Chapter 36
Dustin
I woke up to someone peppering my face with light kisses.
“That better be you,” I murmured, fingers sliding into her hair, and bringing her mouth to mine. “Or Noah and I are going to have to have a serious talk about boundaries.”
She smiled against my mouth, kissing me softly. She tasted sweet and fresh, and I was immediately aware that I didn’t. I pulled away.
I opened my eyes and looked up at her. Her hair fell over her shoulder, long, thick, and shiny. Whiskey-brown eyes filled with humor looked back, and her mouth curved slowly into a smile.
“Hey,” I greeted.
“Hey, yourself,” she said, dropping another kiss on my mouth. “Time to wake up. We’re plotting.”
“Plotting what?” I yawned, and she sat back, her smile growing. “What?”
“You look cute when you’ve just woken up.”
“Cute?” My eyebrows rose. “Puppies are cute. I’m sexy as fuck.” I showed her my abs. “Remember?”
Hadley groaned and got to her feet. “I must have been confused,” she deadpanned. She walked over to the door. “Up. Your roommates and Savvy are waiting.”
“Waiting?” I dropped my head back on the pillow. “Waiting for what?”
“You.” The door closed behind her, and I sighed. She could have given me maybe five more minutes of her time before she left. I got out of bed, went to the bathroom, did what I needed to, including brushing my teeth again, and then pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt.
I came out of my room and took in the sight.
Dante, Savvy, and Hadley were huddled around the kitchen island, and Noah sat on a chair by himself, flicking through his phone.
I looked between them, and even though Hadley was at the island, looking smoking hot in a pair of jeans and a light sweater, I dropped down beside Noah.
“Hey.”
He looked up. “Hey.” He looked over his shoulder and back at me. “Honeymoon over already?”
“Shut up.” I watched his lips twitch, but he focused back on the phone. “What’s going on with you?” I asked him quietly.
“Nothing.”
“Don’t bullshit me, man,” I scolded him. “We’re friends, right?”
Noah didn’t look up or answer. I jabbed him in the side, making him flinch and glare at me.
“Tell me what you need, and I’ll get it done.” I held his glare. “We’re in this together, I know it’s shit, and I’m sorry for my part in that this morning, but they aren’t beating us. I won’t let them.”
“You won’t?” He huffed out a laugh. “How the fuck do we stop them?”
He looked defeated, and I wasn’t ready for Noah to look ready to give up. I turned to look over my shoulder and saw Savvy and Hadley still talking, but Dante was watching us, and I widened my eyes at him, the international signal for him to come and save my ass.
He came over, tapped Noah’s knee for him to move aside, and Dante dropped onto the edge of the couch.
“You want to quit?” he asked softly.
“Yeah, I do,” Noah said, head down, eyes back on the phone.
“Dust? Do you?” Dante asked me.
I held his gaze. “Yeah, I do. I just want to play football . . .”
“But . . .” Noah said gruffly.
“But it pisses me off that there’s more to this story and I don’t know what it is, or how deep it goes, or how wide it spreads,” I said.
Dante nodded once. “I get it, I do.” His gaze shifted to Savvy, who was now in our fridge pulling out drinks while Hadley inspected pre-prepped meals.
“I wish I’d never poked,” he admitted quietly.
“But now that I know . . . I can’t let it go.
They will never let it go.” He jerked his head to the girls.
“But you can,” he told Noah, his voice sincere.
So sincere that Noah lifted his head and looked at him in surprise. “What?”
Dante sat back a little. “The impacts of what we uncover could be huge,” he said, looking resigned.
“The impact for the ones who uncover it, I don’t want to think about too much,” he confessed softly.
“But I’m in this. There is no getting away from it, not for me.
But neither of you has to be. You can quit listening, quit being part of it. Walk away.”
Noah glanced at me. “And Dust?”
Dante grimaced. “Think he got in deeper when he hooked up with the reporter.”
“Grandma always used to tell me I lacked street smarts,” I joked lightly.
“Noah?” Dante asked gently.
He sat there for a long moment, Savannah’s voice carrying from the kitchen, Hadley asking her about the food. Noah sighed loudly, looked at us both, and stood up with a nod. He didn’t say anything, just walked into his room and closed the door.
“Shit.”
I wasn’t sure if I said it, Dante did, or we both did at the same time. We exchanged a look, and Dante nodded, his lips pursing together and his eyebrows lifting, not trying to hide his disappointment and surprise.
“I thought it’d be me.” My voice was low, too low almost to hear. “I thought I would be the one who walked away from this.”
Dante leaned back completely, his smile sad. “Yeah, me too.”
Hadley walked over, balancing drinks on a tray. I jumped up to help her.
