Page 209 of Hard Pass

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.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

Cole