Gracie was speaking to my father across the court, and I was stuck refereeing some bullshit fight that Colby fucking Hart had shit talked himself into.

He was staring her down like she was his next meal, and there was nothing I could do from halfway across the court with my arms holding back one player from pummeling the other. 

My father took a menacing step toward Gracie and that was when red flashed across my vision. 

The cacophony of the crowd faded into an angry blur in my ears, the almost blinding court lights blending and blurring behind my eyes until they only focused on one specific point on the court—on her.

Gracie, with her dark, unruly hair and small frame bedecked in my team's colors.  Gracie with her too-wide eyes and soft features that crumpled after something my father said to her. 

Hart tried to swing wide and the other player got too close, catching the fist in the side of his mouth. 

Blood sprayed, and then Gracie cringed back from my father. 

Fuck this. 

Dropping my arms from holding Hart back, Calvin screamed at me to come back to help diffuse the situation, but it wasn't my problem that Hart didn't know how to control his own fucking temper, especially not when my father was speaking to Gracie in that ominous way he usually reserved for his only son. 

Nothing around me mattered, not as my entire focus shifted until she was all I could see. 

He was here, out in the open with that threatening sneer usually held back, kept hidden for behind closed doors where no one would hear the yelling.  

Back then, it was so no one could hear the punches, either, but that had stopped the moment I hit a growth spurt and tackled the weight room like the more weight I could lift, the more force I could put behind my punches when I finally fought back. 

And fought back I did. 

But it wasn't like I could do that here, in front of faculty and the rest of the team, and god only knows who else could've been in attendance. 

Suddenly my feet stopped and I was standing before them, sweat clinging to the back of my neck and a restless beat in my heart that resembled the uncomfortable pinch to Gracie's raised eyebrows. 

"Kalen, thought you'd be reeling in your teammate's on the court right now, not abandoning them just to come talk to your girlfriend on the sidelines."

The deep rumble of my father's voice pierced through the hazy mist of desperation to reach Gracie and the rumble of the crowd and the buzzer in the background came rushing to the forefront of my senses. 

Ignoring my father, I edged him out of the way with my body to turn toward Gracie and grab her hand in mine, her brown eyes catching a brilliant sparkle in the bright stadium lighting on the court. 

"Everything alright here?"

Her hand was trembling slightly, and it was of course that moment that my step-mother decided to grace us with her presence. 

"Honey, what's going on?  Shouldn't you be over there with your team?"

The team could all go and fuck themselves for all I was concerned if my father tried to take one more step toward my—my what?  It wasn't like I'd defined anything with Gracie. 

It was insane, really, the fact that I felt so protective of her after only knowing her for such a short time.  

She was staring up at me with wide doe eyes and something like pain shining on her features, and I only took one moment to glance at my step-mother's glittering jewelry, freshly dyed hair and perfectly manicured fingers crossed over her chest before pulling Gracie into my body, finally noticing her friend on the fringes of the conversation with murder in her gaze directed at my father. 

"Go and sit with Franny until the game is over, and meet me at the locker room entrance once it's over."

She nodded against my mouth as I leaned down to brush my lips against her temple, handing her off to her friend before turning on my father and his wife, wondering what the hell he could've said to Gracie to render her practically speechless. 

Considering the girl had slapped me the first time we'd ever even met, the streak of fire in her wasn't easily tamed, and she'd been fucking trembling in my arms before walking away. 

"What did you say to her?"

"Kalen!  Don't talk to your father like that, you need to get back out there.  It looks like your coach is trying to get your attention."

"I don't fucking care what he's trying to do, I care about what he said to her."

I emphasized my point with a sharp jab of my finger to my father's chest, and only then did he seem to shrink back a bit. 

Others were crowding around us and giving us a wide berth as I raised my voice, but no one else around us mattered. 

What mattered was making sure my father knew to stay the fuck away from Gracie at all costs, especially after what had just happened with her mother. 

