Page 22 of Protect

I give him a long look. “Did you pack everything?”

“Yes.”

I check his bag too and snort. “You forgot your good luck charm. I don’t like our odds without it.”

Dimitri rolls his eyes, clearly not in the mood for an attempt to fix our fucking problem. “It’s not a good luck charm, it’s a fucking knuckle buster.”

“Sounds like common sense rather than good luck considering what we’re about to get into,” I hint.

Sighing, he gives in with a nod. He dips into his room, grabs it, flashes it to me like I won’t believe him if I don’t see it, then we head to the car.

“Does Knox actually have news?” I ask.

“Ask him when we get there. If he doesn’t, I do.”

“And you’re not sharing, why?” I demand. “You already know—”

“I know you’re overeager and a fucking mess right now. Try a goddamn apology or—”

I grit my teeth, replaying his words to me.If this is friendship or a taste of what Hope’s in for, then I hope she escapes on her own and you never see her again.

He’s the one who owes me an apology, but that sounds like something that we can hash out on the ride there. Once we get what we need to find Hope, there can’t be any problems between us, can’t be any distractions.

“You’re going to fucking hate being in this car with me,” I warn.

“As if I expected otherwise,” Dimitri snorts as he gets us on the road and checks the GPS to make sure we’re on the way to Hope’s old house.

Nine

KNOX

Hope’s diary weighs heavy in my hand as it stares back at me.

I’m not stupid enough to think that a book has any feelings or intention, but this one feels evil. I hate realizing howfucking awful I was. Every page I open to is another horror story that I didn’t need to know. It’s another step into Hope’s brain, which is clearly a place she has never wanted me to access.

“It’s fucking wrong,” I whisper.

Honestly, I feel like I need a shower. I need to scrub my eyes and my mind of all of this. But she handled it. She handled it, her father, and us three making her life hell. All this book is doing is showing me exactly how fucking stupid I was the entire time.

I thought I was so fucking smart.

I thought I had the world figured out.

Don’t get close to anyone except Coach. Coach was always right. Coach was a good man. Everyone else was a threat. Everyone else would hurt me.

I was fucking stupid.

Worse, I was willfully blind. I should never have believed that shewantedhim. I never should have believed a single word out of his beer-soaked mouth. But I did because he was goodto me. He made the pain stop. He protected me. He made me better. Because of him, I got out of high school, got out of the hell that I was forced to call home. I was able to make a life all because of Coach.

How can that be the same man who would do horrible things to his daughter?

A part of me didn’t want to believe it.

That same part of me was convinced this was some kind of creative writing experiment, but I’d seen the truth now and there was no going back. I couldn’t close my eyes against it. Then I just saw more. More of the horrors spelled out in Hope’s neat handwriting.

“The answer is in here,” I tell myself. “I have to find it.”

So I open the book again. I’m in summer, which is obviously the worst because there’s no escape, but since I’ve worked back towards the front, I’ve been finding out more about her mom.

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