24 #5
The lodge went still as a small white car turned into the drive alone.
My body recognized it before my mind finished denying the reaction. My pulse slammed against my throat, and every muscle tightened in preparation for a fight I had no intention of allowing her to start.
The car parked several spaces away from the others, but the driver’s door remained closed.
I pictured Charm sitting behind the wheel with both hands pressed against her mouth.
I knew how she cried when she was trying not to make noise.
I knew the exact tremor that moved through her shoulders, the color her eyes became after tears, and how cold her fingers would be when she finally forced herself out of the car.
None of that belonged to me anymore.
The driver’s door opened, and Charm stepped into the snow.
I opened the front door before she reached it. Cold air moved through the entryway while I pulled on my Frost jacket and lifted my gear bag from the floor.
Charm stopped halfway across the drive, her boots sinking into the fresh snow as she stared at me. Her face was swollen from crying, and she looked like she hadn’t slept, eaten, or stopped shaking since I closed my apartment door.
My body registered every detail, but I refused to let any of them reach my face.
“Ryan.”
I slid my sunglasses over my eyes and looked past her toward my truck.
She rushed forward when I stepped onto the porch. “Please wait. I know you don’t want me near you, but I need five minutes.”
I turned toward Briggs. “You have the code to my apartment.”
His expression tightened. “Yeah.”
“I left the spare garage remote in the kitchen drawer. Take it if you need it.”
Charm stopped at the bottom of the steps. “Ryan, please look at me.”
I adjusted the strap of my gear bag and walked down. When she moved into my path, I stepped around her.
The sound she made followed me across the snow. It was small and broken, the same sound that almost made me open the door the night before.
Today, it touched nothing.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know that isn’t enough. I know I failed you, but I need you to hear why.”
I unlocked the truck.
“Ryan.”
I opened the rear door and threw my bag inside. Her hand lifted as though she intended to touch my arm, but she remembered what happened the last time. Her fingers curled into her palm before they reached me.
“Please don’t act like I’m not here.”
I closed the truck door and looked toward Briggs. He stood on the porch with Cade and Easton several feet behind him. Bliss and Aura remained inside the lodge, visible through the open doorway.
“I’ll be at the apartment tonight,” I told Briggs. “You guys enjoy the place.”
Briggs came down one step. “I’ll meet you there.”
“So will I,” Cade said.
Easton moved beside him. “Me too.”
“You don’t need to.”
“Didn’t ask,” Briggs replied.
I nodded once.
Charm looked between us as she finally understood I was leaving the lodge I rented rather than spend one night beneath the same roof as her.
“You don’t have to go.” Her voice cracked. “I’ll stay in the other cabin. I won’t bother you after we talk. I swear.”
I walked toward the driver’s door, and she followed.
“Ryan, I stood up to them after you left.”
My hand stilled on the handle, but I didn’t turn around.
“I told my father what he did was wrong. I told my mother they betrayed me. I left that house and chased you because I choose you.”
Too late.
Every word was one she should have said while I stood in that study begging her to prove I mattered.
“Please say something.”
I opened the door.
“Tell me you hate me. Yell at me again. Say whatever you need to say, but please don’t look through me like I’m nobody.”
I climbed behind the wheel.
Charm caught the edge of the open door without touching me. Tears spilled down her cheeks as she stood inside the narrow space between the truck and the frame.
“I’m asking you to trust that I didn’t mean to hurt you.” Her fingers tightened around the metal. “Please, Ryan. You know me. You know who I am.”
I stared through the windshield.
“I love you.”
The words hung between us while my hands settled around the steering wheel.
“I love you,” she said again, her voice breaking harder. “Please believe me.”
I looked at her then.
Charm’s breath caught as our eyes finally met through the dark lenses of my sunglasses. Hope flashed across her ruined face, instinctive and desperate, because she still believed my attention meant there was something left to save.
I gave her the only thing I had come outside willing to say.
“Begging someone to trust you feels like shit, don’t it, mami?”
Her fingers fell from the door.
I pulled it shut.
Charm stepped back as the engine turned over. She stood beside my truck crying, her arms wrapped around herself while I slid my sunglasses lower on my nose, straightened my backward cap, and looked at Briggs over the top of the frames.
He nodded.
He had me.
I pushed the sunglasses back into place, shifted the truck into reverse, and left Charm standing in the snow with every word I refused to hear.