Chapter Twenty-One #2
Jax didn’t move. He looked at him—really looked, eyes steady, almost pleading without words. “I’m not hitting you, Chase. I’ve liked Avery for a long time. I would never hurt her. I was going to talk to you this weekend about dating her.”
That only fanned the fire. Chase broke loose from Theo’s hold. His fist crashed into Jax’s ribs, folding him forward with a grunt. Pain etched his face, but still no retaliation.
The hall erupted into a battlefield. Teammates wedging themselves between, shouting over each other. Luke dragged Chase back; Theo stood in front of Jax.
Avery broke then. Tears streaked her face as she shoved forward. “Enough! Please, enough!” Her voice shredded against the walls.
Chase froze at the sound of her sobs. Just for a second. His chest heaved, fury vibrating through every muscle. He wasn’t done, but Avery’s sobs cut through some of the rage.
I pulled her into me, arms tight around her shaking shoulders. “Stop, Chase. This isn’t really about you.”
Jax straightened slowly, pressing a hand to his ribs, blood dripping from his mouth. He didn’t look away from Chase. Didn’t wipe the mess from his face. Just let it sit there, proof of the beating he refused to return.
Chase’s hands were still balled, knuckles raw and split. His breathing thundered. For a heartbeat, I thought he’d swing again.
But he didn’t. He ripped free of the guys’ hold, spun, and stormed toward the locker room, slamming the door so hard the walls shook.
Jax’s eyes closed. His chest rose and fell, ragged. Avery wrenched from my arms and crossed to him, hands hovering as if she wanted to touch but didn’t dare. “I’m so sorry.” Her voice broke on the words.
Jax’s eyes opened, softened. He pulled her into his embrace, cradling her head against his chest. “It’ll work out.”
Would it? I wasn’t so sure. I couldn’t shake the image burned into my skull—Chase’s fist colliding with Jax’s face. The sound. The betrayal written across both of them.
The guys slowly cleared out. Theo murmured something about checking on Chase. Luke hovered close, shoulders drawn tight. Before Theo got to the locker room doors, Chase shoved the doors open, fury radiating off him in waves of heat. His eyes locked on us—not just me, not just Luke, but Theo too.
“You knew.” His voice was flat, low, deadly.
Luke stiffened. “Chase—”
“Don’t.” Chase’s glare cut as sharply as a blade. “Don’t you dare stand there and pretend. You didn’t think maybe I deserved to know Jax was hooking up with my sister?”
Theo shifted, weight bracing as though he was ready if this turned physical again. “We didn’t know for sure.”
“Bullshit!” Chase’s roar rattled the stands. His chest heaved. He looked between the three of us, betrayal carved deep into every line of his face. “You all knew something. And you said nothing to me.”
My throat closed, words useless. Because he wasn’t wrong.
Luke stepped forward, hand half-raised. “It wasn’t for us to tell you. And Jax and Avery were probably trying to keep it from blowing up. Trying to protect—”
“Protect me?” Chase barked a laugh, bitter and sharp. “You don’t get to protect me. You don’t get to make that choice. We made a pack to protect my sister, especially after she fell apart the year Mila left.”
The silence that followed was jagged. Too heavy.
Chase’s jaw worked, as if he had a hundred more things to throw at us but couldn’t pick just one. Finally, he shook his head, eyes burning.
“You think this is a joke? You think it’s just about some code?
” His voice roughened, breaking somewhere in the middle.
“You didn’t see her last year. You weren’t here when she fell apart—when some guy she never named messed with her after Mila left and she stopped eating, stopped talking, I could’ve lost my sister. ”
Avery flinched, color draining from her face. “Chase, stop,” she whispered, voice small and shaking. “Not here.”
He didn’t even look at her, eyes locked on Jax like he was the only one there.
Guilt twisted low in my stomach. “After Mila left.” The words scraped raw. I hadn’t known—not all of it. Avery told me a little when I first came back, in the library—what Elise had done, and how she’d kept if from the guys. “After you left, she harassed me. I didn’t handle it well.”
I grasped Avery’s hand, twining my fingers tightly with hers. Everyone had thought it was some guy that had broken her down, that made her confidence crack. But it hadn’t been.
“She’s finally good. And now you—” His hand snapped toward Jax, fingers curling into a fist before he forced them open.
“You hook up with girls, Jax. You move on. That’s who you are.
I can’t let you treat her like another one-night stand you’ll forget the next day.
I won’t watch her break like that because of someone I trusted. ”
Avery’s breath hitched, a wounded sound she attempted to swallow. She released my hand and stepped forward, eyes bright with humiliation and hurt. “That’s not fair. You don’t get to talk about me as if I’m not standing right here.”
But Chase was already done listening. He ripped his gear bag off the bench, slung it over his shoulder, and stormed past. The exit door slammed behind him, the sound ricocheting down the hall with the crack of a gunshot.
The room exhaled. Tension bled into mutters, into the shuffle of feet, into skates unlaced with trembling hands. But I couldn’t move.
I just stood there, pulse roaring, while the wreckage of friendship and loyalty scattered around me.
This—this was exactly the kind of fracture Elise would salivate over.
Division she could pry open, rumors she could weaponize.
And with Tori still tangled in her orbit, it wouldn’t take much for the wrong words to reach the wrong ears.
We couldn’t afford to be divided. Not when our enemies circled the way sharks do around blood.
And still, echoing in my head, the crack of Chase’s fist—sharp, final, proof of how fast we could tear ourselves apart.