night air used to soothe me. Not now. Not for a while. It never used to be this hard to recover from a game and calm my temper.
It wasn’t safe to take the game home with me, to treat it like a life instead of a job, but the worst parts of me bled into the best with each and every bruise, scrape, and tackle on the field.
The delineation between Cole Hawthorne and The Beast faded. The rage was dangerous enough on the field. I never wanted it in my home.
But how was I supposed to get rid of it?
I headed inside only once my head pounded with fatigue. Piper stopped me before I climbed the stairs for bed.
“Here.”
She handed me a bottle of water and served a ham and cheese sandwich on a plate with a tiny handful of potato chips. I could go through and entire bag when I hankered for something with a crunch. Ten little chips was a joke.
“I thought you’d be hungry,” she said. I took it from her but stayed quiet. “I saw the game. You’re probably upset.”
An understatement.
“I know it’s going to be inconvenient for you with another person around, let alone a toddler. I was teasing you before but…” She met my gaze. “Thank you for being so generous. It means a lot to me that you are willing to share your home.”
I nodded, my foot on the stair.
“You know you aren’t the monster everyone says you are.”
Her words stung, striking me like a flogger made of a live wire.
It was the first time—the only time—someone spoke so sweetly to me.
I didn’t answer. It was rare enough for me to show gratitude when I wasn’t rendered dumb. This beautiful, smart, vibrant woman thought I was kind?
She didn’t know that she was the only person I had talked with, fought with, or even been near for months, aside from my teammates. I never allowed anyone to trespass on my property, and no one was ever welcomed into my home. Hell, during the offseason, I went for days without talking to a single soul.
And yet there she was.
In my home. My silences. My life.
She’d made me a sandwich because it was a courteous thing to do, but no one had ever been so compassionate to me before. My anger shredded. My vision cleared of that distrustful, blinding halo of rage. I could breathe, see, walk to my room without pitching the plate into the wall just for the chance to destroy something.
I stopped at the top of the stairs, but I turned east instead of west to see what else Piper had done. She had taken the white room for her own, a soft space filled with pastels, feminine and lovely.
And the baby?
I nudged open the door.
Rose slept in the pink room—everything perfect and light and as beautiful as a princess deserved.
Her crib was beat up—some rickety thing that still seemed to comfort her into a quiet sleep. The baby nestled next to a stuffed bunny and curled under a pink blanket.
Absolutely content. Dreaming with a little smile.
I set my jaw. She’d need a new crib. A better crib. Her furniture wasn’t good enough, not for my house, and not for the sweet little thing sleeping so innocently under my roof.
The anger rushed away, replaced by exhaustion.
No.
Something different. Something new.
Contentment?
That didn’t make sense, and I wasn’t figuring it out tonight.
I left the baby to sleep and collapsed in my own room, my head swirling, heart racing, and soul knotted in sheer confusion. This peace I felt wasn’t something that had ever infected me before. I had no defense against a feeling like this—how was I supposed to fight a calmness that stole my temper and replaced it with a sense of…
Letting Piper and the baby into my home might have been the worst decision of my life.
Or maybe they would be the ones to save it.
11
Cole
I dreamt of Piper. That mean I didn’t just wake up with a bruised and broken body. I also wielded an inconvenient hard-on.
Mondays usually hurt. This day was worse. Even my arms ached too much to jerk the stiffness from my cock, the only part of me that wasn’t sore. Usually a good night’s sleep took the edge off after a game, but I should have iced myself on and off through the night.
Live and suffer, my fucking motto.
I peeled myself from the bed. I needed a hot shower to ease my battered body and a couple minutes to