"I was just making sure the girl knew where her place was.  Apparently, I was wrong about how well the two of you have gotten to know each other here at school."

The sneer crept onto my face that looked so much like his. 

I cursed the fact that I inherited more of his genes than my mother's.  

Why couldn't I have had her soft hazel eyes, or her light blonde hair?  Instead, I was the spitting image of my father—dark and stormy and full of spitting rage. 

Who we took that rage out on, however, was the qualifying difference between the two of us. 

My anger had a healthy outlet with basketball, and I had imagined many times that my father's face was the backboard. 

My father's outlet for his rage, however, was me. 

"It doesn't matter what you think.  Here's what I know."

"Kalen—"

"You are going to stay the fuck away from Gracie Gatlin.  You aren't going to think about her, you aren't going to talk about her, and you sure as fuck aren't going to speak to her.  She does not exist to you in any capacity, do you understand?"

The seething words spit from my mouth as a surprised anger lit the fire under my father's feet, but there wasn't a goddamned thing he could do about it in a crowd this size in front of so many onlookers and his precious new wife. 

She hadn't seen him hit me, but maybe he'd taken his old habits and tried them out on her considering how wary and quiet she'd become after trying to interfere earlier. 

"This is going to become a problem for you, isn't it?"

"The only problem I see here is standing right in front of me."

My father clucked his tongue disapprovingly and tried to look down on me with snake-like eyes, though his shorter height made it look almost comical. 

He couldn't tell me what to do anymore than I could tell him to back off from planning my future out at his company that I wanted fuck all to do with. 

"You don't even care who her mother is—was?  Where she comes from?  You're willing to throw it all away on a girl you've only just barely met?"

The game was starting up again behind me, and the players on the bench were eyeing me like they knew I wasn't supposed to be benching with them at this point of the game, but I did not care. 

This was a long time coming, and if it took defending Gracie to finally put my father in his place, then so be it. 

"Does it look like I fucking care?  Stay away from her, or you and I are going to have more than just problems."

"Ben—Ben, people are staring, let's go sit back down and maybe you two can talk it out after, at dinner."

"Oh, I can't do dinner tonight Valerie.  I have plans with 'that girl'.  Her name is Gracie by the way.  You should probably learn it, all things considered."

"All things considered?"

If my words were spat out of my mouth, my father's were sliced clean from his vocal cords. 

"Yeah, since I'm going to ask her to be my girlfriend.  And you know me—I don't take 'no' for an answer."

As if my saving grace, Calvin strode by and grabbed me by the elbow and dragged me to the bench, placing his hands on my shoulders and lowering me down to sit while he glared daggers at me, our coach too entrenched in the game to pay me any mind. 

"What the fuck was that about?  You're benched for the entire rest of the game unless someone gets hurt or thrown out."

Thinking back to the look on my father's face after telling him off, I shrugged off the penalty I'd basically given myself. 

"It was worth it."

"What was your dad saying to Gracie?  Even from here, I could tell it wasn't pretty."

"I don't know, but when she tells me what he said, I'm going to kill him for it."

"Gonna do even more damage than you already did?  Looks like you told him off pretty good already."

"It wasn't enough."

No, if anything I'd given my father even more ammunition to hurt me or Gracie with now that I'd shown my hand and how much I actually cared about her. 

Glancing back behind me to the stands, she was there with her friend as they watched the game, but Gracie's eyes weren't on the rest of the players. 

They were pinned right onto me. 

Calvin whistled lowly, pulling my attention from the girl in the stands back to him. 

"You're in trouble now, Rush."

"Don't I fucking know it."

***

Author's Note:

What did you think of this chapter?

What do we think of Kalen's protective/possessive streak?  ;)

What do you think will happen next?

What do you think of the family drama bound to come from all this?

Favorite character in this book so far?

Until next time my lovely readers,
Kristen :)