“Where’s Noah?” she asked, relinquishing control of the tray to me. She hovered.
“He needs to study,” Dante lied smoothly. “We can catch him up later.”
“Oh.” She looked confused for a moment and then shrugged. “Cool.” She went back to help Savvy.
“Are they feeding us?” I asked, suddenly realizing what was happening. I watched them in the kitchen. Neither of them gave off domestic-goddess vibes.
“You scared?” Dante teased, looking relieved at the change of subject.
Savvy dropped whatever she was holding and yelped, and then Hadley tried to scoop it up, and it was like a car crash in slow motion. “I think I might be terrified.”
He grunted out a laugh. “So . . .”
I turned back to him. “So?”
“You and Hadley?”
I chewed the inside of my cheek. “Yeah . . . I think so.”
“And how is that sitting with you?” He leaned forward and took a soda, popping the tab.
I took a can of soda. “I think I might be terrified.”
Dante smirked but said nothing. The girls came over to join us. Savvy looked at Noah’s closed door and frowned.
“Wh—”
“It’s fine,” Dante told her, rubbing her knee. “What’d you make us?” he asked, changing the subject.
Hadley sat down beside me, handing me a plate. “I didn’t know what you liked, so . . . chicken and rice?”
I nodded, taking it off her. We ate in silence, all of us ignoring the fifth plate of food, and he never came out of his room to get it. When we were finished, we took the plates to the sink and then settled back on the seats.
“Do I ask?” Hadley asked no one and everyone.
“No.” Dante stretched his legs out. “So, where are we on everything?”
Hadley looked at him and then at Savvy, her eyes narrowing slightly. “We know where Tiffany is,” she said quietly. “I think Savvy and I need to go and see if we can find her.”
“Absolutely not,” Dante said firmly. “We’ll all go.”
I looked at him in surprise. “Me?”
“Yes,” Dante confirmed. “You can drive.”
“What about this afternoon?” I asked. “Are we still doing practice?”
“Yes.” Dante looked at the floor, then when he looked up, his eyes flicked to Noah’s shut door once, and then he looked at me. “We go, we set down the marker, this is who we are, we don’t quit. Then if he kicks us out again, well . . . we take it from there.”
“And Noah?” I asked him.
“Will be with us on the field, like he has been since he got here.”
Right. They spoke some more, and I didn’t really pay attention. This whole Mason Sterling thing was a puzzle and a warning in one. What had happened to him? And whatever had happened to him, how easily could they do that to me? Dante? Noah?
It was scary.
It was really fucking scary.
I was starting to envy Noah in his room with the door locked and probably his headphones on so he couldn’t hear us. Dante tapped my shoulder.
“Are we going to practice tonight?”
I got to my feet. “I am. You?”
He nodded. “I missed my classes today, something else he can bitch about tonight.”
The door to Noah’s room opened, and he stepped out in his sweatpants, a white T-shirt, and a Lions hoodie, carrying his duffel bag. He stopped when he saw us watching him. He pulled out an earbud.
“What? Did the plan change?” He looked between Dante and me.
I shared a look with Dante. Neither of us said anything.
I started walking to my room. “We’re going, I just need my duffel bag,” I told him. I looked over my shoulder. “Peterson, with me.”
“And they say romance is dead,” Hadley muttered, but she followed me, and to me, that was a win.
She closed the door behind her, crossing to me as I grabbed a sweatshirt.
“What happened outside?” she murmured, standing in front of me, looking hesitant. She never looked hesitant. I hated that look on her.
“Outside?”
“Why is Noah shutting himself in his room?”
“Studying.” I reached out for her and pulled her close. “Not everyone was blessed with my good looks and brains.”
She gave me a flat stare. “Not every girl in your arms loses her common sense just because you’re trying to distract her with your BS.” Her hands smoothed over my pecs. “Is he out?”
I shrugged.
She looked disappointed, but sighed. “I get it,” she murmured. She rose on her tiptoes and kissed me lightly and then frowned. “I can do that, right?”
“Peterson, you can do whatever you want.” I kissed her back. “I mean, you already sucked me off in my parents’ house, I think a kiss on my lips in my dorm room is pretty tame after that.”
She punched my shoulder. I barely felt it.
“You’re an asshole.” She pointed at me, her glare stern. “You never get to tell that story.”
I laughed. “Who would I tell?”
We left my room together, and Dante was already waiting. Savvy was at the sink washing dishes.
“Savvy?” I looked at Dante, who just gave a kind of careless shrug. “We have a cleaner and a dishwasher.”
“Keeps me busy,” she said lightly. “Wasn’t sure how long you’d be with Hadley.”
