Page 191 of Face Off

I pressed both hands over my mouth, but they couldn’t contain the sound that broke through them.

My parents had watched me disappear and praised my discipline. He had spent years teaching me that smaller meant prettier, obedience meant love, and perfection was the only protection I possessed against becoming another disappointment. After I finally collapsed beneath everything he helped build inside me, he used the damage to blame the one man who had tried to teach me I was allowed to be real.

“Did Milwaukee believe him?”

“They had to investigate,” Bliss said.

“Did they threaten Ryan’s contract?”

“We don’t know what happened inside every meeting.”

“What do you know?”

“We know Ryan sat through interviews and meetings while the organization reviewed the claims,” Aura said. “There were attorneys, records, photographs, and people deciding whether Ryan was the man your father claimed he was.”

My chest burned. “What did Ryan give them?”

“Proof that Lance was lying.”

“What proof?”

“We don’t know all of it,” Bliss said. “Cade told us Ryan refused to give them your private messages or anything you shared with him in confidence.”

My breath caught.

“He had messages proving I demanded secrecy.”

“Yes.”

“He had every time he asked me to claim him and every excuse I gave him.”

“Yes.”

“He could’ve handed them our entire relationship.”

“He wouldn’t.”

“Why?”

Neither woman needed to answer.

Ryan had held every frightened confession I gave him as though my trust mattered more than whatever the words revealed. He possessed proof that could’ve made Lance’s version of our relationship collapse faster.

Using it would’ve required exposing me.

“He protected me.”

“Yes,” Bliss whispered.

“After everything I did to him, he still protected me.”

“Yes.”

I turned away and wrapped both arms around my stomach. Ryan had entered Milwaukee with a surgically repaired hand and a future he’d nearly lost before playing his first professional game. Lance followed him there and accused him of destroying a woman Ryan hadn’t seen since the night he broke his hand.

Ryan still protected me.

He allowed strangers to pull apart his childhood, his parents, his foster history, his fights, his body, and every brutal piece of his life before he would hand them one private piece of mine.