Chapter 19
Hadley
The door had barely shut before the burn hit my lungs.
Not embarrassment. Not shame.
Anger.
Thrown like a grenade into my living room and left to detonate.
I paced. Then I stopped pacing because I was shaking too hard to walk. Dante Spence — golden-boy quarterback, king of the team — had barged into my apartment, taken one look at the lip-lock situation, and ripped Dustin away like I was some kind of threat.
He had implied I was getting closer to Dustin to use him to get closer to the story.
Use him?
I wanted to strangle someone. Specifically, someone over six feet tall who played QB10 for the Alabama Lions.
I hadn’t started digging because of Dustin. I hadn’t kissed him because of the story. I kissed him because he infuriated me, challenged me, pulled truth out of me I didn’t want to say out loud — and because I wanted him.
Badly. Honestly. Inconveniently.
And Dante’s implication — that I was manipulating Dustin — hit harder than any other insult he could have flung at me.
It made me feel dirty and wrong. It was the patio behind the bar all over again — the moment I had pulled back because mixing desire and an agenda felt wrong.
I’d resolved that. And now Dante Spence was implying that’s exactly what I was doing.
I had stopped anything with Dustin then because it felt wrong to move forward when I wanted to pump him for information.
‘Pump’ is not the right word, Hadley.
This time, I wanted Dustin because I wanted to have sex with him. Dante Spence did not get to judge me for that. He definitely did not get to insinuate I was using Dustin.
I sank onto the couch, touching my lips, still swollen from Dustin’s kiss. I could still taste him, and that only made the heat in my chest burn hotter.
Dante had it backward. I wasn’t using Dustin; if anything, Dustin was the distraction pulling me away from the story I should be focusing on. And that realization pissed me off even more.
I grabbed my notebook and snapped it open.
Fine. If Dante wanted to make me the villain of this story, I’d earn it.
I was going to follow this wherever it led, and I wasn’t going to feel dirty about it.
And nothing — not professors, not the department, not Dustin’s stupid, perfect mouth — was going to scare me away from the truth.
For all I knew, they were playing me. Maybe they’d given me just enough to think I had something to throw me off the trail. I’d heard of institutions doing it before. Well, too late. I was already onto it. And now I was angry, which made me very, very dangerous.
I opened my laptop and reviewed everything I already possessed. I checked and double-checked my thoughts, my information, and what little I had learned. I spent hours reviewing everything.
I didn’t sleep.
I lay on the couch — the same one Dustin had practically ruined for me emotionally — staring at the ceiling, replaying the night like a film I didn’t remember auditioning for.
Dustin’s mouth on mine. His hands on my waist. The heat, the pull, the way every ounce of common sense evaporated when he touched me.
Then Dante stormed in like a self-appointed morality police officer and dragged Dustin out of my apartment while implying I was the problem.
Using Dustin as an in. Not cool.
That line looped repeatedly until my blood pressure could have powered a small city. I wasn’t using Dustin. But apparently, everyone thought I was either a liability or a seductress with a notepad, and if those were my options?
Fine. Let them choose wrong. If they wanted to treat me like the threat in the room, I’d happily become one.
Screw them all.
By sunrise, I was upright, caffeinated, and still vibrating with indignation. Anger was good. Anger was clean. Anger cut through the noise. And right now? I needed the noise gone.
I’d dug out the Sterling file — the roster, the redacted student-paper draft, the internal disciplinary code numbers I’d scribbled at two a.m. — and laid everything out on my bed like a detective in a crime show whose life was spiraling off the rails.
Except mine wasn’t spiraling. I was lining up the next shot.
Someone erased Mason Sterling from the system. Did that same person shut down the article to protect him? Or the girl? Or the university? Either way, it meant that this person had power.
I had made a list before; I made it again this morning. Find out who wrote the draft for the paper. Track down the academic staff from that year. Cross-reference every athletic withdrawal in the campus police records. Identify anyone who could identify the girl.
Find the girl.
That last one was the most important to me. That’s why I went to Savannah. Working backward might make things easier, but if I had to take the hard route, that was okay too. Because if I was going to tell this story, I had to tell her story.
I circled the line. Twice.
Then I opened my laptop and typed, Mason Sterling, disciplinary hearing, and athletics into the search bar. Nothing. It would have pissed me off if I finally found something; this wasn’t my first time searching for it.
