Chapter 29
29
Aviva
T hings seemed to change after Jack’s and my venture into somnophilia. That morning, he’d held me, made me burnt eggs in our little kitchenette, his eyes earnest as I’d forced myself to eat them.
I kept rubbing my left shoulder. It was bothering me.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, an unreadable expression on his face.
“My shoulder itches, and part of the skin feels raised,” I said. “It’s kind of weird.”
He walked behind me, lifting my hair to look at my shoulder, stroking his thumb over the bump and sending shivers down my spine.
“Looks like a bug bite,” he said, before bending to drop a kiss over the irritated spot. “There we go, all better.”
Straightening, he came around to stand in front of me, the kitchen bar in between us.
“How do you like your orange juice?” he asked, changing the subject .
I’d told him about Asher and the pulp.
I thought. “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “I don’t even know what type of juice I like, or if I even like juice. It’s been so long since I felt like a kid, and it never occurred to me to figure it out.
He lifted my chin, kissing me.
“Then we’ll figure it out together,” he said.
It sounded like a promise.
He told me he’d see me later—and he did, insisting on driving me to work, staying there the entire night, and then taking me back to the hockey house after his shift, where he proceeded to give me so many orgasms I forgot my name.
He was no less brutal, no less demanding or controlling. If anything, he got worse. He seemed to be everywhere I was, all the time—except when he had practice, which he began dragging me to. I couldn’t prove it, but he had to be stalking me. Otherwise how did he know when I was at my apartment vs. class vs. the library? If he even thought someone was checking me out, he’d stare them down until they looked away. And his animosity toward Professor Johnathan grew. I wasn’t sure if we were going to make it through the semester without Jack beating the shit out of him, for nothing more than breathing the same air as me.
Thankfully, the slut shaming had stopped. Instead, I was treated with deference by other Reina students, as if I were Jack’s girlfriend and not the target of his torture. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, or of myself. I felt disloyal to Asher, and I didn’t know what to do about it. I was incapable of resisting Jack, not when he was cruel, and not when he was tender.
My loyalties were shifting, and it made me uneasy. I’d never felt this way before.
I got breaks when Jack was at practice or training at the gym, or at away games. I used them to work on other angles to get the evidence against Joshua Jensen I needed, attacking my mission with renewed vigor and the sense that the walls were closing in on me. Everything I did for my brother ran the risk of hurting Jack. I was being torn in two.
Since Jack had punched his own goddamned goalie , getting close to Dave and asking him what he knew was no longer an option. There was no way of talking to Dave without Jack finding out, and the goalie didn’t deserve being punched again—or whatever worse thing Jack decided to do in retaliation. Besides, I doubted Dave even wanted to talk to me.
No, I needed something else. Tovah had done some recon, and discovered that Coach Jensen lived in a gated community with a code to get in, so breaking into his house was out. I couldn’t figure out how to steal his phone. That left his computer in his real office. Not the one in the locker room, but the sports administration building: Hallister Hall.
Jack was supposed to be at practice late that night: he had a scrimmage. He’d told—not asked, told —me to come, but I lied and said I had a shift that night at The Stacks. I told him I’d meet him back at the hockey house after, and he’d accepted it without a fight, although he’d said something under his breath about me “not needing that fucking job.” Worried that he wanted to turn me into a kept woman, I hadn’t pushed the issue.
If all went as planned, I’d be in and out of Hallister Hall before Jack finished his scrimmage, and waiting for him in his bed before he got home. I didn’t love what that said about me, but it was better than him figuring out what I was actually up to.
When I’d cased the building, I’d discovered that there was a back door on the first floor that led to a little, private courtyard—because didn’t the coaches and athletic admin types deserve their very own courtyard, far away from the rest of us? The important thing was that the back door was never locked.
I threw myself over one of the hedges, landing on my ass. Embarrassing, if someone had seen me, but no one had. Standing and dusting myself off, I glanced around to make sure of that before trying the door.
Still unlocked.
My sigh of relief was the loudest thing in the night as I pulled the door open and headed inside the building. Coach Jensen’s office was on the second floor in the east wing, a corner office that must have been a real get for him. I climbed up the old, wooden staircase, marveling at the grandeur of the building: cream colored walls lined with framed photographs of former coaches, players, and newspaper reports of historic wins. Although during the day it must have be a light, airy building, at night it was dark and almost creepy, as if all these former athletes’ eyes were following me as I made my way down the hallway to Joshua Jensen’s office.
When I reached it, I pulled the bobby pins out of my hair, unbent them, and got to work on the door. Jack was wrong when he’d called me liar, but he was right when he’d called me a thief. I’d stolen my fair share of food money out of my aunt’s purse and “borrowed” her credit card when she was too sick or out of it to remember to get groceries. She’d always locked her door, so I’d learned how to jimmy a lock.
