want anyone bringing her to Flint.”
Cade didn’t answer immediately.
“I mean it.”
“She may come on her own.”
“Then don’t help her.”
“What happens if she does?”
“I don’t know, but she isn’t staying with me.”
“What about the cabins?”
“They’re paid for. Everyone can use them.”
“You booked those cabins.”
“For everybody.”
“For Charm,” Bliss said softly.
I swallowed against the pressure in my throat. “Not anymore.”
“What about Saturday?” Cade asked.
“I play.”
“The scouts are still coming?”
“Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, and Washington.”
“And you’re good?”
A brutal laugh left me. “No, but in hockey terms, I am violently ready.”
“So, you can play?”
“That’s a different question.”
“Can you?”
“Hockey existed before her. It’ll exist after her.”
The lie came more easily than the first.
I could play hurt and angry. I could turn every fractured piece of myself into speed and drive it through anybody stupid enough to stand between me and the net.
The ice had never asked me to prove that I deserved it.
“Call Chris when you get to Flint,” Cade said. “Let him know you’re there.”
“I don’t need a babysitter.”
“No, but your agent needs to know his left wing didn’t wrap his truck around a guardrail.”
“Drive the speed limit,” Bliss added.
I glanced at the speedometer and eased off the gas without admitting I had done it.
“We’ll stay with Charm tonight,” Cade said. “You don’t have to worry about whether she’s alone.”
“I hope she’s alone.” My grip tightened on the wheel. “Espero que sin mí no sea más que un fantasma.”
It was another lie.
“I hope that without me, she is nothing but a ghost,” Briggs translated, although nobody sounded like they wanted the English.
“I know,” Cade said.
I hated that he let me keep that lie too.
Briggs spoke from the back seat. “I’ve got your back, Ry.”
The words were simple and stripped of his usual bullshit.
I nodded even though he couldn’t see me. “I know.”
“If you need anything—”
“I won’t.”
“I know that too.”
Something in his tone tightened my chest, but I didn’t examine it. I had spent enough of the night digging through things capable of killing me.
The exit for the interstate appeared ahead. Cade told me to call when I reached Flint. Bliss told me again to slow down. Briggs didn’t say anything else before the call ended.
The silence that replaced them was worse.
I turned on the radio, but the first song was one I had played in my kitchen while Charm danced barefoot with me between the counter and stove. I shut it off before the second line.
Her absence filled the truck anyway.
She remained beside me through the darkness, wrapped in rose-blonde hair and the blue dress she had worn to Thanksgiving.
I felt the phantom weight of her hand on my thigh.
I heard her laugh when I corrected her Spanish and the soft voice she used when she read poetry aloud because she knew I liked listening more than I admitted.
I hated every memory.
I loved every version of her inside them.
By the time the first sign for Flint caught in my headlights, the grief had settled beneath my anger. It hurt every time I breathed, and it would keep hurting whether I admitted it or not.
I had survived hunger, concrete floors, fists, foster homes, rape, and graves. I knew how to build a life from whatever remained after somebody tore the first one apart.
Charm couldn’t be different.
I needed to believe she wasn’t.
I had warned her that I wouldn’t keep playing by the Harlens’ rules. I warned her not to test whether I meant it. She tested me, and I severed every piece of her I could reach before loving her turned me into a man willing to crawl back into that corner.
The parts buried beneath my skin would take longer.
For now, I kept driving.