Page 99 of The Triple Play

Elliot held up his hands in surrender, his lips breaking into a smirk as he laid there on the grass.

“Just… shit, you know I don’t want to, but let him go,” I sighed, grasping Cole by the shoulder and pulling back gently. He let me. “For once, we need to use our brains.”

Cole spat in his general direction, taking a few steps back and removing his foot from Elliot’s chest.

“Get the fuck out of here before I call the police for stalking me,” I said.

Elliot pushed until he was sitting up, wiping the dirt and morning dew off on his basketball shorts, his gaze flicking between us like he wasn’t convinced we wouldn’t just let our fists fly. But I wasn’t about to be arrested for assault unnecessarily when we had a kid on the way.

“You come back here again and I won’t be as forgiving,” I added. “Believe me when I say you don’t want three sets of fists hitting your skull.”

Chapter36

Cole

Ishut the front door behind us as quietly as I could, but my hands were still shaking as I set my keys down on the table by the door. My mind kept replaying Colton’s voice from five minutes ago, raw and angry, and the way Elliot had smirked like he held all the cards here.

“We need to wake Xavi,” I murmured, kicking off my slip-ons I’d pulled on in a hurry before I’d left earlier. “He needs to know. Then we can figure out how to tell Annie without sending her into a spiral.”

“Yeah. Okay,” Colton said.

I was absolutely exhausted from the game last night, from the stress of the last few weeks in general, but I couldn’t let it stop me from handling this the way we needed to. I checked my phone as I slipped down the hall, Colton hot on my heels. We still had two hours until morning skate. We could do this.

But my stomach churned at the thought of Annie being here alone while we were out.

I pushed open the guestroom door quietly, slipping into the darkness, and immediately noticed the lack of Annie on the bed. Xavi was sprawled out, still lightly snoring, peaceful and oblivious.Shit.

“Colton, go find Annie,” I whispered. “She might be throwing up. Don’t tell her what’s going on.”

“On it.”

Colton darted out of the room, and I moved to the side of the bed, flicking on the lamp on the bedside table. I reached out a hand and shook his shoulder lightly.

“Xav,” I said, my voice hushed. “Wake up.”

He groaned and rolled onto his side toward me, his hands reaching out like he was searching for Annie. “What time is it…?” he grumbled, turning his face into the pillow.

“It’s eight. I need you to wake up.”

“Skate’s not till ten.”

“Xavi, we have a problem,” I said, swallowing down the discomfort of it.

That did it. He sat up fast, blinking hard, his eyes not quite focusing. He scrubbed at them, pressing his palms into his eyesockets as if it would help, his hair an absolute mess and dried drool clinging to the side of his mouth. “What? Where—Is Annie okay?”

Colton jogged back in, his gaze flicking between me and Xav. “She’s in the shower. She’s a little nauseous, but fine. Took every bit of self-control to not get in there with her.”

Xavi’s brows furrowed as he turned to look at me. “What’s going on if it’s not Annie?”

“Colton went for a run this morning,” I swallowed. “He was followed. Photographed.”

Xavi blinked slowly. “Photographed? Like, press?”

Colton shook his head, checking back over his shoulder briefly to make sure Annie hadn’t randomly gotten out and followed him. “It was Elliot,” he explained, his voice a little hollow. “He’s working with Annie’s dad. Think they’re digging up dirt on us, said Annie’s ‘throwing her life away’.”

Xavi’s eyes went wide as he ran a hand through his sleep-messed hair. “Are you serious?”

I nodded. “Colton said he has… pictures. We don’t know exactly what of, but he implied that they’re bad. Apparently, we need to be a bit more mindful of shutting the blinds. He threatened to go public.”

---