Page 81 of Ruthless Edge

Laura gives an awkward laugh. "I just thought⁠—"

"What did you tell Emma?" His voice has gone somewhere I've never heard it. "Tell me. Right now. Tell me what you said to her at that gala."

Laura looks at me.

And I watch the calculation end. I watch her realize there's no version of this that works out for her, and her expression crumbles.

"I told her," Laura says, "that you didn't come because you didn't want to be seen with the fat girl."

The night is very quiet.

I feel the words land in my body and travel to every part of it, and the tears that were already there get worse, and I pull hard against Knox's grip.

He doesn't let me go, but he also manages to not hold me too tightly at the same time.

"Tell her what really happened," Knox says.

Laura glares. “I don’t really think⁠—”

“Tell her!” Knox snaps.

Laura's jaw tightens. "I never told you she won. You didn't know she was there."

Knox exhales once, slowly.

"You did this," he says, "because you were threatened by her."

Laura's chin lifts. "Knox⁠—"

"That's it, isn't it." He's not asking. His voice is still even, still quiet, and it's worse somehow than if he were shouting. "You met Emma and you saw exactly who she was and you couldn't stand it. Because when Emma's in the room, you see that you’re nowhere near as good as her. Nowhere near as beautiful. Nowhere near as smart. Nowhere near as funny, or wonderful. And you couldn't handle being next to that." He looks at her steadily. "So you made sure she wasn't around."

"That is not⁠—"

"You found the woman I wanted to be with," Knox says. "And you destroyed it before it started. You hurt her. You made her believe something about herself that was never true, and she carried it for three years, and you did it because you were scared of her." A pause. "You should have been."

Laura's expression has gone very still.

"The guys are already sick of you," he says. "You know that. You've known it for a while. But I want you to hear this from me directly. I am going to make sure every single person connected to the hockey team knows what you did tonight. What you did three years ago. You are not going to show up to another game, another event, another party. If you walk into a room I'm in, I will walk out of it. If you try to come to the hockey house, I will have you removed. You are done playing this game." He steps back. "I never want to be in the same room with you again."

Laura says nothing.

"Get out of my sight," Knox says.

She goes.

Her heels click on the pavement and then around the corner and then she's gone, and the night is quiet, and my face is wet and my chest aches and Knox pulls me toward him and I go, because I don't have anything left to hold myself separate with.

His arms come around me and my face goes against his shoulder and he holds me, the full weight of him steady and warm, and his hand moves through my hair slowly, like he's been doing it for years.

I'm trying to put it together. The pieces keep sliding.

He didn't know I won. He didn't know I was there. He asked Laura to find out who had bid on him, when he was getting stitches at the ER for an injury at practice, and she told him nobody had. He believed her, and he moved on, and I sat at a table for three hours waiting for a person who had no idea I was there waiting for him. Three years of something I built my entire understanding of Knox Carter on, and Laura made it up. She walked across that ballroom and looked me in the face and made it up.

I don't know what to do with that. I don't know where to put it.

"I didn't know," he says quietly. "Emma. I didn't know."

"Knox—"