Chapter 28
28
Jack
L ittle fury.
My little fury.
I clutched Aviva in my arms, my nose in her hair, taking her in.
She’d hated being called princess. She’d never told me why. Anger—at her parents’ murderers, at myself —filled me, but I kept my touch gentle. She didn’t deserve to be gripped too hard, like she hadn’t deserved the ways I’d tortured her over the past weeks. I’d taken out my rage and my fears on her, my frustration at my lack of control when it came to her.
I had no more control than I’d had before. In fact, I felt the threads tying myself to my self control snapping. There was a crazed animal inside of me, scratching at its cage, howling to be let out. To hurt every single fucking person who’d ever hurt her.
Including me .
I didn’t deserve her, but it didn’t fucking matter. I was still keeping her.
I should’ve known what she meant to me. I’d had so much sex in my life, I couldn’t even keep track. When I’d escaped the restrictive confines of my childhood home, I’d fucked everyone and anyone who would have me, men and women, young and old. I hadn’t cared, beyond the release it gave me.
Aviva had been different from the beginning. The first time I’d kissed her, I’d lost. But if this was what losing felt like, I never wanted to win again.
She’d called me a liar. And she was right. I’d been lying to myself this entire time.
Light began to stream through the curtains. We’d fucked and fucked, for hours—sometimes slow and sweet, sometimes sharp and vicious. Every single goddamned second felt better than anything else ever had in my life…except, maybe, getting to hold her like this.
She yawned, soft and satisfied. “You said you’d tell me about—” she hesitated.
I swallowed. “What broke me. ”
She hummed in agreement.
Sighing, I tried not to fall into the past. “My parents are…religious. Devout as hell. My father practically lives at his synagogue—or did. I don’t know anymore, I haven’t spoken to him in years. He never even worked, depending on my mom’s small income to float all eight of us. Community members tossed us enough money that we managed to keep our home, and food on the table, but that was it.”
“Eight?”
“I have five siblings. Well, six, if you include Marcus.”
She digested this, so I continued, playing with a lock of her hair .
“My dad was abusive. Physically, verbally. Rarely to my mother—or at least if he was, he did it behind closed doors.” The room was cold. How similar to him had I become?
“Jack,” my little fury murmured, as if she could tell I was about to get stuck in the past and guilt. “Stay with me.”
“My mother, for her part, never stood up for us. In retrospect I don’t blame her. She was trying to survive, same as the rest of us. My brother, Micah, took the brunt of it. Until one day, he was gone. My sister Rebecca left after. I was third in line, doing what I could to protect my younger siblings, to be the buffer between my father and them. And even though I know better now—or try to know better—I felt abandoned. By my mother, my older siblings, the community. Everyone. No one looks out for you but you.”
Aviva twisted around to look at me.
“Until Coach Jensen,” she said, finally getting it.
“Until Coach,” I confirmed. “The community center had a rink. The manager would pretend not to see me when I’d borrow skates and a stick, and go out on the ice. I owe her a lot. It was the only place where I felt safe and in control of my life. I’d go there after school, and stay until late. She even kept the rink open for me.”
Mindy. I wondered how she was doing. If she remembered me. If she knew where I was. If she was proud.
She wouldn’t be proud of the way I treated Aviva.
I wasn’t proud of the way I’d treated Aviva. I’d raped her. There was no way around it. Something I abhorred, I’d done myself. And even though it had gotten me her, and that I didn’t regret…I’d hurt the person who was quickly becoming the most important thing to me.
She was fire and she was fury and I’d tried to stamp that out. Not because she’d threatened Coach, but because her very existence had threatened my control.
I cleared my throat. It hurt to swallow. “One day, a man approached me. Told me I was one of the most talented players he’d ever seen, especially for a teenager. He began showing up to train me. Let me join their team. Gave me free equipment. Taught me everything I knew—about ice skating, about what it meant to be a man.”
I looked at her carefully, wanting her to get it. “He never once touched me inappropriately. Never even insinuated anything. He was—is—like a father to me.”
Aviva opened her mouth, maybe to defend herself and her brother, but she must have thought better of it, because she said, “Keep going.”