It was a good skill to have, and I was grateful for it as I twisted the ends of my bobby pins around, listening for that telltale snick that meant I’d released the locking mechanism.
…And there it was .
Triumphant, I went to turn the knob and open the door?—
—only for someone to slam it shut and push me against the door.
Fuck.
I twisted my head, staring into Jack’s angry eyes.
“You can’t stop lying to me, can you, little fury?” he said in a voice filled with violence.
“And you can’t stop lying to yourself.”
“Maybe,” he acknowledged.
Gripping my hips, he flipped me around, pushing me back against the door and wrapping a hand around my neck. The position was so similar to the first time he’d caught me breaking in somewhere, I had to take a beat to remember where I was.
Jack must have noticed, too. His smile was almost…sad. “Feels familiar, doesn’t it? You couldn’t leave it alone, could you? I told you, I’d take care of you and your brother. Is revenge for him losing his spot on the team really this important? Why can’t you let this go?”
I stared up at him, shocked, angry, and, damnit, hurt. “Do you really still believe that? After all this time, after everything I’ve shared with you, everything I’ve shown you, you truly think I’m still this heinous bitch trying to take down your coach for nefarious reasons?”
He hesitated. “Aviva, I?—”
“What are you kids doing here?” a gruff voice asked.
I peeked over Jack’s broad shoulder to see an older man in a security uniform glaring at us.
Shit.
Jack turned around and cleared his throat. He was about to give me away, wasn’t he? Visions of jail cells, the dean telling me I was kicked out of school and would never be able to go to grad school and become a psychologist attacked me. Never help other people heal from their grief. So did the vision of a depressed, lonely Asher, who could never play hockey again and would be reduced to shame and regret for the rest of his life.
“Jack, please?—”
“Sorry, sir. Thought it might be fun to sneak into the nicest building on campus and, uh, have a little fun. You know how it is. Horny hockey champion and all that,” Jack said in an aw shucks voice.
The guard shifted, his stern face relaxing into a smile. “Of course, Jack. Big fan. Huge fan. I’ll let it slide, but you’ll have to take your puck bunny somewhere else.”
Jack’s hands fisted. His voice was quiet, but the softness held a threat that scared me, even though it was directed elsewhere. “What did you call her?”
The guard laughed. “Puck bunny. Although maybe pussy is bet?—”
My tormentor was across the room before the guard could finish his sentence. He reached out and gripped the man’s collar, dragging him forward and up. I couldn’t see Jack’s eyes, but from the way the guard squeaked, it must have hurt.
“You don’t call her that unless you want my fist through your face. Better yet, I’ll let Coach Jensen know you’ve been drinking on the job.”
The man squirmed in Jack’s hold. “But I haven’t—” he protested.
“Doesn’t matter. Who are they going to believe, me, or you? Now apologize to her.”
“I’m sorry,” the man said in a choked voice.
“For what?” Jack asked in that soft, frightening voice.
“I’m sorry, miss, for insulting you. ”
Without a word, Jack released the man, who rocked back on his heels before scurrying away, leaving a small, yellow puddle on the ground.
Jack turned to me, the planes of his face even sharper in his anger.
He’d been defending me since the beginning, hadn’t he? Even when he’d humiliated me, he’d threatened everyone else who tried to hurt me.
“Thank you,” I said quietly.
He moved toward me slowly, before wrapping his hands around my upper arms. “No one talks to you that way.”
“Including you?”
“Including me.” He paused, correcting himself. “Except for when I’m fucking you. Degradation and possession gets you off.”
I didn’t protest. He was right.
“Does this mean you believe me?” I hated how small my voice was.
His eyes probed mine.
“I believe that you believe it’s true,” he said. “You’re loyal to your brother, you wouldn’t question him. But I know Coach?—”
I shoved his hands away. He wasn’t only clueless, he was intentionally clueless. “No, you’re loyal to your coach, same as I’m loyal to Asher. Him taking care of you doesn’t automatically make him a good guy. He can be good to you, and still have abused my brother. It. Happened. My brother has the emotional scars to prove it. He is not a liar, and neither am I.”
“I know you’re not a liar, Aviva. Not about this, at least. I’m sorry that I thought that for so long. But your brother?—”
“My brother is telling the truth!”
“You don’t know Coach the way I do, Aviva. ”
How did you get through to someone so set in their worldview?
“No, you don’t know your Coach. You only think you do. I know you think you can read people so well, but you have this huge blind spot when it comes to him. And it makes sense, given your history with him.”
No response. It was like arguing with a wall.
I pushed forward. “Men, especially men with power and authority, often put on a mask to keep society happy. All to hide the monster inside. You should know that better than anyone . ”
Jack’s nostrils flared at the pointed accusation. But he was a monster, with a golden boy mask. How angry was he at me for pointing out the truth?
“Fine,” he said. “You think your brother’s telling the truth? Prove it.”