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“What’s going on?” Elissa asked. She frowned between us.
“It’s fine.” I gave her a little smile.
Dad tilted his head at me, imitating a confused dog, but I left my paring knife in the sink and walked with him to his office. He wouldn’t let go and yell with Elissa in the house. Sweat pooled at the small of my back. He went into his office, and I left the door open as I followed him. He glared at the open door, but I raised my eyebrows. He shook his head, and the look on his face was almost indifferent as he went behind his desk and flopped into his chair.
“Well, you’re damned lucky I didn’t have time to call the insurance company yet, or this would be fraud,” he snapped.
I closed my eyes, then forced them open again. “What do you mean?”
He spun his laptop toward me, and grainy security footage played on an open tab. It was clearly the parking lot behind Mousetrap. My heart sped up as I watched myself unleash about twenty years of frustration on his Lamborghini.Fuck.
“A woman was raped behind the bar three months ago, so Frank Moretti, the owner, put in cameras,” he said, staring at the open door. “Frank is into hockey. That’s why your fucking car never gets towed if you leave it there. He watches your games and the Blizzards. He sent this to me and said he didn’t want to see you go the way of that kid in Erie, Pennsylvania. He wanted to let me know that you did this so I could get you under control.” He slapped his laptop shut.
“You mean the asshole who pushed a woman’s wheelchair down a set of stairs at a bar?” I asked, truly hurt. “You think I would do something like that?”
His jaw ticked. “You wrecked my fucking car. What is this toddler temper tantrum?” He carefully stood, bracing his hands on the desk. I knew he wanted answers, but I felt like I was going to scream and kept quiet.
His nostrils flared, and I braced for this to get ugly, but he didn’t move. “You do nothing. You go nowhere. If it isn’t practice, a game, or class, you’re in this house. You get no money that isn’t for school. You getnothingfrom me.”
Closing my eyes, I swallowed hard. That sounded like he meant forever, and not just until he wasn’t angry anymore. He would probably be furious until the end of time. “And my car? I need it to get to school.”
He chuckled, a dark, ugly sound. “You can ride with Wystan. I don’t know what you did to get him to lie for you, or if he covered for you because you’re on the same team, but you’re on the thinnest fucking ice of your life.” His voice was low and I could barely hear it. “What was going through your fucking head?”
I shrugged because he wouldn’t want to hear anything I had to say.
“Get. Out. I don’t want to see your face.”
“Dad, I’m sorry,” I murmured, and my voice wavered. Fuck, I hated myself for saying that. I was sorry. But I wasn’t. I wished he gave as much of a shit about how I was feeling as he did about that fucking car. “I can’t just disappear from campus after class and practices. I have a life.”
He glared, not saying another word, and I left the room. I’d done this to myself, but I couldn’t help but feel like none of this was fair. I closed the door and stood there, breathing hard. Elissa’s laughter drifted upstairs from below. Blinking back tears, I stared at the floor for a while, then abruptly headed for my room. Dad wouldn’t want to see me—and he meant it. I had no idea how to fix this mess, but that wasn’t new.
12
WYSTAN
Atlas wasin his room and no matter how many times I knocked, he refused to come out. He’d told me to fuck off three times already, and whatever relationship building we’d done had disappeared, and I knew exactly who was at fault.
Joseph.
I didn’t know what Atlas’s father had said to him, but it couldn’t have been good.
Pissed off, I stormed down the stairs and to the kitchen, where Joseph was helping Mom prepare dinner. I offered him a downright evil smile that was the fakest I had in my arsenal, and Mom froze, immediately picking up on the coldness.
“Is everything okay, sweetie?” she asked carefully.
I nodded. “Can I talk to Joseph in his office for a minute?”
Mom set down the knife she’d been using to cut into chicken breasts. “Can I help?”
I shook my head and glanced at Joseph, who offered me a brilliant smile that might have charmed Mom, but I wasn’t fooled, not after how I’d seen him treat his own son.
“Sure, superstar. Let’s go.” He patted Mom on the shoulder and laid a kiss on her cheek. “We’ll be right back.”
I wasn’t entirely sure about that. Fury had me vibrating, and I was surprised I wasn’t bouncing across the floor from it, but when Joseph began to walk toward his office, I followed him. I squared my shoulders, ready for a fight. Atlas was an asshole at the best of times, but he was my teammate and... something else. Fuck buddy? I didn’t know, but the urge to protect him had me balling my hands into fists as I walked through the open door to the office and closed it behind us.
Joseph grinned at me like he couldn’t tell I had steam coming out of my ears and sat down on his office chair. He tugged at his tie and waved at the other seat across from the desk. “Tell me what’s up, superstar.”
“For one, you can stop calling me that,” I snapped, and the smile on his face dwindled. If he thought he could handle me like one of his clients, then he had another thing coming. I stalked forward to stand beside him and poked the desk in front of him with my finger. “And you can stop with the bullshit Best Dad act.”
