Chapter 22
Twenty-two
JAXON
Hope has been wound up for a bit apparently. Dimitri won’t leave her side. He keeps a protective arm around her, rubbing her hip even as we get back home. I don’t blame him after seeing what’s in the box.
Knox won’t stop pacing and I can’t sit still. Who do I have to break for what was sent to Hope? How do we really get rid of the evidence if the person who sent it might have the entire fucking corpse?
“You’re making Hope dizzy,” Dimitri hisses at Knox.
“It’s okay,” she answers, leaning into him and meeting his eyes.
Something passes between them, but I don’t have time to dissect that. We have important shit to figure out.
“We need help… someone we can trust. Any options?” I ask.
“My dad is out,” Dimitri answers. “We already know that.” When Hope gives him a look, he shrugs. “I should have made him pay for his inaction sooner.”
“If it’s just inaction,” Knox murmurs and stops. “Based on him dismissing Hope…”
“He was involved somehow. Especially if he’s not really investigating to the fullest,” I fill in.
Dimitri’s face twists, but he turns to Hope and kisses her temple softly. I don’t hear what he whispers in her ear and I don’t care at the moment.
Knox starts pacing again. “Hope was sent a fucking zombie hand and a bullet. That doesn’t mean it’s Coach’s. It could be a guess, a warning of some kind,” he says.
“Who else’s hand would it be? It’s not like we have a list of people we’ve killed,” I snort.
“My mom is just bones,” Hope murmurs.
“And it’s real,” Dimitri says darkly. “That smell, the way the skin is rotting, the dirt all over it. The only option is Coach.”
“Yeah, going off of guesswork isn’t going to help us,” I argue.
We go back and forth, talking out our options. We can’t get it tested without raising suspicions. We don’t know who sent it and there’s no return address. The only serious crime we’ve committed that anyone knows about other than Hope is killing Coach.
It has to be his. Who would send a random hand and a bullet to Hope otherwise? Knox and Dimitri aren’t convinced and Hope is wavering. I know that, but I think it’s time for the guys to have the full picture.
“It belongs to Coach,” I say, open my phone, and pull up the picture I got from Hope’s phone. “This is what Hope got yesterday. I deleted it on her phone, but I’m sure it’s Coach’s hand. They found him.”
Knox steps up but Dimitri is faster as he snatches my phone.
His jaw ticks, and he hands the phone to Knox. “Why didn’t you share this with us?”
“I saw it. Was sent after we… I pulled it off Hope’s phone,” I don’t need to bring up sex in front of the guys. Not now. “While you guys were out with my brother.”
“What the fuck?” Knox breathes.
Hope stares at me and gives me a look I recognize.
Something hopeless, lost, but frustrated too. She wants to be done with this. We buried the past. Perhaps not six feet deep, but buried it all the same and we deserve to move on from it.
“I can do another dive,” Dimitri finally says.
“Your online buddies,” Knox agrees. “They could probably track down a thing or two.”
“They’ve been trying; the site is off the grid,” Dimitri says.
I nod. “It seems they’re ready to step into the light again.”
Something twists on Hope’s face. I’m still trying to figure out why whoever did this waited until now. Waited until we seemed fine. It would have been better the day after. When the evidence was still ripe, when no one could say it was tampered with.
Dmitri stares at me and I see the same thought echoed. “I wonder why they waited until now.”
“We took down the videos we could find. We killed the bastard. He’s been missing for weeks. What’s changed in that time?” Knox asks.
Hope nibbles her bottom lip. “I went to therapy.”
“Jaxon broke in there easily. Someone might have gotten access to her files,” I mutter.
She nods once and Knox leans into her. He and Dimitri each kiss her cheeks and she gives them equal attention while watching me.
We all know we don’t have long to figure this out.
This is a warning. Shit is really about to hit the fan.
We either have to duck for cover or decide how to handle the fallout.
HOPE
I hate doing nothing. We have evidence in our apartment and nothing is happening. If the police raid us, we’re fucked. So fucked. Is that the point of sending it to me?
If I turned it in immediately, would there have been useable fingerprints? Is me not turning it in a mistake? My breathing shortens, but I grip the table.
“I’m at work. I’m safe. I’m here. I’m safe. I’m in control,” I repeat as if I’m weaving a lifeline out of the sentences.
“Sweetheart,” Knox says gently.
I gaze up at him and realize he has Ben by his side. Ben’s eyes shift between us. “Oh, so this is official now?”
“Ben, do you need a checkup? I’m so sorry. I spaced out and—” I cut myself off when Knox shakes his head and pats Ben’s shoulder before shutting the door behind them. “What is this?”
“We all know something’s up with you, Hope,” Ben says slowly. “Not just about your dad being missing, but with that long absence and before then when you were nervous. We’re all worried and we all want to help. I’m the spokesperson and Knox… I guess he’s the bodyguard.”
Knox snorts but meets my eyes. “He’s safe, baby. All the guys on the team are.”
“Hell yeah, we are. We’d pummel anyone who hurt you. We’d show them why only dummies can handle us regularly,” Ben says as he steps closer to me. “Is someone threatening you? Are they hurting you?”
