Chapter 27
Hadley
Dante moved slightly, bringing her attention back to him.
“Yeah, Ava, we wanted to talk to you because we know you always know everything about the Lions,” he said smoothly, and Jett’s eyes narrowed to slits.
“Why are you here?” Jett asked coolly.
Dante didn’t smile; he didn’t even look at him. “If you let me speak, you’d know.”
Jett waved his hand. “Not you. Why are you here?” His gaze turned to Savannah. “Dust could have done this, but I want to know why the daughter of the dean of Wrighton University is sitting in my house.”
All eyes fell to Savannah. She was watching Jett. “How do you know who I am?”
Jett held up his phone, and there was an image of Savannah and Dante kissing.
So he’d looked them up before they arrived?
Savannah leaned forward. “When was that taken?” she demanded of Dante.
“Who cares?” the twin said. “What’s going on? And why does it involve Ava?”
There was a tense silence, and then I sighed. “Hi, anyone who cares or doesn’t care. I’m Hadley Peterson.” I looked over my shoulder. “Is the rest of the house empty?”
The twins stared at me, and it was the cousin who answered. “No. Why?”
“I’d prefer a controlled environment,” I told him honestly. “Too many openings here right now.”
Jett looked at Gray, and Gray glared back. Then, with a sigh, he stalked to a door in the kitchen, opened it, and bellowed down the stairs. “All freshmen upstairs now.”
In a bizarre flurry of activity, eleven of us were in the basement, and the freshmen who lived there were all upstairs in the main living room. Ash checked the rooms and then turned to us.
“We’re good.”
“Who the hell are you people?” I asked, fascinated.
Ash’s lips twitched.
“Spill,” Gray demanded, his attention on Dante. “Who is she? Why is she here?”
“My name is Hadley,” I told him firmly. “I am a journalism major, and I need to know some details about a player at Wrighton University. It was four years ago, and our records have been damaged. Dustin tells me Ava is a walking textbook for stats. I was hoping you may remember him?” I asked Ava.
“Four years ago.” She thought about it. “Um, I can try. Who is it?”
Before I got a chance to speak, Jett squeezed her hip. “Not so fast,” he cautioned her. “The records are damaged? Check online.” His gaze swept the room. “But you would have done that, and I’m guessing you found nothing.”
“He was a freshman,” Dustin said gruffly. “Wasn’t there long.”
Ava’s eyes widened. “That makes it harder,” she mumbled.
“What’s your article on?” Gray asked me.
“Pressure from football programs on young athletes,” I lied smoothly.
Three football players looked at me with varying levels of disbelief.
The supermodel shook her head. “Okay, this is getting nothing done.” She looked at us all.
“Player, player, player.” She pointed to Dante, Dustin, and Noah.
“Dean’s daughter,” she said, looking at Savannah and then me.
“Reporter.” She considered us all. “This is the start of a bad joke. Dust.” She gave him a look of reproach.
“You were almost a Devil. They’re not going to buy this unless you’re honest. And all of this—” she gestured to us all — “is the furthest thing from honest I’ve seen since you told Katie Zuckerman you were a virgin in junior year in high school.
Now cut the shit and tell us why you’re here. ”
“Who are you?” I asked.
She gave me a look, and I thought I had mastered resting bitch face, but this girl? Totally a whole new level of cold.
“This is Quinn,” Dustin said with a smile of fondness. “I’d have pulled that off with Zuckerman if you hadn’t ratted me out, Lawrence.”
Dustin turned to Dante. “It’s a risk.” His eyes flicked to Savannah. “I trust them.”
“You have bad judgment.” Dante’s cool gaze was on Jett as he spoke to Dustin.
Ash had been quiet, his fingers tapping on his thigh. “When you say it’s damaged, how is it damaged? Encrypted? Or a virus?”
“Redacted,” Dante answered.
“Where’s the original?” Ash asked.
“Deleted.”
Ash’s eyebrows rose. “One semester?” He glanced at Jett. “One semester playing, or one semester at Wrighton?”
“Both,” Noah told him. He turned to Dante. “They don’t look like the kind of guys you can mislead.” He looked at Gray. “Tried to outsmart his run before, didn’t work.”
Gray grinned. “You hit like a motherfucker, though.”
Savannah rubbed her temples. “We can’t tell them everything,” she said with a sigh, and I wondered why she was being so loud because now she just told them there was more than we were telling them.
I didn’t think that was the best move with these guys.
“They’re Santos — this is their school. Literally, this is their school.
” She shot a glare at Dante. “It’s their families.
Their parents are on the school board. Ruling majority. ”
“As I said,” Quinn said coolly, “stop the BS and tell us everything. Or leave.”
