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“Come,” she says, taking my hand, but I can barely feel it. It’s all numbness. Because I know what I’m walking into. Like all my demons I’ve been outrunning for years are finally catching up to me.
I sit where Harris gestures to, while Harris sits on his desk and puts his wife in his big chair with a smile, spinning it around once to make her laugh, before crossing his arms and looking to LaBlanc.
“What did you want to talk to us about, then?”
LaBlanc hands Harris a file, the one I clocked under his arm the second I turned the corner. I don’t have to wonder what’s in it.
“This is a recently dissolved restraining order for Toren Kane to stay away from Lillian LaBlanc, my daughter. It was approved four years ago, just after their high school graduation night, and was upheld until last March.” LaBlanc clears his throat. “I would hate for any of this to come out, and when I realized Toren hadn’t informed you both while living under your roof, I just . . . Well . . .” He sighs heavily, his mask of worry for them thick. My hands dig into the wooden armrests on my chair.
“I just wanted the both of you to be aware of it.”
“I’m sorry,” Sahara says, leaning forward. “I don’t understand. What exactly are you implying?”
Her voice is sharp, and I can see how quickly it irritates LaBlanc.
“I have some statements, as well as Lillian’s hospital records, to explain more about that night, but the simple fact is Kane here attacked my daughter while trying to break into my home and steal from me, with his two brothers.”
“That’s not true—”
“Brothers?” Harris asks, turning his chin over his shoulder to look at me.
LaBlanc shakes his head. “You’re right. He didn’t break in. Lillian happily let him in because she believed they were in love. But he’d had a plan, I guess.” Another fake simpering sigh. “As you know, Harris, I coached him for years. Took him under my wing as a child, let him into my home time and again, all for my daughter to end up in the hospital, knocked unconscious?”
“Toren?”
I’m immobile. My mind is splintering, half stuck in this room while the other half of me is sitting on the pavement of the LaBlanc driveway, crying with Lily in my lap, bleeding. Shouting for help. And no one will help me.
“Are you asking for something? Why are you telling us this now?” Harris asks, his voice a little sharper. “What’s going on?”
“I know you’re helping Kane with the interested NHL teams—and I know a few agents if he needs them, but I just want to make sure you have all the data needed. Of course, I think he’s doing wonderfully now. The last years have done real good for him, but he is a known fighter on the ice.”
Because you made me this way.
“And he nearly killed Rhys.”
I need out of here. Let me out. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
“I just wanted to make sure we’re all on the same page.”
Harris stands abruptly, tucking the files into the manila folder and slamming it closed.
“Of course.” My coach nods. “Thank you, LaBlanc, for this. We’ll discuss it and figure out our next steps. And if you or Lily need anything—”
“Oh, we’re fine. It was years ago. She hardly even remembers it.”
Liar. She remembers. We know what you did.
LaBlanc nods his head to Sahara, then taps and squeezes my shoulder as he passes me out the door. My jaw somehow tightens further, until I’m sure it’ll break with the pressure, but I refuse to cry or scream or lose my cool.
Not about LaBlanc and his stupid lies.
He’s just trying to hurt me now, because he can’t get to Lily anymore.
“Toren?”
Sahara says my name in a way that means she’s said it a few times. I can’t look up, my body folding in half, eyes to the floor as my knees bounce with the anxiety.
“I know what he said to you,” I say, staring at the floor but then looking up at the Harrises. “But I didn’t hit Lily. I would never hit a girl. Never, okay? You have to believe me.”
