CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Cole
I nod at my agent’s text. At least that part’s done. Now . . . this.
Just as I raise my fist to knock again, Tristan opens the door barefoot and holding a beer.
Completely fucking relaxed.
“Dude.” His brows lift in surprise. “What’s up? What’s the rush to see me?” His gaze narrows slightly and his voice grows serious. “You okay?”
The irony almost makes me laugh.
I step inside before he can move fully out of the way and do my best to mask my disgust. “How was your trip? Did you close the deal?” I ask.
“Not yet. I need to finesse a few more things for them, then yeah, I’ll get it closed.”
His house smells like a bachelor pad—takeout food and Febreze.
ESPN drones quietly in the background from the ridiculously sized television mounted on the wall.
His suitcase is at the end of the hall, unpacked.
There’s a stack of papers on the kitchen counter, and his laptop is open with what looks like on the screen.
A site that provides up-to-the-minute stats for the NFL.
On any other day, I wouldn’t think anything of it. All the guys track stats in one way or another. But right now? It might as well be a confession.
I don’t know if Tristan notices me looking at it, but he positions himself in front of the screen, leaning his ass against the counter.
“So what was so urgent you needed to see me an hour after I landed?”
I stare at him for a long moment.
At one of my closest friends.
At the guy who grew up with me through my high school years. The women. The experiences. The ups and downs of college and collegiate football.
Someone I never thought I had to protect myself from.
I cross my arms and lean against the back of the couch. “You tell me.”
He clenches and unclenches his jaw, confusion etched in the lines of his face. “Cole . . . I’m confused, brother.”
“Don’t brother me.”
He opens his mouth and closes it. Good. Because if he starts lying right now, I don’t know what the fuck I’ll do.
I grip the back of the couch on either side of my hips to stop myself from putting one through the wall.
Or his face.
His eyes flick over me carefully and his brow knits. “You look pissed.”
“You’ll be lucky if that’s all I am.”
The silence that follows is heavy. Tristan rubs a hand over the back of his neck and exhales sharply, but my glare is unrelenting. He shifts his feet, crosses his arms, uncrosses them, and then finally says, “Who told you?”
The question punches straight through my chest.
Not denial. Not confusion. Confirmation.
And all the bartering I did with myself that the bet was a coincidence, that he would never do that to me, and on and on, fly out the fucking window.
I stare at him. All the things I’d rehearsed in my head are gone. He really did it.
And suddenly every weird moment since the start of season replays differently in my head.
The questions and the timing of them.
The games he pressed harder after bad throws.
The way he brushed off conversations about the investigation quickly at times and asked too detailed questions at other times.
The bets stopping. Then starting again.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Who told you?
“You did,” I finally say, laugh sounding hollow. “Because I never would’ve looked at you otherwise.”
I expect him to backpedal instantly. To stutter and sputter and overexplain and get frantic.
Instead, his face hardens and somehow that’s worse. No guilt. No panic.
“It’s not like I killed somebody.”
My fist connects with his jaw, and the crack echoes through the room.
Tristan stumbles sideways into the wall with a curse.
My breathing is ragged, hands clenched, and body vibrating. All I want to do is hit him again, but I can’t. My hands are my tools and the last thing I need to do is damage them breaking the guy’s fucking nose.
Tristan presses his hand against his jaw and rubs it, eyes wide with shock before anger flashes hot and vicious across his face.
“You wanna fucking go?” he snaps, his own arm cocking back.
“You knew, as one of my best friends, where to cut the deepest. How could you?” My voice is terrifyingly calm.
“I didn’t mean for it to go this far.”
I laugh once, disbelieving. “You didn’t mean for organized betting tied to an NFL quarterback under federal-level league investigation to go this far?”
“I never threw a game.”
“That’s your defense?”
“I never fucking touched the field.”
“No shit. I did. But that didn’t stop you from using me, did it?”
His eyes flash. “I used information.”
I stare at him. Did he really just fucking say that? Has he really separated the two things in his head? Information versus friendship. Data points that mean more than me. Not once did he think about it being a betrayal.
“You noticed the hand thing,” I say quietly.
“It’s always been there. During college. Last year. But it got worse this year.” He pauses. “Not my fault you started tipping your throws, Cole.”
Christ. The man has zero shame. Like I’m some random athlete he’s watching on SportsCenter and not his best friend.
“You knew when I was struggling,” I say.
“You were easy to read if someone paid attention,” he says, justifying his decisions.
The betrayal in that sentence staggers me. Because someone was paying attention. My best friend.