Next, I typed, Student complaint confidentiality policy, and the search returned pages and pages. I started going through each search result. Again, I would not stop digging.
There was a campus police report from that spring with the date, location, and names redacted, but the category was still visible: SUSPICIOUS INCIDENT — RESIDENCE HALL — REFERRED TO ADMINISTRATION.
I hadn’t seen this before, had I? I read it again.
Suspicious. Referred to administration. Did that mean no further investigation was conducted? My stomach tightened. Was this it? Was this the fracture line the university hoped no one would notice?
I was noticing it.
My phone buzzed.
Mike: Hey . . . are you okay? QB10 looked really serious this morning.
I checked the time. How was it nine thirty? I stared at the screen. I should ignore him. Instead, I decided to answer him.
Me: Why would I not be okay? Why is Spence serious?
I almost deleted it, but I hit send.
Mike: He was reminding us all how to conduct ourselves with the media, I thought of you, I miss your company.
Aww.
Me: Tell Dante to worry about his own life.
Delete.
Me: Did you ever hear Mason’s name from ANYONE? Just yes or no.
I pressed send. He wrote back immediately.
Mike: No. Never.
Exactly what I expected, and exactly what scared me. I closed the messaging app and pushed my laptop aside. If no one knew Mason’s name . . . if no one knew the girl’s name . . . if the administration erased every trace . . . then there was only one place left to look.
The original student paper’s email archive — not the printed version or the archived draft. The internal inbox, with drafts, notes, corrections, and the conversations the editors didn’t print. I knew they’d have it because editors never really delete anything. Not permanently.
And I knew exactly how to get access, but it was risky.
I just needed a friend on the newspaper staff willing to ‘accidentally’ stay logged in to their email.
That meant it was time for a quick coffee drop-in at my old friend’s place, who had already graduated and moved back to Nashville.
I stood up and thought about it. Would she help me?
We didn’t end our friendship on the best of terms.
I hesitated. I’d tried not to think of her at all.
“Fuck it.” She owed me this, plus a stolen plant.
I grabbed my bag, zipped the Sterling file inside, and headed for the door. There was always a lead, and I had one; I just needed to be brave enough to follow it.
Well, no one ever called me a coward.
I jogged down the stairwell and out onto the sidewalk, and determination lengthened my stride as I headed to the parking lot two blocks away, where I paid cheap monthly rent.
My car was a little rusty and decidedly dirty, and I prayed to whoever was listening for it to start.
It did. With a cry of victory, I put the car in drive and set off for Nashville.
I almost ran over Savannah Cole.
Her hands were on my hood, and her eyes were wider than mine as she stared at me through the windshield.
“Shit.” I threw the car in park and got out. “What are you doing?”
She gulped. “I was crossing the street . . .” She looked down at herself, checking to make sure I hadn’t run her over.
I hadn’t. Much.
Just like her boyfriend hadn’t thrown my cat at me.
“Do you have a license?”
I blinked. “What kind of question is that? Of course I have a license.”
“Just checking,” she muttered. “Not sure you can drive.”
“Pfft, please.” We looked at each other. “Can you move? I have somewhere to be.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Where?”
“Wow. Suspicious much?” She shot me a look I’d only seen from her father. “The similarities between you and your dad are startling, do you know that?”
Savannah flushed. “The flat disapproving stare?” she guessed, and it broke the tension.
I didn’t hide my grin. “The ‘you’ve disappointed yourself more than me’ one.”
Savannah snorted. “Yeah, I know that one well.” She smiled at me, her attention shifting to the car. “I don’t know you well, Hadley—”
“Or at all.” I crossed my arms.
She grimaced. “Or at all,” she agreed. “But you have a certain . . . air about you.”
“An air?”
“It’s like a mixed signal of determination and . . . trouble.” She gave me a weak smile. “Like something catastrophic.”
“A catastrophe?” I stepped back toward the car door. “You stay there. I won’t brake this time.”
Savannah laughed. “I mean it as a compliment.”
“I didn’t take it as one,” I called to her, getting into the car. She didn’t move. “Savannah?”
“Where are you going, Hadley?”
“A drive.”
“Can I come?”
“Absolutely not.”
Her eyebrows rose, and she stared me down.
Fuck my life, they were all so . . . demanding.
“Can you pretend you never saw me?” I asked tentatively. I didn’t expect her to come around the car, open my passenger door, and get in. “What are you doing?”
“When you’re in the car, you should always lock the doors. People get carjacked.”