Page 76 of Pucking Obsessed

The taste of blood. Being dragged out of my bed in the middle of the night and kidnapped, as my parents coldly watched.

Save me…Mom…help…please…

I fiddle compulsively with my tie, adjusting it. “Of course not.”

Shay’s looking as sick as I feel.

After all, his addict biological parents literally sold him.

“What’s this got to do with Code?” Shay asks.

“I think,” Robyn says in a choked voice, “that Dad may have hurt him more than I witnessed.”

My stomach drops. Protectiveness sears through me.

Eden prowls to his feet. “What do you want us to do?”

“Wait.” Startled, I grip Robyn’s chin and tip her head up, so that I can searchingly look into her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know yet. And it’s killing me.”

From Eden’s expression, however, he knows at least some of the truth.

Eden has a special type of friendship with Robyn’s brother, even if he doesn’t understand it yet. If Cody has confided in him, then that’s private.

I’m happy that Eden understands that aspect at least. But then, he’s spent his life guarding secrets.

“We’re here for both of you, love,” Shay says. “Whatever you need from us.”

Robyn relaxes slightly. “I don’t know what to do. Will the fact that Cody saved his life change how Dad treats him?”

“Then they lived happily ever after,” I drawl, unable to clamp down on my sarcasm.

I wish that I could reassure Robyn that coach will have a revelatory moment.

Maybe coach’s life truly did flash before his eyes.

He’d have seen what a dick he’d been to his own son.

Who knows?

Perhaps, he’ll feel ashamed and beg for forgiveness on his knees.

Except, I’ve got more chance of submitting to lay across Shay’s lap for a spanking.

And that is seriously never going to happen.

I shudder at the thought.

Yet if coach does try to mend his relationship, seeking a genuine second chance, I wouldn’t blame Cody if he took it.

Even now, there’s a deep, buried child-like part of me that wishes my parents would do the same.

I know that it will never happen.

My parents have rejected and abandoned me twice. I’m dead to them, and they’re dead to me.

Or perhaps, the real me was never alive to them in the first place.

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