Page 26 of Break

Hope turns and looks at me as her dad pushes her to the guest room. Her eyes are watering. Her lips part, and for a moment Ithink she’s going to say something. She’s practically digging her feet into the carpet.

“Are you going to fight me again, girl?” her dad slurs. “You know how it will feel then. You know I like how pretty you look when you cry.”

“Don’t do this,” she whispers to him, tears brimming her eyes.

She doesn’t hit him, but with that threat… I can’t do nothing. I can’t let this play out in front of me. I can’t make up for the past, can’t change shit, but I sure as hell can do something now. She doesn’t want him, doesn’t want this, and only an asshole, an ingrate would let it happen.

The no is clear.

I hurl forward, grabbing his shoulder, and fling him back against the table. Coach hits me. “That’s my piece of ass you’re—”

I hit him harder, sending him tumbling over the table. “She said no.”

I see red. Maybe it’s years of pent-up issues. Maybe it’s the fact that I should have done this the first time I saw a video of him with her. Maybe it’s long overdue and I have to get it out of my system.

I’m ready to kill her dad. I slam my fist into him again, then I’m lifted off him. His face is bloody, his eye swollen shut, his lip cut, but it’s not enough. I kick him as hard as I can in the dick, and considering I used to be a kicker, I have plenty of force.

He can’t even scream. He wheezes and cups his dick and balls in his hand as he curls into the fetal position. Knox hits me and Dimitri drops me.

I glower at Knox.

“What the fuck!” he demands.

“She said no. End of discussion,” I say as I pick myself up off the ground. “Think on that tonight, then tell me I was wrong.”

I spit on Knox’s shirt, shake my head, and look at Dimitri. He clears his throat. “She left.”

Then I have no reason to stay.

Fourteen

DIMITRI

Were 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 somethingelse.

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. Jaxonhas always believed if someone is worth fighting, it’s because they deserve the worst agony a person can give.

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