Chapter 45
Forty Five
Ezra
It was like any other day until it wasn’t.
All I wanted was to be inside my girlfriend’s pussy, because her ban has my balls aching blue.
So, when the team forced me into going to a club with them, I was grumpy as fuck. But, like always, they convinced me to go.
Reluctantly, I agreed. I shouldn’t have. I should’ve gone home, straight to my woman.
Kaeli’s name flashing on the screen was all it took to bring a smile to my face, which had been resting like a bitch, seeing my teammates and friends flirt relentlessly with the puck bunnies.
Though for the first time, Seb didn’t take his chance and was brooding over his own glass of scotch, staring at a woman I’m pretty sure was Jackson Davis’s girlfriend.
He’s the goalie for the New York Falcons, so going there would be disastrous for him.
“Don’t even think about it,” I warn him as the captain of the team.
All he does is grunt as his jaw grinds. I shake my head at his stupidity and turn to another brooding player sitting beside me, Noah.
I would’ve asked who pissed in his drink, but I had to take the call from the woman I love.
God, I can’t believe I get to tell her that. I’m the luckiest motherfucker alive.
A few months back, I was rolling through the motions like everyone else, working myself to the bone and going back to an empty home.
My last heartache didn’t help the cause.
Now that I finally know how it feels to have your person, I’m never letting her go.
Accepting the call, I put the phone to my ear, shouting her name into the receiver. When she doesn’t reply, I check the phone and call out for her again. Her broken voice and hang-up stir something unsettling inside me.
Without a second thought, I’m pushing my way out. I’m on the road in no time, glad that I didn’t have more than two sips.
I cover the twenty-minute distance to her place in seven, driving recklessly and breaking God knows how many traffic rules.
The second I open the door, her screams of terror reach my ears. When I squat down and touch her, her cry breaks my heart like nothing ever did before.
I shake her, begging her to listen to me. She finally blinks at me, seeing me, and launches herself into my arms. I hug her as tightly as humanly possible right there on the floor and take her to the bedroom once she passes out. I lie down on the bed with her sleeping form in my arms.
To say that I’m scared shitless of what elicited such an intense reaction from her would be an understatement.
All types of possibilities run rampant in my mind, each one worse. Then the memory of her flinching when I had been teaching her to skate months back and her nightmare the first time I stayed over, flashes through my mind.
My brows furrow as I stare at her sleeping form, her limbs glued to mine. Does that have something to do with it? I won’t know until she tells me.
Lost in thought, I fall asleep when her whimpers have me jerking awake.
I look for her in the dark and find her eyes scrunched shut. She’s having a nightmare again. I tug her to me and whisper words to calm her down.
Her sweaty, trembling body clinging to me as I hold her, afraid she’ll disappear if I let go.
* * *
Kaeli’s shuffling as she wakes rouses me, too.
Stretching her limbs, she mumbles on a yawn, “Good morning, darling.”
Fuck, this is not the time, junior.
I tell my dick as it twitches in my pants.
She sidles closer to me, resting her chin on my chest as she smiles at me, her face still flushed with yesterday’s tears but no less beautiful.
“Good morning, Feather,” I croak, pecking her lips.
When it doesn’t look like she’ll say anything, I ask, “What happened yesterday, Kaeli?”
It’s as if for a second she forgot all about it. “So, it did happen, huh?”
“It did.”
She opens and closes her mouth like a fish, not saying a word. “Kaeli?” I tuck a strand behind her ear as she leans into my palm.
With a weary sigh, she begins. “I’m being stalked.”
I blink at her like an idiot. “Sorry, you’re being what?”
We both know I heard it and just don’t want to believe it. The ground shifts beneath me as the gravity of what she just told me settles in, and I shoot up to sit in the bed, pulling her with me.
“What the fuck, Kaeli? Are you alright? Did you get hurt?” I frantically search her body for any injuries, my heart threatening to burst out of my chest.
She takes both my hands in hers, rubbing her thumb on my knuckles. “I’m alright. Nothing happened.”
“Who did it?” I growl. “Tell me who did this, Kaeli, and I swear to God I’ll kill him. But before that, I’ll shatter every bone in his body to pieces.”
She gives me a stern look. “You’re not going to do anything like that.”
“But–”
“We’ll do it the right way. We’ll file a complaint against him.”
“But then I won’t be able to beat the shit out of him for scaring you,” I reason, my heart thundering in my ears.
“Promise me you’ll do no such thing, or I won’t tell you his name. I can’t have you behind bars.” She can be so fucking commanding and stubborn.
She continues to glare at me until I relent. “Fuck, fine! I promise.”
“Good.”
“Now tell me!”
She glances between my eyes before revealing. “It’s John Mullens.”
My eyebrows draw together as I browse my brain for the face associated with the name. My eyes widen at the realization. “As in the previous Social Media Director?” I confirm.
Kaeli nods. “The very same.”
“Since when?”
She hesitates before answering. “L…Last year.”
“And you’re telling me this now?” My voice edges closer to a mix of panic and fury.
“It’s not like I go on advertising it to people,” she retorts, rolling her eyes at me even in this situation.
I rub a hand over my face. “Fuck, Kaeli. You should’ve told me at least.”