Noah was at the door, foot tapping, and I wisely said nothing as we left. I kissed Hadley briefly one more time, and then we headed to the stadium.
We walked in silence. I don’t think we’d ever walked in silence. I knew I didn’t like it, but I also knew it was better to say nothing; we didn’t need this to be more of a thing than it was. At the doors leading to the locker room, I glanced at both of them.
“And if he loses his shit?” I asked quietly.
“Then the team doesn’t see that we didn’t try,” Dante murmured.
Noah nodded. “And we sit on the sidelines so anyone in the stadium will see we turned up.”
The locker room was almost empty. We timed it so we wouldn’t be late, but we also wouldn’t walk in when he was most likely there.
We relied on the fact that our coaches would already be on the field.
Afternoon training meant staggered drills, with position groups rotating through — the usual controlled chaos — but when we walked back in, it felt like the air itself thickened.
Noah slowed first. Dante didn’t.
I followed them down the hallway toward the locker room, the sound of whistles and shouting bleeding in from the field beyond the doors. Every step felt deliberate. Not defiant exactly — but not apologetic either.
The three of us changed quickly into practice clothes and then hit the field at the same time. Coach spotted us the moment we walked out of the tunnel.
He was standing near the entrance to the field, clipboard tucked under his arm, talking to an assistant. He stopped midsentence when he saw us, his expression flattening into something hard and unimpressed.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
Dante stopped a few feet away. Noah and I flanked him without thinking about it.
“Training,” Dante said.
Coach laughed, short and sharp. “I told you I’d see you tomorrow at six.”
“You told us to leave this morning,” Dante replied calmly. “We heard you, but we train in the afternoon.”
Coach’s eyes flicked to me, then to Noah, then back to Dante. Measuring. Calculating.
“I told you tomorrow,” he said. “Because I need you to stay out of my way.”
“With respect, Coach,” I said, keeping my voice even, “we missed reps. Spring game is coming up, do you think it’s best for us to miss training right now?
I was late. My friends covered for me. In over three years, I’ve never missed training.
Neither has Dante. And neither has Noah since he got here.
I was late for the first time, ever, today.
Not like some on the field behind you, who have never been sent away, even when they’re serial offenders. ”
That got his attention. “You don’t get to decide that, Slater.”
“No,” I agreed. “But we do get to show up.”
A long silence stretched between us. Somewhere behind him, a whistle shrieked, and pads collided. Life went on.
Coach stepped closer, lowering his voice, his eyes glittering with anger. “You’re pushing your luck.”
Dante didn’t move. “We’re doing our jobs.”
Coach looked at Noah. “You too?”
Noah swallowed, then lifted his chin. “Yes, Coach. Ferguson was late every day last week by at least twenty minutes each time. You gave him a protein bar and told him to focus more. I was on time today — early, actually. Half my training was already done, so was Dante’s, before any of these guys behind you turned up.
I don’t know why you’re treating us differently.
I don’t know what message that sends to the rest of the team either. ”
Something shifted in Coach’s expression — not surprise, exactly. Annoyance. Like he’d expected Noah to fold.
Coach straightened, his authority snapping back into place. “Fine. You want to play it this way?”
He pointed toward the field.
“Not one of you is stepping foot on my field today.”
Dante didn’t react. Neither did Noah.
“We’ll stay on the sideline,” I said smoothly.
Coach’s jaw tightened. “That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s what we’re doing,” Dante replied sharply, his look at Coach glacial.
For a moment, I thought Coach might explode. Instead, he gave a sharp nod and turned away.
“Sideline, all of you. You move when I say you move,” he snapped. “Don’t think I won’t remember this.”
“We’re counting on it,” Dante said quietly.
Coach stalked off, already barking orders, already pretending this hadn’t rattled him.
Noah let out a slow breath beside me. “Well,” he muttered, “that went about as badly as it could’ve.”
I shook my head. “Nah.” Both of them looked at me. “He’s not telling anyone else; the other coaches don’t know what’s going on. Keep your game-day faces on, don’t give them an inch.”
Dante’s mouth twitched. “You’re not wrong.”
We took our seats on the sideline, helmets resting at our feet, eyes forward. Players noticed. They always did. No one said anything — but the looks lingered.
I stared out at the field, chest tight.
This was the line. Right here. Silent and defiant.
Not walking out, not yelling, and not quitting.
Three players on the sideline, helmets at their feet, watching a practice they weren’t allowed to be a part of. Anyone in the stadium who looked over would see exactly what they were supposed to see — players who showed up anyway.
And whatever this turned into — whatever it cost — I knew one thing for sure.
I wasn’t backing down now.