Page 29 of Rulebreaker (Gamebreakers #4)

TWENTY-NINE

Atlas

Bang!

The boards rattle, the impact loud in the empty rink.

My opponent’s grunt and curse at me is just as loud.

“Fuck, Atlas!” he growls as the puck squirts free.

I ignore him, just give him one more shove before I corral it and skate off, hauling ass to the net.

The guys don’t make it easy on me, even though this is supposed to be a friendly match–but then again they’re not blasting people into the boards like I am either.

And I don’t feel the sticks slashing over my forearms, the shoulders connecting with mine, the shoves to my back.

Nope.

I’m purely focused on the goal.

Because maybe scoring will make me feel something–or make me feel anything instead of the frigid anger, so cold it’s sunk itself into my cells, frozen them in place.

Frozen me in time .

She’s married.

Fucking married .

“Fuck,” I hiss, bobbling the puck. The ice surrounding me shudders under the pressure of that thought—something that’s helped along by another slash, this time hard enough to send pain radiating up my arm.

I glance to the side, see Banks’s angry face, and regroup, getting control of the puck again, driving hard to the net.

Banks chases me down, but I’m fueled by rage, by fury, by?—

Hurt.

Clang!

My shot glances off the post and collides with the boards, but when I pivot to grab it, I suddenly find myself face down on the ice, Banks’s big ass body on top of mine, both of us sliding several feet before we come to a halt.

“Enough,” he growls when I fight him.

But the man is big and strong…and he does this shit for a living.

I have no chance of bucking him off, not even with that frozen rage fueling me.

“Go!” he snaps, and considering that I’m still eating fucking snow, I can’t see who he’s talking to.

I find out less than twenty seconds later, though, because Banks levers his weight off me, hand shifting to my arm–

An arm I yank.

And don’t succeed in freeing.

Mostly because Dash is grabbing my other arm and the two of them are hauling me to my feet on the now empty rink. I don’t get the chance to even get my skates under me before they’re dragging me off the ice.

I grunt as they drop me onto the bench, scowl when Banks, Dash, and Royal immediately close in on me, blocking my exit back out onto the rink, toward the locker room, cutting off all angles of escape.

And, fuck, but I want to escape.

To get the fuck out and bury myself in work, in what’s safe, and never fucking look back.

Romantic love is bullshit.

Honesty is an illusion.

“Well?”

I look up, see that my friends–my family –are glaring at me.

“What?” I snap, glaring right back.

Dash drops his big, dumb hands on his hips and lifts his brows. “Want to tell me?—”

Royal coughs.

“ Us ,” Dash corrects, “what the fuck is going on?”

I grind my teeth together so tightly that a bolt of pain shoots through my jaw. “You’ve seen the stories. And you’re the one who alerted me to the news in the first place. You know exactly what’s going on.”

“I’ve seen the tabloids, dumbass,” Royal says. “And I’ve been in enough of them to know they’re always spouting bullshit.”

“Not this time,” I mutter.

She’s married–fucking married.

And I fell in love with her. And she lied.

She fucking lied.

There’s a blip of quiet then Dash asks, “So, you’re not going after her?”

“No.” I glare at him. “I’m not.”

More silence, a longer blip.

Then Banks tosses up his hands and snaps, “Have you learned nothing from us?”

“I’ve learned,” I growl. “I’ve fucking learned plenty. ”

That whole claiming a good woman, giving her the world, and doing everything in my power to make her mine forever?

I learned I wanted it.

Learned it was the most precious gift on the planet.

I just didn’t learn how to fucking choose wisely.

“Yeah?” Dash bends, his face several inches from mine. “Then why the fuck are you here and not in Nashville with Lily when she so clearly needs you.”

I sniff. “I’m sure she and her husband are doing just fine.”

Dash straightens, shoves his hand through his hair and sighs disgustedly.

But it’s Banks quiet question that slices deep, shattering all that ice around me. “Did she tell you she wasn’t married anymore?”

“No,” I growl. “But generally fucking someone and dating them and making them fucking fall in love with you means that you’re not fucking married!”

My friends still.

Then Dash lifts his brows. “You didn’t know?”

“I didn’t know,” I grit out.

“ You didn’t know?” Banks says, eyebrows in his hairline, shock in the lines of his face.

“I fucking just said that, didn’t I?”

The idiots just look at each other.

“You didn’t know?” Royal asks.

“Right,” I mutter, shoving up to my feet. “I’m done with this conversation.”

Banks catches my shoulder, pushes me back down. “You didn’t background check her?”

I blow out a breath. “No.”

“Seriously?” Dash blinks.

Kill me now.

But I know they’re not going to leave–and as much as it galls me, I can’t fucking take them all on at once.

They’ll just hold me down and I’ll have to answer their questions anyway.

“I trusted her,” I admit and without the ice, the pain is roaring back in, making it hard to breathe, to think.

“So no, I didn’t run a check on her. I expected her to tell me shit like this. ”

Royal shakes his head. “Fuck, man?—”

“I know—” I begin, expecting him to be on my side now.

“—you need to stop acting like a hurt little bitch boy and focus.”

My mouth drops open. Then I glare at him again. “On the fact that she lied to me?”

“On the fact that her feelings for you were likely so goddamned big that she was terrified of hurting you,” he says and those words bounce through my insides, doing damage, so much damage that my anger starts to ebb away…

And horror slowly begins to grow in its place.

Because all at once I remember her telling me we needed to talk at the airport.

And at the house Jean-Michel arranged for us, when I was so fucking worried about cooking us breakfast that I didn’t give her the time or space.

Had there been other times?

Maybe.

Christ, I can’t think.

Can’t breathe.

She’d tried to tell me.

And–

Royal’s phone buzzes and he snags it from the cubby on the bench, staring down at the screen.

“Lily is a good person,” Banks says. “We all know that”—the guys nod their agreement, though Royal’s is distracted, since he’s still focused on his cell—“but her not telling you aside, you’re missing the important part of this. ”

I freeze, that horror filling my insides as I rasp out, “What part?”

“She was eighteen when they met, man. Twenty when they married. And he was fifty-eight and sixty.” Disgust on his face. “Of age or not, there was no way she could truly consent to that, could truly be an equal party in the relationship, not when he held her career in the palm of his old ass hand.”

Fuck. Fuck.

He’s right.

And I didn’t let her explain, didn’t stick by her side and figure out how to help her out of what had to be a messy situation–prenups and royalty rights, the fucking age gap between them…

I just told her to go.

To go back to him.

To the man who took advantage of her, manipulated her, who might have?—

“I need to go,” I say, standing up, shoving away Banks’s hand when he goes to grab me again.

“I’m glad you’re getting it, but you need—” he begins.

“No,” Royal interrupts, gaze lifting from his phone’s screen, his eyes locking with mine, the expression in the blue depths making my inside twist. “He really does need to go.”