“We weren’t exactly braiding each other’s hair.” Sarcasm drips from her words as she folds her arms over her chest.
“Goddamn it, Kaeli. Okay, tell me everything.”
An uncertain emotion flashes through her eyes, giving her a faraway look. She takes her time before she speaks.
“Three years ago, I got the internship I had lost all hope for after that coffee debacle. I was living my happiest life and working hard at my job. I had to do good, Stacy had stuck her neck out for me. But Mullens always found some problems with my work, reprimanding me. I pushed myself to do better, missing my meals and messing up my sleep schedule.”
Her features reflect regret as she loses herself in her past. I take her hands in mine and caress them softly, quietly trying to lend her my strength.
Kaeli takes a deep breath before continuing.
“Initially, I thought my work wasn’t up to the mark.
But then I noticed how he would always find a way to get me into his office alone and not only ridicule my work but also comment on the way I dressed.
‘Your skirt is too short,’ or ‘Your blouse is too tight,’ or ‘Your dresses distract the men here,’ he’d say. ”
My hold tightens on her hands, barely restraining the bubbling rage at the fuckwad. “Why didn’t you tell anybody?” I attempt to ask as gently as possible.
Kaeli scoffs. “Who would’ve believed me?”
I want to say I would have, but I know what she’ll say.
Then, I remember the times I made comments about her distracting the players, and the guilt and embarrassment threaten to swallow me whole.
“Fuck, Kaeli. All those times I provoked you by spouting shit—” My words break on a gulp. I can’t even say it.
“I know you didn’t mean it, darling,” she caresses my jaw. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not!” I claim. “I have been downright cruel and mean to you.”
“I won’t lie and say that you haven’t,” she sighs.
She shouldn’t forgive me. I don’t even forgive myself.
She continues, “That’s what women mean when they say that men don’t even realize how privileged they are. They say and do things without a care in the world, with no accountability whatsoever.”
I swallow a gulp, shame drowning me. “And I fed into it when I talked like a grade A asshole to you.” She peers at me with a sad smile, making me feel ten times worse, because how this remarkable woman agreed to be with me is beyond my comprehension.
I steel my shoulders. “But I’ll do my penance by showering you with love and apologies, and working on myself and using the platform I’ve been blessed with to make the world realize how they still hurt people without even meaning to.” I turn my head and plant a soft kiss in the palm of her hand.
She nods, “You should. Because even I changed how I dressed up, instead of standing up to that fucker.” Kaeli takes a deep breath before resuming, “Then one day, when there was barely anyone else left in the arena, I finished up late and went to show him my analysis.”
My breath ceases, and my heart pounds, afraid of what she might say next.
“Like always, he criticized my work, and then he…he cornered me.” Her breath trembles as it comes out in shallow puffs. “He said…said that he needs to punish me to teach me a lesson and then groped my breasts.” She chokes on a sob, holding in to complete the incident.
While the only thoughts in my brain are of how to get away with his murder. I will kill that son of a bitch for putting her through something like this.
“I kicked him in the nuts as he keeled over and grabbed the pen stand from his table, and threw it at his head. He bled, but I ran like hell, while he chased me down the corridor. But thankfully, there were still a couple of people left, so he couldn’t go any further.
The next day, I filed a complaint against him with the HR department, and they investigated it and found the recording of him running after me in the corridor.
I also had emails and some phone call recordings as evidence against him.
So, the team fired him and asked me to keep it on the down low.
There were some leaks and speculations, which were the reason why the company had to work on its image.
But no one really knows the truth, not even Stacy. ”
When she’s done telling me everything, I open my arms for her. “Come here, Feather.”
She breaks down as tears spill down her face and buries herself in my embrace. I calm and soothe her as I promise to protect her or die trying.
Her body convulses as she lets go of the past she had been holding onto for so long, while I hold her through it.
Now, everything makes sense: her flinching, her looking petrified at the game, her subtle alertness. It hurts that I didn’t see it all before.
A few minutes later, she pulls back and wipes her tears. “Since then, he randomly pops up at places where I can’t do a damn thing to him. Last night was the first time he followed me like that, though. He’s why I was apprehensive about being interviewed with you.”
My hands curl into fists around her hand, my body vibrating with anger. Just thinking of what could’ve happened then and now chills me to my bones.
I go to stand, when she halts me, her voice panicked. “Ezra, no. You promised.”
I cast her an incredulous look. “How can you expect me to stay put after what that sick motherfucker made you suffer through? And why isn’t he in jail?”
Kaeli’s gaze flick to her lap, her teeth chewing on her lower lip. “I didn’t file a report,” she admits.
“Why?”
“I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, and the seniors would not have taken the bad PR favorably.” She shrugs as if it wasn’t already a big fucking deal.
He put his filthy hands on her, molested her, and harassed her. He fucking stalked her. Fucking hell!
I pull at the roots of my hair. “Tell me, Kaeli, how can I let it go?”
“I’m not asking you to let it go. I’m asking you not to do something that will land you behind bars, damnit!” she yells.
Seeing her exhausted and spent, I will myself to calm down. This is not about me. This is about her. And right now, she needs me.
I might not tell her what I’ll do, but I will make John Mullens pay for ever believing that he could get away with what he put Kaeli through.
I will ruin him.