Page 208 of Hard Pass

“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.