Page 23

Twenty-two

I couldn’t close my eyes, too scared of the shadows in my room. I stayed at the front door, leaning against the wall, listening to when they came home. Or if I would hear Jared.

But nothing.

Not a whisper, not a creak or a sigh.

They never came home, or they stayed at a different floor.

I have no answers about what happened last night after Jaxon told me to go home, and all I can think about is how beaten and broken Jared looked on the floor. I don’t see them letting him just walk out of there, but what else can they do that won’t end up with them arrested?

And it’s not like I can say anything. Will anyone believe me? Will Jared lie and claim he didn’t try to force himself on me?

I could lose my job. I could lose… everything.

Everything but the men who barely ever let me out of their sight.

Why is everything so messed up?

I clench my eyes shut while I sit in my parked car in front of work. I have to go back in. I have to show my face, but what will I find?

A soft knock on my window makes me flinch, and my eyes fly open.

Dimitri stares at me, his expression blank. He nudges the door, but it won’t open.

I slowly unlock the door and let him open it for me. He doesn’t wait, and the cool morning air crawls inside the car. My body tenses as I gaze up at him, the sun rays gleaming behind his head and almost forming a halo. How ironic.

“I’ll walk you in,” he says, and I swallow.

“What happened to Jared?” I ask as I hop out of my car. Before I can even turn, Dimitri already holds my back and has the car door closed.

“Nothing to worry about, sweetheart,” he says, a cocky grin plastered on his face.

He walks ahead, and I’m not sure what else I can ask as I’m sure I won’t get a full answer .

Every staff member we pass, every player doesn’t look twice as there’s nothing wrong, or at least nothing they know about.

“What about my office?” I ask as I step up to Dimitri.

He says nothing until we reach my door. His hand clutches the handle before he meets my gaze with his light grey ones. “What about it?” He opens the door with a swing, and I peek inside.

The ravage I saw last night is… gone.

Everything seems to be replaced, even my laptop.

Shock renders me speechless at first as I blink my eyes a few times, making sure that I’m not imagining things. How is this possible? Everything was broken. How did they pull this off in a night?

“Wait,” I start, but Dimitri tosses my bag on my desk and almost leaves.

“Dimitri, please,” I say as I reach out and grab his arm, an electric current passing between us. I quickly release him and pull my hand back, my fingertips tingling from where I touched his warm skin.

“We leave after practice,” is all he says and truly leaves me in my office.

There isn’t a drop of blood anywhere. It’s spotless. It even smells clean.

How the hell did they do this?

Without lingering too long, I set everything up and check my laptop to make sure everything is on there .

“How did they do this?” I whisper as I scroll through my calendar. Everything is there, every appointment. Even the pictures of my work trip are still there.

I scroll through the pictures, slowing on the ones with Jared. My stomach lurches at the sight, and memories of last night crawl over my body like ants, making me squirm in discomfort.

How could he do what he did? He was always so… nice.

At this point, I should have a sixth sense for guys who don’t like being told no, who don’t listen to anything else but their own desires. How did I not see this coming?

A knock on my door makes my heart stop. I look up toward the doorway, expecting to see one of the guys or even Jared, but it’s none of them.

“Hope? Do you have a minute?” Head Coach Carpenter asks.

I close out of everything on my computer and nod, forcing my eyes not to widen in concern. “Of course.”

Tension crawls through my body, fearing what he’s here for. Perhaps he knows what the guys did. Perhaps they found Jared’s body.

He walks inside, standing by my desk at the same spot Jared tried… I blink away the memories and focus on Coach’s worried glance.

“Jared,” he sighs. “His shoulder.” He shakes his head.

His shoulder was good until… “What? Did something happen?”

It seems I’m going with it and keeping my mouth shut about last night .

He rakes his fingers through his dark grey hair. “He got in a brawl last night at one of the pubs. His shoulder is… destroyed.”

I blink, forcing myself to act surprised. I saw the state that Jared was in last night. Destroyed is probably an understatement. “Destroyed?”

