“Yes, sir.”
“How many times?”
“I don’t know.” My hand throbs in answer. “A lot.”
“You broke his nose. And you could’ve broken your own hand.”
“I don’t care,” I say before I can soften it. “He was dragging a girl upstairs when she could barely stand. Her eyes weren’t focusing. She could barely say my name.”
Coach’s gaze sharpens. “You’re sure she wasn’t just drunk?”
The word hits me wrong. I lean forward before I can stop myself.
“She wasn’t drunk,” I bite out. “She had one beer and a single sip from the bottle he handed her. That’s it. She knows her limits. And even if she didn’t—” My jaw locks, heat rising fast. “It wouldn’t give him a free pass.”
Coach studies me, silent.
“This had nothing to do with her clothes or how shelooks,” I add, voice low and steady. “She couldn’t type, Coach. She tried to text me, and her hands wouldn’t work. At the hospital, they said it looked like a sedative. They’re running specialized panels.”
The word hospital lands between us, heavy and cold.
Coach drags a hand over his mouth, eyes closing for a beat.
“She’s okay?” he asks, softer.
“She will be,” I say. “She’s home. Sleeping. But that’s not the point.”
He opens his eyes again. They’re harder now. Sharper.
“You come straight here from there?” he asks.
I nod. “Stopped at my place to shower.”
“And you went with her to the ER.”
“Yes.”
He leans back, chair creaking, and stares at the ceiling for a long second.
“Do you understand what you’re accusing him of?” he asks finally.
“I do.”
“You’re calling one of your teammates a predator, O’Connor. That’s not a word we throw around because we’re pissed about a girl.”
The sentence hits me like a slash to the back of the knees. My fists curl.
“This isn’t about me being pissed about a girl,” I say, forcing each word out steady. “This is about her almost ending up unconscious in a stranger’s room because one of our guys decided he was entitled to her body.”
There’s a beat.
“Is there anything else I should know?” he asks.
The question hangs in the air like a puck on edge.
Anything else.
The bet flares in my head, ugly and bright. Reed’s smirk. Isabelle’s voice. The way I let myself go along with something I knew was rotten from the second I agreed to it.
