Chapter 39 Cole
COLE
By the time I shoved back from my desk, in my own corner office down the hall from my father, it was past nine on a rare Friday with no game.
My father knew exactly what he was doing, asking me to finish the financials tonight. He thought he was keeping me from Eva, from Tristan, from the team, and that I’d do it because I’d turned over a new leaf.
He didn’t know I knew he’d set a deadline for Eva on my rehab records and blackmail on Alek.
He didn’t know I relished the opportunity to pore over the way he used shell companies to hide the money he’d stolen from his own company.
He didn’t know I was going to stop him from hurting anyone else ever again.
No matter what it took.
The party was noisy and loud and full of gorgeous assholes getting absolutely wasted—exactly what a frat party at a school for the elite should be.
My costume was minimal—a glowing mask, courtesy of Katie, who’d giggled about MaskTok when she handed it to me, and black leather gloves on top of the black button-down and slacks I already wore.
I’d teased Eva about chasing her through the campus, and, to my delight, her eyes had gotten wide.
Her lips parted as her breath stuttered before she laughed and shot me down.
A stranger shoved a full red cup at me, and I shook my head.
As tempting as it was, I needed Eva as much as I’d needed any drug, to smell her, to taste her, to wrap my hands around her waist and pull her against my body, soft and stunning and fucking perfect.
My hands shook, and I reminded myself why I was doing this, why I was sober, and just how fucking badly my father wanted me to fail.
I can do this.
“Cole!” Rami shouted, waving at me above the press of the crowd. Weaving in and out of drunk, costumed assholes, I made my way to him, keeping my eyes peeled for Eva’s shock of red curls.
Rami looked me up and down and laughed. “You look like such an asshole,” he teased me. “The girls are gonna be all over you.”
“You mean Eva’s gonna be all over him,” Katie said, sliding under my arm with a cup of bright red punch in her hand. She was wearing almost nothing, some sort of sexy ghost.
Rami’s eyes turned flinty. “What are you drinking?”
“Who the fuck knows? It’s good.”
“Did you see them make it?” he demanded.
“Easy there, tiger,” Katie said with a bright smile that didn’t meet her eyes. “You lost the right to worry about what I’m drinking when you cheated on me.”
Rami’s expression flickered to anguish for a moment before he turned around and stormed off.
“Do you have to be so hard on him?” I asked her, and she cocked her hip out and raised her eyebrows.
“Did you have to be such a dick to Eva?”
“Do you not see me groveling to get back in her good graces?”
Katie’s expression softened. “Good. You both deserve good things to happen to you.”
“Have you seen her?” I couldn’t imagine Tristan leaving her side during this party.
Katie shook her head. “Not since we got here.”
Me
Where are you, sparrow?
She didn’t answer. I wandered through the frat house, from room to room, looking for Eva and Tristan without any luck.
Goddammit.
“Oh my god, Cole Carter!” A stunning blonde woman draped her arm around my waist. “Are you here by yourself?”
“Nope,” I said with an easy smile, moving out from her embrace.
“A girl who lets you out of their sight isn’t working hard enough to keep you,” she said, stroking her fingers down my chest, and I flinched before controlling myself.
“Or I’m not working hard enough to keep her,” I said, remembering my role—my father’s son, star of the team, charming and polite and never giving anyone reason to suspect that something might be wrong.
The girl snorted but backed off.
Eva wasn’t in the kitchen or upstairs. After wandering back downstairs, stopping to say hello a thousand times, I spied a campfire out back. Silently, I slipped out the back door and finally spied Eva’s bright red curls dangling down her back.
What the fuck was she wearing?
A short vinyl skirt barely covered her ass, with fishnets underneath.
I couldn’t tell what she wore on top, because at least she was wearing Tristan’s leather jacket.
Christ, that ass. I paused for a moment to admire it from the steps of the back porch, the way the skirt flared over her hips, the dig of the fishnets into her flesh.
I couldn’t fucking wait to bite into her later, leaving marks I could tattoo on her ass.
Maybe tonight was the night.
Or maybe Eva would say goodbye and go back to Alek’s, like she had after watching the game last night.
Tristan draped his arm over her shoulder, and I looked more closely—was Eva wearing cat ears? And a fucking tail? Tristan had wrapped colored string all over himself, it looked like.
Oh my god—a kitten and her ball of yarn.
They were so fucking cute, my chest ached.
“Fat bitch,” someone said beside me, slurring his words.
What the hell?
“Fucking puck bunnies. Bet he’s with her because she’s easy.”
I looked around but didn’t see any of the other women associated with the team.
“Shows why you can’t let women work in men’s sports,” another voice said. “They just hook up with the players anyway.”
“I applied for that job. Bitch took my spot.”
Fat bitch. Easy. The words drilled into my skull.
How many times had my father said shit like that about people he considered beneath him?
About anyone who didn’t serve a purpose in his empire?
I knew Eva was self-conscious about our relationship—she’d said so more than once, that she hated the way people looked at her when she was with us.
My fist connected with his face before I’d made a conscious decision to move.
Three men and me, with my fists up, wearing this stupid fucking mask that limited my visual field. But I was sober, and I was a hockey player used to taking my licks on the ice and playing the rest of the game. And who the fuck were these assholes?