“I did what anyone else would have done given the situation. You got worse and I got better at spotting it. There’s no crime in that.”
“I trusted you,” I say, voice rough and chest burning. “I let you in every goddamn facet of my fucking life.”
“Cole—”
“You weren’t supposed to be someone I had to protect myself from.” I take a step closer, fury rioting through me.
Finally, something akin to guilt flashes across his face.
“I got in too deep,” he says quietly.
And it’s like every time he admits it, even when I know it to be true, it’s like the knife is twisting even deeper.
“It started small.” He drags a hand through his hair. “A bet here. A bet there. Something to cover the money I’d lost on the last bet. The hole kept getting bigger—what I owed, who I owed it to—and so I did what I had to do to settle some of my debts with the information I had.”
“Are they settled?” I ask, astounded that he could do this to me and not really fucking care at this point if they are or not.
“One step forward, two steps back.”
“So, no. You made money off using me and then went and dug the hole deeper on another bet.” Fucking hell. “Who do you owe?”
“You don’t want to know.”
But I already do. A bookie. A loan shark. Some guy running a gambling site overseas to stay undetected. All of them require a cut. All of them want interest on money owed.
All of them probably offering more than valid threats when the next payment is late.
Jesus, Tristan. How could you do this to me?
But I don’t care. Can’t. Not after what he’s done.
“You think I wanted this to happen?” he barks and points to me, his eyes widening and body fidgeting. “I was trying to stay afloat, Cole.”
“You used me.”
His face twists. “I never gave them enough to destroy you.”
What. The. Fuck.
“What did you just say?” The words are pure venom. He may not have destroyed me, but I just left the bed of a woman who he sure as fuck did.
“I controlled it,” he says like he genuinely believes it. “I only fed enough information to shift prop bets. Performance stuff. Completion percentages. Injury probability. I kept it away from anything that could bury you completely or actually trace back to you.”
My God. He really thinks that matters.
“But it did, Tristan. It’s dirtied my reputation and—”
“You should thank me,” he says suddenly. “You got Dublin out of this, didn’t you?”
The sentence detonates inside my chest. I cross the room so fast he barely has time to react before I slam him into the wall by the front of his shirt.
“Don’t ever say her name again,” I grit out as his eyes widen in shock.
“She never belonged in this mess. She’s just collateral damage.”
“You put her there.” My forearm is on his chest, and it takes everything I have not to push it higher to his neck and press there instead.
His laugh is almost diabolical as he stares at me in confusion. “She’s in your life because of me.”
Rage flashes hot enough to blur my vision. Step back, Cole. Let go.
My body is warring between restraint and consent to beat the hell out of him.
I let go abruptly, Dublin’s face this morning in my head, and I step backward before I become someone I can’t come back from.
Before I am unable to accomplish what I came here for.
Tristan coughs once as he adjusts his shirt while I look at a guy I trusted with everything and feel nothing recognizable anymore.
Just disbelief. Just fury. Just grief.
“You’re going to fix this,” I say.
His head snaps up immediately. “What?”
“You heard me.” My plan already in motion.
“I’ll just stop. Won’t bet anymore. That’ll take the heat off you and it’ll go away,” he rambles. “Fixed. I’ll figure out how to pay the—”
“Not going to cut it. You will fucking fix this.”
His face pales slightly. “Stopping is fixing it.”
“No. You will confess publicly to whom I ask you to. You will clear my name. You will clear Dublin of any wrongdoing.”
“That’ll destroy me,” he whispers.
I stare at him coldly. “Just like you tried to destroy us.”
His jaw tightens and his eyes are loaded with disbelief. “Us? You’re picking her over me?” he whispers.
“Yes.”
He physically recoils.
“I love her.” And he didn’t give a fuck what putting Dublin in the crosshairs would do to her life.
He’s fucking dead to me.
He shakes his head with a half laugh. “What am I supposed to do, call up the NFL and confess, saying, hey, it was me? Like, come on, Cole. Let’s be real here. That would ruin my life.”
He really thinks he’s just going to stop and that’s the end of this, doesn’t he? He doesn’t give a flying fuck that Dublin’s career was collateral damage. That her reputation was ruined and drug through the mud.
“You’ll confess all right, but when and where I tell you to.” I turn to move toward the front door. “I have it all set up—”
“Cole—”
“No.” I hold a hand up. “I’m in control now. Not you. I will have a car here to pick you up at nine tomorrow morning.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“You will show,” I say with quiet steel in my voice.
“Cole.” A plea.
The asshole.
I glance over my shoulder and meet his eyes. “You were once my friend and that’s what makes this so unforgivable.”