Page 2 of Knot Your Pucking Secret

Not when the man who raised me was a liar.A criminal.I had to ask myself if I wanted to be tied to that for the rest of my life. I had to decide if, once all of that got out to the press, I’d be able to recover emotionally from the scrutiny. The truth is, I’m not so sure.

So I let it go.

To grieve, and to heal.

Because there comes a point where carrying the weight of what someone did to you becomes a choice, and I’ll be damned if I spend another day carrying theirs. So here I am, back in the west. A city I didn’t think I’d see again after returning to Vadena. Back at my regular job. And I’ll be just fine.

It’s been five months since I left Vadena. Left them.

The wounds are still fresh, and the scars always will be. But scars aren’t reminders of weakness. They’re proof I survived.

Chapter One

Lennon

“BITTCCHH, we are here!”

The combined shriek of Veronica and Bronte blasts through the speaker, loud enough that I have to pull the phone away from my ear. The sound catches me so completely off guard that a laugh slips free before I can stop it, rich and unrestrained in a way that feels almost foreign after months of forcing every emotion behind carefully constructed walls and throwing myself into work. Some things, it seems, survive absolutely everything.

“Hi!” I say, shaking my head. “How far away are you guys? I am just leaving work.”

“We just picked up the car, and we’re leaving the airport now. Fuck this traffic, by the way,” Veronica says before cursing someone out.

I snort. Somehow, despite everything that’s happened since we last stood in the same room together, Veronica is still unapologetically herself. Loud. Foul-mouthed. Entirely unconcerned with whether the rest of the world approves of a single word that comes out of her mouth. There is something oddly comforting about that. While my own life has been flippedin every shade of upside down in recent months, Veronica has remained exactly who she’s always been.

“Okay, well, we should get to my apartment around the same time. Drive safely and V,” I say, weaving through the stream of people spilling from the office building, trying to pull the former Cardinals PR manager’s attention back to me as she continues to curse out the‘sad excuse for an Alpha’on exactly where he can shove his driver’s licence.

“Yes?” she chuffs, finally bringing her attention back to the conversation.

“Please don’t get yourself locked up on the way here. I have spent far too long in police stations today.” She laughs, loud enough that I have to pull the phone away from my ear again, and despite the weight of the case I’m working on strapped invisibly to my shoulders, a smile finds its way onto my face. It’s small, but it’s there all the same.

“I make no promises.”

I don’t doubt that either.

If anything, leaving the Cardinals only stripped away whatever microscopic filter she’d possessed. Years of smiling politely through marketing meetings and press conferences, pretending to tolerate executives and shark-like journalists, had finally caught up to her. Now she seemed to take genuine pleasure in telling people exactly where to shove their opinions, and watching Veronica embrace complete and utter chaos has only made me adore her even more.

Hanging up the phone with a quiet sigh, I climb into my car and pull out of the parking garage, joining the slow crawl of afternoon traffic as the city slips past my windows in muted shades of gray. People weave confidently between crossings with takeaway coffees in one hand and their phones in the other. The traffic gives me a few moments to people-watch those daring to cross the street, like always.

Life continues exactly as it should for them, blissfully unaware that somewhere, someone is living through the worst day of their life while everyone else simply keeps moving. It still amazes me how ordinary the world can look after yours has fallen apart. It amazes me even more how easily people look past one another. Maybe they don’t know. Maybe they don’t want to know. Either way, they keep moving.

I know all too well that struggle rarely looks the way people expect it to. It’s half the reason I wanted to become a lawyer in the first place. I wanted to stand beside people on the worst days of their lives, to shoulder the weight when they were no longer strong enough to carry it themselves, to fight battles they shouldn’t have to face alone. To challenge a system that too often forgets the people trapped inside it. Maybe that’s why coaching came so naturally to me. Sure, I was nervous at first, but beneath it all, beyond their jerseys and their brands, I saw people. Sons. Husbands. Brothers. Fathers. Friends. They, too, carried insecurities of their own. Grief and pressure that rarely made it to the surface. The world only ever sees their highlights. Rarely the sacrifices it took to get there.

I understood them because I knew what it was like to smile through the shitshow we call life and convince everyone around you that you were perfectly fine.

Compassion has broken my heart more times than I can count. It’s made me care too much, give too much, and hold onto people long after they’ve let me go. It’s the reason I believed in every player who walked through the Vadena locker room doors. The reason losing all of it still feels like someone reached inside my chest and carved out pieces of me that I’ll never quite get back. Not because I lost a career, but because somewhere along the way, the team felt like family to me. And I seem to have less of that these days.

The girls haven’t arrived by the time I pull into my apartment complex, giving me just enough time to throw my work bag onto the kitchen island, kick off my heels and disappear into my bedroom to change into an oversized hoodie and lounge pants. If tonight is going to be spent crying my eyes out over romance classics, I refuse to do it in corporate attire.

The sound of knuckles against wood echoes through the apartment sooner than I expect, bringing a bright smile to my face. I don’t even get the front door open fully before both Veronica and Bronte are pushing through, collecting me in their arms.

The warmth of them surrounds me instantly, familiar arms wrapping around my shoulders and waist as though no time has passed at all. It’s overwhelming in the gentlest way. Safe. Familiar. Home. A feeling I don’t quite get here anymore.

Maybe it’s something in their scent. The familiarity in Veronica’s perfume woven together with Bronte’s lavender body wash. Scents that remind me of girls’ nights, road trips, celebrations, heartbreaks and every chapter of my life they’ve stubbornly refused to let me face alone. Or maybe it’s because, after months of convincing myself I had to carry the weight of the world by myself, my village is finally here. The people who’ve never expected perfection from me. The people who’ve never asked me to earn their love.

And finally, after bottling up every emotion that has haunted me since the moment I got the call telling me my father was dead, I break.

It isn’t quiet. Grief never is.