Page 10 of Leave Me Broken
I think I nod but I can’t be sure. He doesn’t say any more so I force words out of my tight throat. “And Parker is?”
Please don’t say it.
“My son.”
Fuck.
I’ve been off my game all night. Thank God this is just a practice.
“What the hell is your problem?” Alyssa snaps.
It’s definitely my fault we didn’t get the point, it was coming right for me. It’s not my fault because Parker came back in the gym from wherever he walked off to and sat in a chair to Ash’s left, and I couldn’t stop looking back and forth.
“Are you that big of a whore that any guy that comes into sight is fair game?”
“Shut up, Alyssa.” She has no clue what she’s talking about. Before this year, guys didn’t mean shit to me. They still don’t, I only care about one—now two, but not for the reason she thinks.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to clear my head, but I can feel them looking at me and it’s fucking me up. I grind my jaw. Someone shoves my side, I lose my balance and fall to my ass with a thud and a huff.
“Enough! Alyssa, bench. Now,” Coach shouts.
She glares at me, and I glare back. It’s a bad day, so instead of just letting her walk by, I wait till she’s close enough and kick her legs out from under her. Ash tells me not to, like he knew my plan, but I’m not listening to him. This is all his fault.
Alyssa gasps before she falls to her ass right next to me. She doesn’t have the extra padding I do; she screams but it must not affect her like she’s leading on because she tackles me to my back as I go to stand. She punches my face once, twice before I get my arms out from under her scrawny thighs and shove her off. I know I don’t have long before we are broken apart. I pull my fist back and nail her right in the stupid, bitchy face three times. When I’m lifted off, her face is bloody like I can feel mine is.
She spits blood on the floor when Luca pulls her to her feet. “You—”
“Practice is over!” Ash barks in my ear, cutting whatever she was going to say off. He holds me to his body with one arm, and like a toddler, my feet aren’t even touching the ground. “I expect everyone here at five a.m. tomorrow morning.”
I cringe seeing my teammates’ shoulders sink because we weren’t meant to practice at all tomorrow, now we have to be here at five in the freaking morning.
Janelle is doing her best to not smile, which makes me smile. I don’t hide mine, though. I smile and I smile big to rub it in Alyssa’s face that her punches didn’t do shit despite the burn in my lips and the sticky blood dripping off my chin.
“She started it because she’s a whore!” Alyssa screeches across the gym. Luca is attempting to pull her into the locker room but she’s fighting him like a crazy person.
“Look who’s talking!” I shout back. “You fuck anything—” Ash’s hand clamps over my mouth, not letting me say anything more. He digs his arm into my ribs and shakes me. “Knock it off,” he snaps.
I turn my attention to him, feeling angrier than when Alyssa punched me. “Of course you let her talk shit about me but God forbid anyone says anything about your perfect little pet. Does she sit when you tell her to? You give her little treats and tell her how good of a girl she is? And I’ll bet she even—”
Ash’s voice booms across the gym and in my ears, he doesn’t remove his angry glare from me once. “I said practice is done. Go home!”
The girls are quick to scurry away. Ash storms across the gym toward the office and tosses me inside. He slams the door behind him, and I wonder if he will punch the wall with how angry he looks, like Jason used to, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t turn around. He doesn’t do or say anything. His hands are flat against the door and his shoulders are rising and falling at an accelerated pace, so I know he’s angry, but if he is going to be angry with anyone—it should be Alyssa.
I grab a few tissues from his desk and shove them in my nose, then I reach down and pull my shirt over my head to stop from staining it any more than it is and prop myself on the edge. “She started it.”
The door complains as his hand slams against it before he spins and pins me in place with a look I’ve never been on the receiving end of. Anger. Sure, I’ve made him angry, but normally there is lust or amusement under it. Not this time, just straight up anger, and it scares me a little. He doesn’t even look at my bare abdomen or cleavage once. “She’s right.”
His words are like a knife straight to the stomach, I would know, and I grip it with the hand not holding my tissues. “Which part?” My voice is weak, exactly how I feel.
“Not about you being a whore, Payson.”
Ash walks right by me toward the bathroom and returns with a first aid kit and a bowl of water and rag. He drags the rag over my face in silence, making my anxiety grow. “You do not need stitches and should be fully healed in a week.” Ha, she hits like a bitch. Should have known.
The water splashes over the side of the bowl onto the floor when he drops the rag into it. He lowers his forehead to mine and closes his eyes.
“She’s right because you are easily distracted. Sometimes it works in your favor, like when your mom showed up before the game and you were amazing.” I know there’s a but, and I already know what it is. “But, like today, you let me”—his eyes flick up open—“and Parker.”
I stiffen hearing that name. I don’t know why it’s affecting me so much. I knew he had a son, maybe because of the way I met him? Maybe because I was completely blindsided? Or maybe because I expected to be meeting a kid when I met Ash’s son. Not someone so close to my age. I don’t know.