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Fourteen

DIMITRI

W ere we wrong?

The thought keeps echoing in my head. Something was off. That’s what Jaxon was telling me the second he brought Hope here. I didn’t see her face, but Jaxon’s not a soft kind of guy. Her being upset wouldn’t get under his skin. It’s something else.

Then his comment. The only thing he said once he ripped Coach away from Hope… “She said no.”

It breaks me. I rub my jaw. All those videos. There were so many, and we… we never said a fucking word. My dad never took her seriously, and that seemed to mean it wasn’t serious. She was just a liar, but now I’m bothered.

The way she looked at me—like I was her only shot at freedom—made my damn stomach twist. And I just sat there. I fucking sat there and watched Coach claim her soft body with his greedy hands.

Our body. Our girl.

Knox gets Hope’s dad in the recliner. Coach pants. “Ice, please. Knox. My boy.”

Knox just stares down at him. There’s no mercy, no forgiveness, no confusion in his eyes. He’s pissed, the kind of pissed that would make me sure that Knox could kill someone.

“Knox?” Hope’s dad demands, opening his good eye to look at Knox.

“Did she ever like it?” Knox asks.

Her dad huffs. “Of course she did. You saw the tapes. She begged me for it.”

“But she ran?” I ask, my voice punching out with more ferocity than I’ve ever spoken to Coach with before. “Why would she run from you if she liked it? If she begged for it? If she wanted it?”

He glowers at us, then stands up just to drop back down while clutching his crotch. Jaxon doesn’t hold back when he fights. Knox learned how to pull his punches and his kicks. Jaxon has always believed if someone is worth fighting, it’s because they deserve the worst agony a person can give.

And he can give a lot.

“No, she ran because of what you three did to her. I had a perfect little fuck toy and you three screwed it up!” Coach snarls. “So you’re going to fix it. I’ve had to spend seven years only hearing her voice on the phone. Seven years watching the videos.”

“Did she ever come on to you?” Knox snarls.

“You’ve seen the videos!”

“The videos of you , a grown man, fucking your daughter,” I hiss as my stomach churns at the thought. It was never right, no matter how stupid and brainwashed we were in the past. “Videos you never should have shown us.”

“She’s a whore! She’s just like her mother, ready to spread her legs for anyone, but then you three broke her! I bet you hurt her. You’re the ones who didn’t listen to her saying no. Did you even wait for the yes?” her father snarls.

“Did you?” Knox demands.

He starts to say something, but Knox takes a step forward, his hands curling into fists. It shuts up Hope’s dad long enough for Knox to speak. “Did you beat her until she said yes? Threaten her with worse if she didn’t?”

“I—”

“That’s what it sounds like.”

“A good whore knows her place,” Hope’s father says.

I wince on his behalf. His behalf and Hope’s.

How the fuck did we ignore it? No. We didn’t ignore it.

There’s no excuse for the kind of shit we pulled.

I was sure she was legal and sure it was super ‘Alabama’ of her to want her dad, but there’s stepdad porn and…

fuck, I made every possible excuse to not believe he was…

The word is too terrible to say. I don’t want to think she had to deal with that for years.

So many videos .

Knox looks at me, and I realize I said those last three words aloud. They hang in the air for what feels like minutes before fading away into tense silence. Silence that is meant to be broken.

No… shattered .

Something breaks in Knox. He loses it. He grabs coach’s face and slams his head into the coffee table, breaking Coach’s nose and probably dislocating his jaw. I stand up and push Knox back.

“Don’t kill him,” I order, fighting the part of me that wants to see Coach bleed and suffer for all the fucked up shit he did to our girl.

“He deserves it,” Knox argues, struggling against me.

“Kill him and you’re in jail. If you’re in jail, the team is fucked, we’re fucked, and so is Hope because this asshole won’t be in jail,” I try to reason.

“So pretty. So much like her mom,” Coach drools. “It was so easy. A few threats, a few warnings, a few drugs every now and again.” He laughs. “Once I had one video, all I had to say was that I’d release it. And who would believe her? I was a pillar of the community. Nothing could stop me. ”

“You'd better say that to the fucking police or I will kill you,” Knox snarls. “I’ll make sure you feel every second of it and bury you where no one will find you.”

And he means it. He will absolutely follow through on his threats. He learned it from the bloody asshole in front of him.