“What’s happening?” she asked, her heart beating fast.

“They’re fighting,” he said, voice dull and flat. “Dad must’ve had a bad practice with the team. Mom must’ve gotten home late again.”

The sound of something breaking cut through the air, clear even over the drone of the fan. His mother cried out. His dad yelled again.

“Ash,” Kincaid said again, lifting her head to look at him. “Is your mom okay? Should we…”

His eyes were staring straight ahead at the wall, his expression hollow. “No. We shouldn’t.”

“But—”

“There’s nothing we can do, KC,” he said, voice hard. “Nothing I haven’t tried before.”

Kincaid pushed up higher on her elbow, concern filling her. “He hurts her? Like this is a regular thing?”

She’d been around Coach Isaacs at school. He was a wide-shouldered, gruff guy, and she knew Ash had a tense relationship with him, but the football players seemed to love him. She’d seen him joking around with the guys in the hall. Plus, he was a hero in town for winning two championships in the last two years.

That guy hurt his wife?

Ash wouldn’t look at her. “Not all the time. But if Dad has a bad day at school or practice and starts drinking, he gets mean and paranoid. He’ll check on when her shifts end at the hospital. If she’s later than he thinks she should be, he gets like this. He convinces himself she’s having an affair with a doctor or something. Sometimes he implies that I’m not his.”

Kincaid gripped the blanket in her fists. “Jesus.”

“Before you ask, no, she won’t leave. I’ve tried to talk to her.” He stared toward the door. “It’s been like this a long time. She said she loves him too much to do that, that she made a commitment to him in front of God, that it’s only the stressful job and the alcohol talking, not him.”

The sound of a slap made Kincaid’s stomach turn over with dread.

Ash winced ever so slightly, as if he was simply enduring, shutting some part of himself down.

“If that’s what it means to love someone that much, I don’t want any part of it,” Kincaid said.

“No shit,” Ash said gravely. “Whatever they have isn’t love. It’s…fucked up.”

Kincaid suddenly understood why he always wanted to come to her house instead of the other way around. She’d thought it was because of his mom’s restrictions, but now she realized that despite the nicer house on the nicer block, there was a whole lot of ugly in his house, too.

She wet her lips, treading carefully. “Ash, I’m sorry. Does your dad hurt you?”

He shifted next to her. “Physically? No. He’s too protective of his job. He knows if he left a mark on me, I’d show it to every damn person I could find. So he just yells at me or ignores me. Fucking coward. He only hits the person he knows would never tell.” He glanced over at her, eyes unreadable. “Can we not talk about this? Can we just pretend it’s not happening right now?”