“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. Iwantto 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 whathappened 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’reallhere 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’sstilldoing it.
Maybe… maybe we have a shot at actually moving forward.
Twenty-three
HOPE