One threw a punch at me, and I dodged it, only to slam my first in his stomach. While he was bent over, another took a swing at me.
Somehow, in the melee, my mask got knocked off.
“Cole!” Eva shouted from my left.
Oh fuck, she was going to be so disappointed in me.
Suddenly, I wasn’t fighting alone. Tristan was by my side, but the fight had turned into a fucking brawl.
What the hell?
People were losing their minds fighting, slinging deck chairs around, hitting each other with beer bottles.
I dodged and weaved, but when a fist collided with my cheek, I fucking felt it.
Sirens wailed in the distance.
Shit.
Students started running, but I had to make sure Eva got out. I whirled around and searched the yard for her hair, only to find myself yanked back into the fray.
By the time I was standing up straight, a row of cops were handcuffing students and putting them into cars.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Tristan swore, grabbing my wrist and dragging me away from the line of cars. “The last thing I fucking need is to get arrested for a fight.”
Before I could pull out my phone to call a rideshare, a cop stepped in front of the two of us. I froze. Tristan stilled and held his hands up. The cop didn’t even look at him—he was looking me up and down. “A goddamned Carter,” he hissed. “Just what I fucking needed.”
I sighed and offered up my wrists for cuffing. “I’m not gonna call my dad.”
“Doesn’t matter. We’ll all pay for this,” he muttered as he pushed my head down and into the backseat of the car.
Tristan joined me on the other side but didn’t say a word.
I didn’t either. If I’d learned nothing else from my father, it was when to keep my mouth shut. I sure as hell wasn’t going to admit to starting the fight in a cop car.
Two hours later, we were booked, along with half a dozen other students, my mask and belt and gloves in the property locker.
They locked us all up together in a big cell with benches along two walls. The cops had divested Tristan of his rope, leaving him in a black sweatshirt and sweatpants and the other students in various states of costuming.
The two women who’d joined the fight were locked up in a cell across a wide hallway. Eva wasn’t among them, so I had to assume she’d gotten away.
Assume.
My phone was still in property lockup, and she could be anywhere—hurt, scared, disgusted by my violence, never wanting to see me again. The thought cut through my chest like a fucking blade.
Fuck. Fuck!
“You fucker,” snarled one of the guys who’d been making the nasty comments about Eva. “You started this.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Started what?”
“Started a fight—over that fucking girl.”
I furrowed my brow and scooted closer to Tristan, who draped his arm over my shoulders and tugged me tight.
“Not sure what you’re talking about.”
“That fat bitch,” he snarled.
My vision tunneled. Tristan’s arm tightened around me, holding me back, and it took everything I had not to cross the cell and finish what I’d started at the party. My hands curled so tight, my nails bit into my palms.
“Easy,” Tristan murmured against my temple. I forced myself to breathe, forced myself to stay still. This is what Eva did every day—swallowed her rage and kept on smiling because she fucking had to.
I could do this for her.
I would do this for her.
I swallowed hard then smiled. “I would never talk about a lady that way,” I drawled, getting comfortable with Tristan, or at least as comfortable as we could be.
He scratched my scalp. “You don’t have to stay in here if a responsible adult comes to pick you up, you know.”
I looked at him, confused. “What?”
“Yeah. They’re not going to actually arrest us,” Tristan said. “Just hold us for a night, maybe through tomorrow to fuck with us because cops are assholes, and then they’ll let us go.” He looked at me in surprise. “Do you ever pay attention to anything?”
I laughed quietly. I couldn’t blame it on never having been arrested before, because neither had Tristan.
“You’re going to call your lawyer, right?” he asked.
The moment stretched out. One call, and I’d be out of here in twenty minutes, the whole thing buried before morning. But then my father would ask questions. Why was I at a party? Who was I with? What started the fight?
He’d find out about Eva. He probably already suspected we were back together.
Why else would he have given her that deadline on my medical records?
But right now, it was just suspicion. If I called, if his lawyers came, if they pulled the police report and saw I’d started a fight at a party where Eva was, he’d know for certain.
He knew everything and everyone in this town—I wouldn’t be able to keep her involvement a secret.
And then he’d renege on our deal not to touch her, because I’d already reneged on mine.
I’d handed him enough weapons against people I cared about. I wasn’t giving him another one.
I shook my head.
“Cole—”
“No.” The word came out harder than I meant it to. “I’m not calling him.”
Tristan’s hand stilled on my back. “You could lose your spot on the team.”
The new coach, whoever the fuck it would be, could kick me out. My father could cut me off entirely, but none of that mattered if Eva ended up in his crosshairs. “So could you. I’m done letting other people suffer for my fuck-ups.”
Tristan’s thumb resumed its circles on my shoulder blade, and then it hit me—Tristan could call his own people. His brother Cedric would drive down in a heartbeat, if he asked.
Tristan was staying because I was staying.
My chest squeezed. Nobody had ever—not once in my entire fucking life—chosen to suffer with me when they had a way out.
“I’m not calling.”
I guess I wasn’t done letting people suffer from my fuckups after all. I closed my eyes and tried not to think about how many ways this could go wrong.