“So you can dig for yourself?” I asked her.
She pointed to Ash and Mia. “I have two computer wizards. Nothing stays buried on the internet. Trust me. Ash will find it.”
“This is getting weird,” Ava piped up. “And confrontational, which we don’t need.
We’re all friends here.” She seemed to be oblivious to the indignant stares from the two quarterbacks in the room.
“I don’t need details. Just tell me the name.
If I remember him, I remember him. I don’t know why you’d need his stats, though. ”
“Mason Sterling,” Dante told her.
Ava tapped her chin. “Sterling . . . Hmm.” She started to pace, and we simply watched her. “Sterling . . .” She frowned as she walked. “You said four years ago?”
Dante nodded.
“I’m thinking . . .” She stopped pacing, and it seemed like everyone else in the room held their breath.
“He was a defensive end. Six five? I think,” she said after a couple of minutes.
She bit her lip as she concentrated. “I think . . . it was four-point-seven-eight for the forty.” She tilted her head back and stared at the roof.
“Not a starter, but his high school stats were impressive. I remember . . . do I?”
She bit her lip again as she resumed her pacing.
“Yes, I do. He was cute. My mom even said he was a great fit for the Blues, and he was fit.” She was in a world of her own as she thought about it.
“Sacks, he had over fourteen. Fourteen and a half? Fifteen? Somewhere in there. Every game he was in the backfield; we were excited for him to be a Lion. Um, hurries . . . low thirties? He got double-teamed every week; we reckoned that’s why Coach Sutherland kept him on the bench so much.
It was a shitty team that year.” She flashed a smile at Dante. “We needed a good QB to lift us.”
She was like Rain Man. I couldn’t remember what I ate last week, and she was telling me stats about a player from four years ago who had been on the team for one semester. Was she real?
She nodded to herself. “Yeah. I don’t think I remember much else.”
“You remember that from a freshman who played one semester four years ago?” Noah asked her, clearly impressed, and I was so glad it wasn’t just me who thought Ava’s memory was extraordinary.
I looked at Jett. “Just accept you’re losing every argument. She doesn’t forget anything.”
Ava laughed. “Football stats for the Alabama Lions, I remember. Where I put my phone when I’m holding it, not so much.” She looked at Dante. “I’m sorry that wasn’t much help.”
His gaze flicked to mine; it was more than we had, and I turned back to her with a wide smile. “You did great.” Savannah and I exchanged a look. “What high school?”
Ava looked pleased at the praise. “Um . . . ooh. Now that, I forget . . . He was a southerner, though — not Alabama, Tennessee maybe?”
“Tennessee?” Savannah asked sharply. “Chattanooga?”
Ava thought about it. “Maybe?”
Mia was on her phone. “Hartwell Hawks, one Mason Sterling.” She turned it to us. “This him?”
“You found that already?” I asked, taking it off her.
“Ava said he was a good player. The suburbs hold on to the memories of the glory days.” Mia shrugged. “I took a punt.” She turned and looked up at Ash. “Did I just make a football reference?”
He grinned down at her. “Yeah, you did.”
Savannah and I looked at the phone. I quickly snapped his picture with my own phone.
“That’s, like, five years old, he’ll look different now,” Mia reminded us.
“This is so helpful,” I told Ava and Mia honestly. “Thank you.” I turned to Dustin and the others. “We good?”
“I’m still waiting to hear why,” Gray rumbled.
“Got some trouble at school,” Dustin told him without missing a beat. “Need to know more before we know if we need to act, and the implications if we do.”
Gray’s gaze flicked between the three of them, lingering longer on Dante. “Draft-stock implications?”
“Possibly.” Dante looked like he was carved from ice.
All three Santo men exchanged a look. The specific shorthand of people who’d been in enough situations together to recognize the shape of another one.
“Let us know if you need us.” It was Jett who spoke; he said it to Dustin, but he glanced at Dante.
I’m sure I wasn’t the only one whose mouth had dropped in surprise. He didn’t give warm vibes, but he sounded sincere.
“And remember—” Gray gave us all a hard look — “we told you nothing.”
Dante’s smile was media perfect. “I’ve already forgotten I was here.”
Five minutes later, we were outside, getting into the two cars, and driving away.
I turned to Dustin. “That was intense.”
He huffed out a laugh. “That was the Devils on a good day.”
* * *
The quiet settled in like a third passenger.
Not a comfortable quiet. Not a peaceful quiet either. The kind of quiet that made my skin buzz.
Ava had given us a lot — context, details, a new lead, and a suspiciously perceptive side-eye at me and Dustin that I hadn’t appreciated — but now it was just the two of us, the dark road stretching out ahead, and the weight of everything pressing against my ribs.