36. Cole
Chapter 36
Cole
I shut the front door behind us as quietly as I could, but my hands were still shaking as I set my keys down on the table by the door. My mind kept replaying Colton’s voice from five minutes ago, raw and angry, and the way Elliot had smirked like he held all the cards here.
“We need to wake Xavi,” I murmured, kicking off my slip-ons I’d pulled on in a hurry before I’d left earlier. “He needs to know. Then we can figure out how to tell Annie without sending her into a spiral.”
“Yeah. Okay,” Colton said.
I was absolutely exhausted from the game last night, from the stress of the last few weeks in general, but I couldn’t let it stop me from handling this the way we needed to. I checked my phone as I slipped down the hall, Colton hot on my heels. We still had two hours until morning skate. We could do this.
But my stomach churned at the thought of Annie being here alone while we were out.
I pushed open the guestroom door quietly, slipping into the darkness, and immediately noticed the lack of Annie on the bed. Xavi was sprawled out, still lightly snoring, peaceful and oblivious. Shit .
“Colton, go find Annie,” I whispered. “She might be throwing up. Don’t tell her what’s going on.”
“On it.”
Colton darted out of the room, and I moved to the side of the bed, flicking on the lamp on the bedside table. I reached out a hand and shook his shoulder lightly.
“Xav,” I said, my voice hushed. “Wake up.”
He groaned and rolled onto his side toward me, his hands reaching out like he was searching for Annie. “What time is it…?” he grumbled, turning his face into the pillow.
“It’s eight. I need you to wake up.”
“Skate’s not till ten.”
“Xavi, we have a problem,” I said, swallowing down the discomfort of it.
That did it. He sat up fast, blinking hard, his eyes not quite focusing. He scrubbed at them, pressing his palms into his eyesockets as if it would help, his hair an absolute mess and dried drool clinging to the side of his mouth. “What? Where—Is Annie okay?”
Colton jogged back in, his gaze flicking between me and Xav. “She’s in the shower. She’s a little nauseous, but fine. Took every bit of self-control to not get in there with her.”
Xavi’s brows furrowed as he turned to look at me. “What’s going on if it’s not Annie?”
“Colton went for a run this morning,” I swallowed. “He was followed. Photographed.”
Xavi blinked slowly. “Photographed? Like, press?”
Colton shook his head, checking back over his shoulder briefly to make sure Annie hadn’t randomly gotten out and followed him. “It was Elliot,” he explained, his voice a little hollow. “He’s working with Annie’s dad. Think they’re digging up dirt on us, said Annie’s ‘throwing her life away’.”
Xavi’s eyes went wide as he ran a hand through his sleep-messed hair. “Are you serious?”
I nodded. “Colton said he has… pictures. We don’t know exactly what of, but he implied that they’re bad. Apparently, we need to be a bit more mindful of shutting the blinds. He threatened to go public.”
The color drained from Xav’s face immediately. “Fuck. Does Annie know?”
“No, not yet,” Colton sighed. “This just happened, like, ten minutes ago.”
Xavi stared at him. “Please tell me you beat the shit out of him.”
My jaw tensed. “No, we didn’t,” I said. “I wish we could have. But Colton was right, he’s got Annie’s dad on his side. He would have just sued us into oblivion.”
“He’s fucking blackmailing all of us, though.” Xavi’s voice was getting louder, angrier, and I gripped him by the shoulder, hushing him. “Surely that’s fair game.”
“Yeah, fair game to do something legally, not bash his head in,” I sighed, rubbing my face in exhaustion. “We need to tell Annie. But I don’t know how to do that without stressing her out, and the stress will only make her nausea worse.”
“Shit, you’re right.” Colton sat down on the edge of the bed, his lips pursed, his jaw hard. “What the hell do we do about practice? I don’t want to leave her here when he could be just outside the gate.”
“We could bring her with us,” Xav offered. “Or one of us can stay home, tell Coach we’re sick.”
I mulled it over. “That’s not a bad idea. Rock, paper, scissors?”
“Fuck no, you keep winning,” Colton murmured.
“Well, if you’d stop picking paper every time?—”
“What are you playing rock, paper, scissors for?”
Three sets of eyes turned to the door immediately. Annie stood there, wrapped up in a towel, her damp hair falling around her face in long, stretched ringlets. Her hand pressed against her stomach over the towel, like she was trying to settle her stomach with touch alone.
None of us spoke, and she looked between the three of us, her nose crinkling just a little in confusion. “Uh…?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but Colton was already moving, his arm reaching out toward her in an offering. “Come here, sweetheart,” he said gently, and she took a step toward him, taking his hand in hers. He pulled her to him, lowering her onto the bed beside him. “We need to talk.”
“Have you taken your meds yet this morning?” I asked hesitantly.
“Yeah, just before my shower. Why?”
“Did you keep them down?”
“Yeah. I’m nauseous, though,” she said hesitantly, her gaze flicking from me, to Xavi, to Colton. “Is that what this is about?”
