And just like that, the room goes still. Dead fucking still. Like we’re standing at the edge of something we can’t walk back from.
Rafe’s hand moves before I can even breathe—slow, deliberate, dragging down from my wrist along the inside of my forearm, brushing over my knuckles until he finds exactly where my fingers are still curled under the blanket. Still wrapped around myself. Still humiliating.
He doesn’t hesitate.
He wraps his hand over mine—warm and huge—and I gasp, choking on the sound, because this is nothing like the shame I expected. Nothing like disgust. Nothing like the rejection I braced for the second he walked through the door.
“Jules…” Rafe starts, his voice dropping into that quiet, dangerous place that makes my bones vibrate.
“Yeah?” I whisper, breath trembling, eyes flicking up to him because I can’t not.
He holds my stare. And then his fingers tighten—slow and crushing—around my hand, around my cock, around the shame I’ve been drowning in.
He doesn’t break eye contact for a second. “I’m going to kill that man.” The words land like a blade sinking straight through the center of my chest.
I freeze, breath locked in my throat. His grip tightens again, just enough to make my hips jolt, just enough to make the air stutter out of me like I’m falling.
“If he’s the reason you’re this broken,” Rafe says, voice low and terrifyingly steady, “the reason I have to drag you out of your own mind, the reason you’re playing on the most dangerous rink there is just to stay alive…” He leans in closer, so close I feel his breath on my lips. “If he’s the reason you stare at the ice like it’s a fucking trauma flashback—he’s going to die. Slowly. And painfully.”
My eyes go wide. My pulse kicks. Shame and heat and something darker choke me all at once. “Rafe—”
But he isn’t done. He takes my hand—still wrapped around myself—and pries my fingers off, slow enough to be cruel, gentle enough to be devastating. My breath shudders, my cheeks burn, and then—he replaces my hand with his.
His palm. His grip. His heat.
His claim.
It’s the first time Rafe has touched me like this. And I don’t think I’ll ever recover.
14
RAFE
He chose love over himself.
That’s what did it. That’s what broke him—not the drugs, not the league, not the pressure, and not even the fucking tape.
Love.
And not the kind of love that saves you. Not the kind you bleed for proudly. No. Julian Reaver chose the kind of love that ruins. That creeps into your chest with soft hands and leaves teeth marks on your soul. The kind of love that never intended to stay. That only takes. That hides you behind closed doors while it smiles for the cameras with a wife and two perfect fucking kids.
The kind of love that films you without your knowledge, fucks you with the lights on, and smirks into the camera while you’re breaking open like a prayer.
I know who it is. Of course I fucking do.
Nathan Grant. Captain of the Toronto Royals. Married. Publicly wholesome. Privately predatory. I met him once at a gala, years ago. Clean-cut. Golden smile. That kind of man doesn’t smell like danger—he smells like safety, and that’s what makes him the worst kind. You don’t see it coming until you’re bleeding out on the locker room floor.
My jaw flexes as the rage settles into something quieter. It’s no longer roaring, no longer hot.
Now it’s cold. Precise.
And it all makes sense now. Every feral choice, every snort, every crash into danger like Julian wants to be punished. Like he’s trying to scrub himself raw from the inside out. Like he’s trying to outrun the part of himself that loved someone who never intended to love him back.
He was a secret.
A disposable one.
He threw the game—his career, his name, his entire fucking life—just to protect the man who fucked him and then handed him a loaded gun with a smile.