He nods. “He’s in surgery now, but we’re sending him back home to recover.” He straightens slowly. “You did good, Hope. But we can’t protect them from being stupid boys off the field.”

I muster a smile. “I hope he gets better. He’s a good player.”

The words leave a foul taste in my mouth as they used to be the truth, but now, with what he tried, I can never look at him the same. He will always be the person I thought I could trust and who ended up stabbing me in the back. I don’t even want to be in the same building as him anymore.

I guess Knox did me a favor by making sure Jared can’t play football this season.

“I don’t think he will. I’ve been on the phone the entire morning, and they think he’ll never play again.”

My shoulders slump as relief tremors deep in my chest. Right next to my guilt. I shouldn’t wish for anyone’s downfall, but how many people have tried to cause my own? “Oh…”

He turns and looks around. “Did you… redecorate?” he asks with a furrowed brow.

I tilt my head. “Does it look like I did?” I joke.

He laughs. “No, still the same but also different somehow.”

I clear my throat. “I was in a cleaning mode yesterday, that’s all,” I lie .

At least I disposed of some garbage last night. Well, the guys did for me.

He hums. “Well, it looks nice.”

He smiles down at me and with a last nod, he leaves the office.

I dare to breathe when he takes the last step out of my office. I never lied to him like this. Yes, I kept secrets from my past. Yes, I didn’t tell him what I truly thought about the nightmares he brought on the team.

But this feels different.

But not… wrong.

DIMITRI

I did what was needed and brought her inside, not giving in to her questions, and hurried back to the apartment complex.

We failed. We let someone else touch her. Touch what is ours. And now I have to leave her alone again.

Because this isn’t over.

We broke her all those years ago, tore her apart, and the scars are still there. But we have to put her together, fix her in the image we want. She only needs to give us a tiny opening. Just a sliver of something.

Patience is running out. It slips away, uncontrollable and wild .

I knock two times on Jared’s apartment door, the one next to Hope’s, and Jaxon opens up. I slip inside and lock the door again.

“Find any more?” I ask Jaxon.

He nods. “Knox is losing it.”

“Fuck,” I mumble and step past him.

We’re so blind. We were blind when it came to her father, and we were blind when it came to our teammate, her neighbor.

We’re so hyper-focused on her that it’s putting her in danger. When will we learn to look around her too? At her surroundings. At the people she keeps closest. At ourselves.

If we keep fucking up, we’re really going to lose her.

I step into the spare bedroom and a chill races up my spine as I stare at the wall.

Pictures of Hope. Sleeping, showering, when she’s pleasuring herself, getting dressed, staring out the window, cooking.

There are so many. Too many.

Pictures. Videos. I want to burn every scrap of them all if they contain Hope in them. They’re too damning. Too dangerous.

Besides, a camera can’t capture how beautiful she truly is. How her smile radiates bright enough to light up a room. How her eyes glow their captivating hue.

Pictures and videos are a disgrace when it comes to showing her off.

“They don’t look like pictures,” Knox murmurs as he goes through a pile of them.

Bile rises up my throat. “How so? ”

“How could he take pictures of her taking a shower?” He tosses a pile my way, and they scatter to the floor.

There are so many, too many.

My brows drag together as I stare at them, analyzing the angles…

“The angles are the same, or at least, there are only two, right?” I look at Jaxon as I point at the pictures Knox tossed on the floor, hoping he sees it too.

“And these.” Knox gets up from the bed and hands me a few from Hope’s bedroom.

“Same, right? Same angles. This couldn’t be a camera.”

“Oh, fuck,” Jaxon breathes. “It was. It has to be.”

His words hit me. “He put cameras in her apartment.”

Knox pushes us aside and rushes out.

Jaxon and I run after him, just in time to see that Knox has a key to Hope’s door.

“Hey, since when?” I ask.

Knox stares at me briefly and shrugs. “Day one.” He opens the door, and we follow.

The apartment is spotless. A fresh and flowery scent lingers in the air. As much as I want to take in the space and imagine her in every room, we’re on a mission to uncover what some sick fuck did to her private space.