I shook my head. “There’s not much else. I took my beatings, I began to fight back. The day I was stronger than he was, the day I threatened my real father—told him I’d kill him if he ever raised a hand to any of us again—that was the day he kicked me out. I went home on Saturdays when I knew he was out to check on my siblings, and now they’re all safe, thank god.”
Aviva pressed a kiss to my neck.
“It’s okay, Jack. You’re okay,” she murmured, and I held onto her words—to her—like a lifeline.
After I’d calmed, she asked, “Is that why you volunteer with foster kids?”
I nodded. “How did you know?”
“My brother told me.” She searched my eyes for a moment, then admitted, “I used to do the same thing. I miss it.”
My chest ached with the sweetness of her words. In some ways, we were so similar.
“We can go together sometime,” I said .
She nodded. “Tell me the rest.”
I cleared my throat. Talking about this hurt. “Coach took me in, let me live with him, helped me with my applications. Helped me change my name from Yacob to Jack, because I wanted to leave my past behind. By that time, he’d gotten the job at Reina, and he made sure the recruiters knew who he was. We started around the same time, me as a rookie player, him as a rookie college coach. He was the one who convinced me to red shirt, pushing me until I became the player I am now.”
“You’re going to be first in the draft, aren’t you?” she said.
“As long as I keep our winning streak going, take us to the Frozen Four, yeah. It’s rare that a left wing gets picked first; NHL teams usually go for centers. But?—”
“But that’s how good you are,” she finished for me. “I’ve seen you play.”
I tugged her hair. “I remember.”
A rosy blush covered her face, her chest. Probably from remembering that night on the rink, when I’d fucked her so hard we’d both changed. I’d refused to recognize it then, so had she.
But we were here now, thank fuck.
Or at least I was.
“Micah and Marcus showed back up in my life recently. Rebecca…” I shook my head. I had gotten two texts from her in the past couple of years, and relied on Marcus and his personal private investigator for news. “I think she ran away with the circus, or something like that. Marcus set us all up with massive trust funds, cars, helped get my younger siblings emancipated from our parents. But even with his financial support, even though his presence in my life means I have power, finally, I don’t trust him. ”
Raising a hand, she gently brushed a hand through my short hair. “You don’t trust anyone, do you?”
“How could I? Everyone leaves.”
Except for Coach.
And maybe her.
“You don’t trust anyone either,” I pointed out.
“Except for Asher,” she said.
“Right.” Her fucking brother.
What would it be like, to have the same loyalty from her she had for him? I wanted it, badly. And I promised myself in that moment: I’d get it. Break my own rules to make sure it happened. Lie, cheat, or steal. Aviva would be loyal to me, and me alone.
She cupped my face. “I’d kill your father for you, you know.”
Her words were a sweet stab, a knife dripping in honey.
“I will kill Tom, and those men who shot your parents. And you. Did you ever find them?”
She sighed. “No. It’s more important to Asher than it is to me. It was a random robbery gone wrong—even though we had nothing to steal. I’ve got vengeance in my bones, but now it’s for the living.”
The look in her eyes.
You , it said. You, despite every terrible thing you’ve done to me.
“My little fury,” I said, kissing her again, and she kissed me back, claiming me as much as I’d claimed her. There was no sweetness, no gentleness this time. We were both angry at each other’s pasts, each determined to erase it. She scratched her nails down my back, I grabbed her arms and held her down. I shoved inside her, she bucked, still wet with her release and my come. I pounded into her and she fought me, but this time it was because she enjoyed it. At some point, I needed her, so I flipped her over onto her stomach and layered my chest over her back, entwining my fingers with hers. Daylight turned her brown hair almost copper. My cock hurt, almost raw from the number of times I’d fucked her, but I was too hungry for her to stop.
My world could’ve burned to the ground, and I wouldn’t have cared.
As long as I was inside her wet heat, listening to her as she screamed from the combination of pleasure and pain, my name a litany on her lips, nothing mattered but her.
My little fury.
If Aviva wanted to burn the world down, I’d help her. If she wanted to burn my world down, I’d hand her the match.
Because from now on, she was my world.