Page 131 of Trick Shot

“No.” My voice is steady, unlike my pulse. “I’m not a child, Dominic.”

Dom’s nostrils flare.

“You clearly are if you’re letting him bury his fucking hand between your legs.”

My breath catches and my cheeks flame. My stomach twists in knots of guilt and fury and shame.

Jace immediately moves, taking a step forward.

“Watch your fucking mouth, Dominic.” His voice is nothing like the one that whispered against my skin earlier. It’s darker and sharper.

My brother turns to him slowly, eyes narrowing into dangerous slits. His jaw ticks once.

“You really think I’m that fucking dumb?” His voice is calm, but it’s a violent kind of calm—the kind that only comes when someone is holding themselves back from total destruction.

“Every single time she disappeared last week, you did too.”

Jace and I glance at each other.

“I told myself I was crazy. That I needed to stop thinking like that. That my fucking brother wouldn’t do this to me… would he?”

He looks at me then. And it hurts. Because this isn’t the version of Dominic I know. This is the one that looks like our parents. The one with stone in his eyes and judgment in his mouth.

“And tonight,” he goes on, eyes cutting back to Jace, “I watch her follow you. I give myself shit for thinking it’s suspicious. And then I come down to this.”

He gestures to us and the workbench next to us. The shame hits me all over again, like I’ve been stripped and put on trial.

“Then you shouldn’t have come,” I snap, lifting my chin.

Dom looks at me, eyes narrowed.

“You shouldn’t have followed us,” I continue. “If you were already suspicious, then you knew exactly what you’d find. You should have waited until we were back home and asked me.”

Dom points a finger at me.

“You don’t get to decide how I react to this. Not when you were doing this behind my back.”

“And you don’t get to decide what she does,” Jace steps forward.

“Take a step closer and I’ll break your fuck’n jaw,” Dom warns him, then turns back to me.

I’m done letting his words slice me open while he pretends it’s out of love.

“Dom, this isn’t the time or place—”

“The time and place?” he cuts in, voice sharp. “You let him touch you in his fucking workshop while the whole team’s here. But sure, let’s talk about timing.”

My face flushes, but before I can speak again, Jace does.

“If hitting me’s gonna make you feel better…” He spreads his arms out wide, standing open. “Then do it. Hit me. Then stop for one fucking second and listen.”

Dom’s breathing is erratic, shoulders rising and falling, he’s standing on the edge of eruption.

“You really think there’s anything either one of you can say right now that’s going to make this better?”

His eyes cut back to me. They don’t look like the brother I grew up with.

“You let NHL’s biggest manwhore put his hands on you,” he spits. “And now you want to stand here and reason with me?”