“Check everywhere,” Knox snaps.

We don’t speak as we scour through her apartment, trying to put everything back how we found it .

Every book, every cabinet, everything gets moved, and my heart skips a beat when a tiny camera stares back at me from between the fake flowers on her bookshelf.

Anger fires through me as I imagine everything this camera captured. Her reading a book snuggled up on the couch. Her laughing as she watched one of her favorite movies. Her crying after we pushed things too far.

Jared didn’t deserve to see any of those things. He didn’t deserve to be in her presence, much less lay a finger on her.

“Found one,” Jaxon bellows.

“Me too!” I sigh as I work to get the camera from its hiding place.

“They are wireless,” I note. “So he had to keep them charged.” The thought wraps around me, thinking about how many times he has been in here without her knowing.

How did he know when to enter? Did he sneak in here at night when she was asleep? He must’ve been watching her and tracking her habits for at least weeks.

A loud crash comes from her bedroom, and I roll my eyes.

“Stop breaking shit!” Jaxon yells and walks into Hope’s bedroom.

That thick fuckhead always has to break stuff. Look what he did to Hope’s office. It took freaking hours to replace everything and a lot of favors.

But we had to do it. Not just because we didn’t want people being suspicious, but also because Hope deserves better than broken pieces and destruction. It’s the least we can do to clean up the mess so that she didn’t have to worry about it on top of everything else.

It’s become clear to us that we need to correct some things and change others if we want her to willingly let us close.

I walk after Jaxon just in time to see one of the wall paintings fling across the room.

But that isn’t what makes anger boil inside me.

Four.

Four fucking cameras lie on her bed.

“All from here?” I ask with an eerie calmness in my voice.

“No,” Knox grits and tosses one more on the bed. “Five.”

“We should’ve killed him,” I say as my fingernails dig into my palms.

“You,” Knox starts, “shouldn’t have stopped me.” He points his finger at Jaxon, and I step between them.

They are both taller, but that won’t matter. I can stand my ground and they know that. Right now, they really don’t want to push me because all I can think about is smashing Jared’s face in for violating Hope in more ways than one.

“Fuck off, both of you,” I say. “Find the cameras and clean this mess up.” I stare at Knox before adding. “Don’t break her stuff. She likes her stuff.”

The tension in his face softens and he stiffly nods before stalking off to pick up the wall painting that he threw across the room.

Jaxon drags his fingers through his hair, sighing through gritted teeth. “If we hadn’t caught him last night, he would’ve gotten away with all of this. He would’ve kept watching her. ”

“Sick bastard,” I mutter, picturing his creepy ass watching her on his computer screen with all the lights out. Did he jack off watching her? Did he picture it was him when he watched her touch herself?

Fury churns in my stomach as my fingers flex. We didn’t teach him a good enough lesson, but as much as I want to beat him down again, we have plenty of work to do here. A wrecked apartment is going to freak her out, and I’m not adding to her stress.

Fuck. I wish I could have her in my arms. I wish I could kiss and fuck away her pain. If she lets me get close.

It took us all day and patience to find the cameras and fix the wreckage Knox created. But I’m sure she’ll notice. She’s too smart to not notice that things aren’t exactly in the same place she left them.

“We have to tell her about this,” I say to the guys, and they both nod.

“We’ll show her tonight,” Jaxon says and lifts up the bag filled with the tiny cameras.

“We have to check his apartment more. I don’t think we have everything,” Knox adds, and I can’t disagree with him.

This obsession… there must be more.

My phone buzzes in my back pocket, and I slide it out, staring at the screen as it lights up and Hope’s message appears.

Are you ready to go?

A smile tugs on the corner of my lip. “Our sweetheart is ready to go home. I’ll go get her. ”

“We’ll wait in Jared’s apartment,” Jaxon says, and an approving grunt comes from Knox.

I nod and stride out of her apartment, ready to have her back by my side. I just wish I didn’t have such bad news to deliver to her.