Chapter 1 #2
“I fucking love that.” I wiped my eyes as I got myself together. “Shit, I needed to laugh that hard. That felt good.”
“It did,” Dante agreed. He was still a little breathless from laughing. “I hope you don’t lie,” he added with a chuckle.
“God, I hope you do.” I dodged the cushion Dante threw at me. “So no girl waiting at your old school?” I asked Noah, getting back on track. “Or back home?”
“No time,” he said honestly. “I train all the time. When I wasn’t training at home, I had schoolwork, or in the summer, I worked. And trained.”
“Yeah,” I nodded in commiseration. “How will Savvy cope once the season starts?” I asked Dante, because there was no way in this world those two weren’t lifers, not after all the shit of the last few weeks.
Dante looked far too pleased with himself. “She totally gets it. I think I’m going to be really lucky. She’ll get a taste of it when spring training starts soon, so we’ll see. I have a good feeling, though.”
“Yup.” Noah stretched as he stood. “She’s a good one, all right. Any more questions for me?” he asked us as he cleared the empty cartons. When we both said no, his gaze flicked to mine briefly. “Anyone else got anything they need to get off their chest?”
Shit.
Dante’s head was shaking. “Nope, all my baggage is now your baggage.” He looked guilty as hell.
“Don’t sweat it,” Noah murmured. “In truth, some of that baggage was ours anyway.”
“Yeah.” I nodded, avoiding looking at them both.
“We were thinking . . .” Dante began.
The three most dangerous words ever uttered, I decided.
“What now?” I groaned.
“Sav wants to find the blogger. Hadley? It’s likely she didn’t stop looking into the program, and we want to know what she found out. If anything.”
Noah was looking my way.
Fuck.
“Really? Maybe. Or she could have stopped.” I would not make eye contact with Noah, I vowed. Which would have worked if he hadn’t bounced a balled-up napkin off my head. “Asshole!”
His look was pointed, and I groaned, drawing Dante into the one-sided conversation. “Not cool, man.”
“What’s not cool? What’s going on?” All hilarity had left him, and he was once more in QB10 mode, eyes sharp, assessing, waiting for your tell. “Dust?”
I rubbed the back of my neck as I avoided direct eye contact. There was a reason he had a reputation for being cool as ice; the guy’s stare was frigid.
“Just . . . it’s nothing to freak out about, okay?”
“Not liking how this is starting,” Dante muttered, looking over at Noah, who’d sat down again.
“I met a hot brunette.”
Dante looked confused. “And?”
“She’s smoking hot. Like, you have no idea.”
I watched him glance again at Noah, clearly having no inkling of the bombshell I was about to drop. “Okay? And?”
“I went to the bar tonight to see if she was there. She was.” I glared at Noah, who sat impassively. “Until he took me outside.”
“Why? Trouble?” Dante looked even more on alert. The last time I’d seen that look of complete concentration on his face was the final drive of the Championship game that took us to the end zone.
“It was Hadley.”
His brow furrowed in confusion for a split second, and then that laser-sharp focus was on me. “Dust—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. He already said it earlier.” I looked away from them both. “I said nothing to her. About anything. Honestly, all I did was flirt and kiss her.” I sniffed. “Maybe grabbed her ass.” I told the truth. “Never asked her name, hardly spoke to her at all.”
“Does she know—”
“Who we are?” Noah asked gruffly. “Yeah. She asked us if the football program was still rotten.” He threw me an olive branch. “In his defense, he really didn’t know who she was. I told him tonight.”
Dante was silent for a moment, looking down at his hands. “You think she targeted you?” he asked quietly.
I considered it. Really considered it. Not whether she was a spy, or something else that Dante’s paranoia would imagine. But that she’d known exactly who I was when she walked out onto that patio. So when she’d pulled away, was it actually hesitation, or a calculated move to get me to go back?
I didn’t like that I couldn’t answer that, or the fact that if it was the latter, it had almost worked.
I scoffed, more at myself than Dante’s question. “Fuck, D, she isn’t a spy or anything.”
His gaze held mine. “She’s a reporter.”
“Blogger,” Noah corrected.
Dante grimaced. “No — reporter. She’s studying journalism.” He saw our looks. “What? You think I’m not researching every little thing I find? C’mon. Even if I haven’t, you’ve both met Sav. Remember her? My girlfriend.”
I tutted. “We know who she is, dickwad.”
“We walked away,” Noah reminded him. “Dustin didn’t know who she was, and she didn’t share who she was either. He knows now.” He added a careless shrug. “And . . . now we know she’s still digging, so we’ve kind of answered you and Savvy’s question.”
Dante’s gaze was still focused on me. “I think you need to stay away.”
“From a woman I kissed once? Or from the story she’s maybe chasing? The story, which we’re already in the middle of, whether I kissed her or not?” I held his stare. “Two different problems, don’t mix them up.”
The quirk of his eyebrow and the silence that followed told me he heard me.
I’d also heard him. Hadley Peterson wasn’t just a blogger; she was a journalist in the making, asking questions.
And somehow I had a feeling I was going to be her next headline if I wasn’t careful.