“I… I mean…”
“Hey, if you can’t talk to me, that’s okay,” Ben says, glancing at Knox. “You have three guys that will kill for you. If you don’t want that… Coach Carpenter has expressed some things that are either good or bad, you know?”
“Bring him, Ben. Please,” Knox says, barely curbing his fury.
When Ben leaves, Knox walks to me and slips a paper into my hand. “From Dimitri. Jax says he’ll be your last appointment today.”
“That’s nice,” I whisper.
Knox lifts my chin roughly and kisses me hard. It’s hungry, sizzling, scorches all the way through my body just like his effortless dominance. He bites my bottom lip and tugs slightly before letting me go.
“That’s from me,” Knox says with a wink. “Think about it. Savor it. Wonder where it could go.”
I giggle. “I’m familiar with where it can go.”
“Not as familiar as either of us want to be,” he answers with a wink.
Coach Carpenter comes in a minute later and Knox slips out. He’s crafty, distracting me with lust so I didn’t end up a panicked, shaky mess. My face burns when Ben glances at Coach Carpenter, then clears his throat.
“Remember what I said, Hope. You’re part of the team and no one gets to fuck with the team. Period. There are consequences all of us are happy to dish out,” Ben promises.
Coach Carpenter arches an eyebrow in warning and Ben hurries away, shutting the door behind him. Coach Carpenter looks around, then motions for me to sit.
I must seem worse than I feel. “Coach, whatever you’re worried about, I promise. I’m good to work. I want to work.”
“No doubting that, Hope. Not even slightly. I just wanted to… explain something. I’m not sure if I’ve done it well enough.”
My throat tightens and he rests against my exam table. “I mentioned that I don’t like Coach Harbaugh, your dad. Didn’t… don’t… whatever.”
I try to sit there passively, not letting my throat tense further, not forcing myself to fill the silence while he thinks.
Finally, Coach Carpenter explains slowly.
“I heard rumors about him. First, that he ran a boys club and that’s how he encouraged his players.
Then there were rumors about how he treated his wife.
Your mother. That she was never seen out of the house, that she was always nervous and jumpy… everyone knows what that means.”
Looking away feels right.
“You’re nervous and jumpy too. When we met, you asked if I knew him when I brought him up and the fear in your eyes said so much.
I don’t need the details. He’s a bad man, shitty, abusive, and probably worse.
I’ve seen him choke a player that failed him in the heat of the moment,” Coach Carpenter continues.
“All this time? Since you hired me?”
“I was nervous to take any of his players,” he admits.
“Because of him, even before we met. You just solidified it. That one flicker of terror and despair in your eyes when I mentioned him, then that shaky smile told me how much you’ve had to hide.
So, when he started sniffing around, I never mentioned you. ”
“But you told the guys I worked here. They were my dad’s trophies,” I breathe.
“I thought they’d help you, Hope. They’d be another layer between you and your father.
They’d protect you. They were strong and they’d outgrown him.
I didn’t know what would happen after, but I’d kept your father away for a while.
Those days I’d randomly tell you not to come in, the games I told you we had covered—it wasn’t my lack of faith in you,” he explains.
“He was here?”
“And you were right under his nose without being seen, which kept you safe… but then you were gone.” His eyes flash to me. “I’m not stupid, Hope. You left when he did.”
My eyes fall. “Not by choice.”
He nods once. “That’s all we’re going to say about it. Because I’m sure whatever your father got himself tangled up in, whatever’s keeping him from… reappearing… he deserved worse. Deserved it ten times over.”
“You sound really sure,” I whisper.
“I used to work at a high school. I know what certain signs are. The way you hide yourself in your clothes, flinch when someone gets too loud or too close. How you don’t respond to the guys’ teasing flirting.
” Coach Carpenter steps closer. “I don’t need you to tell me because I know what it looks like.
We don’t have to say the words. We can just say that you deserved a father who knew how to show you the right kind of love and leave it at that. ”
My eyes burn. Someone believes me. Coach Carpenter believes me and I never had to say a word. He doesn’t just believe what happened to me in my father’s house. He knows my father’s dead and that he earned it.
He rubs my shoulder and lowers his voice.
It’s soft, warm. “You did nothing wrong, Hope. I promise you that. You were growing up. You were finding yourself. You escaped. You did everything right. He was in the wrong. No man should ever treat or touch a woman like that without consent. And a father… he doesn’t deserve the title. ”
“Thank you,” I breathe, not knowing what else to say.
“Like Ben said, we’re a team. We protect our own.
We look out for our own. Even if we can’t change the past, we make damn sure the future is better.
” Coach Carpenter finally catches my eyes.
“And since you’re part of the team, you have a family of burly guys who are happy to break people from a dirty play, let alone what you’ve been though. We’re all here for you.”
I tremble and thank him again. I want to ask if Knox or Jax or even Dimitri said something, but he only brought them up once, because he thought they’d protect me. He believes me. He’s been looking out for me. He tried so hard to keep me safe and now he’s still doing it.
Maybe… maybe we have a shot at actually moving forward.