“No,” I swallowed.
I stepped around to the front of the bed, taking her hands in mine as I crouched down in front of her. She looked a little pale already, and my stomach churned for her.
“Colton went out for a run this morning. Someone followed him, was taking pictures of him. It was Elliot,” I explained, watching as her eyes widened. “He’s working with your dad.”
The little bit of blood still left in her cheeks drained immediately. “What?”
“He knows you’re pregnant,” Colton added, quieter now. “Tried to convince me it could be his. He’s… Look, I don’t know the extent, but he said he had other pictures too. Ones that definitely didn’t sound PG. I don’t know how the hell he got our address, but he’s taken pictures of us through the fucking windows. He’s trying to use it against us.”
Her hands started to shake in mine, her eyes locked onto me, hearing what Colton was saying but unable to look at him.
“He threatened to go to the press.” My throat closed uncomfortably, and I tried to swallow around it. “He told Colton he’s just trying to get you to see sense and leave this behind.”
“Oh my god,” she croaked. “ What ?”
“One of us is going to stay home with you today,” I added. “None of us feel comfortable leaving you here alone right now. But we’re going to figure something out?—”
“This is my fault,” she whispered, cutting me off, her voice breaking. “Oh my god, this is my fault. All of it. You guys—your careers— fuck , I’m ruining everything.”
I went to move, but Xav was already crawling across the bed, naked as the day he was born, wrapping his arms around her from behind. “No, you’re not,” he said softly, his mouth brushing against her ear. “You’re not.”
“My dad warned me. He warned me that if I didn’t cut it off, he’d make things worse for me. He doesn’t even care that I’m?—”
She cut herself off, her throat working, her breathing too fast.
“I don’t want to ruin your careers,” she said through gasps. “He took away my trust fund, and clearly, that wasn’t enough for him. Nothing is ever enough for him. I can’t pay for shit and now he’s got Elliot trying to ruin your ability to support yourselves. I can’t… I can’t?—”
Annie’s fingers were ice in mine, freezing like she’d just pulled them out of an ice bath.
Xavi squeezed her tightly, pulling her back a little into his lap, like he was trying to calm her down by sheer will alone. “We’ll figure it out,” he said, his voice steady for once in the face of something this stressful. The kid was learning. “But first thing — we need to get you a lawyer to get your trust back under your control. Someone good. Someone who isn’t afraid to take on your dad.”
Xav met my gaze over Annie’s shoulder, a silent request for me to figure that out. I was already ten steps ahead of him.
Her lips parted like she was about to argue, but Colton spoke first. “You shouldn’t have to keep looking over your shoulder for the guy who’s supposed to be your father,” he said softly. “And if Elliot actually tries anything, we’ll figure it out. But we need to take precautions now while we figure it out. So unless you’re itching to vomit in the Peach Arena bathrooms today, one of us will stay home with you.”
I nodded. “And I know a guy who played with one of our old teammates. His brother’s in family law, really good. He’s taken on billionaires and won. I’ll contact him, see what we can do about your trust.”
Annie’s lower lip wobbled. “I can’t pay for a lawyer right now without it.”
“I’ll cover it,” I said, squeezing her hand. It wasn’t even a thought.
She blinked at me like I was speaking another language. Like we hadn’t already been paying for her with the home studio, food, her copay for her doctor’s appointment. “But I can’t ask you to?—”
“You’re not asking,” I cut in, soft but firm. “You’re not asking for a damn thing. I’m— We’re doing this, all of this, because we want to. Because we love you.”
I didn’t miss the way Xavi’s gaze flicked to me briefly at that last bit, his body stilling.
“If you’re that worried about it, darling, pay me back once it’s in your control. But please don’t stop me or Colton or Xav from helping you.”
Colton cupped her cheek, turning her to face him. “Seriously, don’t. If you stress yourself out so badly you end up in the hospital over this, we’re all going to lose our minds.”
She gave a breathy little laugh, the sound cracked, her body still trembling.
“You’re safe with us,” Xav said quietly, pressing a kiss to her neck. “No matter what happens, we’ve got you. You don’t need to worry about money. You don’t need to fight your dad by yourself. We’re here.”
I could see her fighting it internally, fighting the instinct to apologize, to tell us she didn’t want to be a burden, as if carrying our baby and keeping this insane situation from going nuclear somehow made her the problem. It made my chest ache.
I pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “But we do need to be smart,” I added. “Coach already gave us a warning yesterday. If this turns into a full-blown scandal, we could be traded. All of us.”
“And then we wouldn’t all be together anymore,” Xavi murmured, squeezing her a little tighter.
That hit a nerve for her. She flinched .
“But that just means that we need to figure this out as quickly and well-thought-out as possible,” Colton said. “We need a plan.”
Annie swallowed hard. She didn’t speak, but she nodded, and that needed to be enough.
We could figure out a plan. We’d figure it out for us, but mostly for her. We’d give her a fortress. We’d wrap fucking steel around her if we needed to.