Chapter 3
Hadley
I leaned back in my seat, the straw from my soda forgotten between my teeth, as I watched him outside with his QB best buddy and some . . . girl.
Dustin Slater — the superstar in the making, a wide receiver for the Alabama Lions.
With his good looks and a movie-star smile, he looked like the perfect poster boy.
Until you looked closer and realized he had the morals of a feral raccoon.
I’d watched him guide the girl through the crowd with one hand at the small of her back. Casual. Confident. Possessive.
Like he didn’t have to think about how girls just orbited around him. It was as if it were some form of gravity, and he was the sun.
Gross.
I hadn’t noticed that he’d come back to the bar earlier. He and the linebacker had run away from me so fast that it had been amusing.
I’d come back into the bar after my little confrontation with them. The social culture piece wasn’t going to write itself, unfortunately.
Melanie — third year, communications major, member of approximately four social committees if her Instagram was anything to go by — had agreed to talk to me about the bar scene on campus.
Specifically, how students balanced social life with academic pressure.
It was exactly the kind of safe, palatable, deeply uninteresting story my professor had steered me toward.
I was doing it with a smile because I’d caused him enough trauma, and I would need his recommendation.
The problem with this piece, apart from how boring it was, was Melanie.
She’d been uncomfortable since she sat down, answering in short, careful sentences, her eyes constantly flicking to the door. I wasn’t sure if she was waiting for someone to come in and save her, or if she was contemplating just running.
I’d tried every angle — open questions, long pauses, and sympathy about how much work she did. Nothing. She gave me enough for two paragraphs. Nothing more.
I’d been losing her, and I knew it.
“So what would you say is the biggest social pressure students face in—”
“I think it’s just like, you know, finding balance? Everyone’s stressed.”
Groundbreaking stuff. My professor was definitely giving me an A for this.
I smiled, nodded encouragingly, and reminded myself that not every interview was a revelation. Some would be like Melanie, mentally preparing herself to run away from me, while telling me that balance was important.
But then his laugh carried over the music — warm, effortless . . . unfair. I’d turned and met that dark stare, and I was instantly back to the other night when he’d been kissing me, still wondering how I’d gotten wrapped around a guy I hadn’t been formally introduced to.
He’d been watching me, and then his attention had turned to the door.
Once again, he’d confused me, because at first, he looked pissed off that she was there.
Maybe it was because, while she was gorgeous, she was obviously younger than us.
And then the three of them had gone outside.
She’d leaned into him, smiling like he’d told her something funny.
I doubted it. He didn’t have ‘joker’ on his list of many talents — that I knew of, anyway.
I watched QB10 walk back inside with Noah Matthews, the linebacker, and then I saw the STD on legs walk away with the girl. He looked at me, and I hadn’t hidden the fact that he repulsed me.
Manwhore.
Total cliché.
“Hey, Melanie, thanks for this.”
As predicted, she picked up her stuff and fled.
I finished my soda, sucking the straw so hard it made that obnoxious empty-cup noise. When I looked back up, Dante Spence was watching me. Shit. I didn’t want his attention.
His reputation for being cold had been blown out of the water the other week when he had a beatdown with his teammates.
But still, that icy stare unnerved me. He’d lost privileges, apparently; he needed to lose more than that in my opinion, but what did you expect from the beloved quarterback of a program so rotten they should physically stink as a warning.
I dipped my head, not to look demure, but as if I hadn’t been aware the asshat had been watching me. I should leave. I had things to do. Like . . . well, actually nothing pressing, because I was still sort of suspended.
Academic probation.
No official write-up. Just the Dean’s Watch List, which was basically the university’s polite way of saying, “We’re not kicking you out, but we’re definitely waiting for you to slip up.”
I’d written one investigative blog post about suspicious spending in the athletics department, and suddenly I was Public Enemy Number One. Dean Cole had called it “defamatory,” demanded that I remove it, then smiled for a photo next to the head coach at a fundraiser two days later.
So yeah, that wasn’t suspicious at all.
After that, every question I asked was met with silence. The few sources I thought I could count on stopped returning messages. My professor advised me to “focus on less controversial stories if I wanted recommendations from anyone other than him.”
Because apparently, asking where the money went on a social platform counted as controversial and didn’t “fit in with a school of this character.”
What had started as mild curiosity had turned into something else entirely.
Slight suspicion stopped being a passing thought and simple curiosity had settled into my brain like a permanent roommate.
The more I thought about all of it, the more things didn’t add up.
And somewhere along the way, it stopped being ‘just a story’ and started becoming my lifestyle.
I’d turned into the girl who assumed the worst, asked too many questions, and absolutely, annoyingly, could not let things go. I was an angry, skeptical, cynical bitch, and I hated myself for it. I hated them for making me this pessimistic asshole.
And I’d been working on it, I’d been working on moving on. I wanted this degree, and I needed good recommendations so I could then become the journalist I dreamed of being. Because the truth of the matter was, there was always another story.
I’d been letting it go.
And then the quarterback and the linebacker had a big fight in the parking lot, and the guys they fought were gone the next day.
Just gone.
How easily they were removed. How easily the story was quashed. A very harsh reality of how easily it could have been me if Dean Cole hadn’t stepped in.
And instead of a reminder of why I needed to stay away, I was willingly stepping back into the lion’s den, pun intended, to see what else they thought they could handle easily.
In a stroke of genius, if I did say so myself, and quite possibly the single greatest act of Academic Jedi Mind Trickery this university would ever see, I’d convinced my media professor that covering the football program for my practicum would be a “valuable lesson in impartial reporting.” Which was my way of ensuring that if they’re going to try to silence me, I might as well take notes from the front row.
I just hadn’t expected the charm of Dustin Slater to be the first hurdle.
Or the second.
My plan had been to be more in control the next time I saw him.
No kissing first.
Talking first.
But earlier tonight, while Dustin may not have known who I was before, the linebacker definitely did. I wondered if it was a good thing that I was two for two in making Dustin Slater run away from me.
Then he came back, and just as quickly, he turned and walked out with Miss Sephora Gift Card.
Fine.
Whatever.
I did not have time to care about Dustin Slater and his rotating guest list of girls who say ‘literally’ as punctuation.
I still had work to do.
A story to salvage.
A professor to impress.
A program to expose.
I was in control. I just needed another guy on the team to connect with. The star quarterback? Not a hope in hell. Dante Spence was intimidating. The sexy, hot linebacker? Nope. Those eyes looked empty in a way that had nothing to do with being vacant. The wide receiver? That had failed. Epically.
I could do this. I just needed a target.
I stood, grabbed my bag, and took one last look. The two Lions players were still watching me — not subtle, not casual, not curious.
No. This was monitoring. They weren’t scoping my ass or my attitude — they were checking my temperature.
My threat level.
My willingness to play nice.
Which meant they already knew who I was. And probably what I’d done.
Good, because if they were watching me, that meant they were worried. And worry always meant one thing: there was something worth finding.
A slow thrill curled in my chest — dark, electric, hungry. I’d been told already to let it go. To stop digging. To swallow what I’d found and stay quiet.
But I didn’t survive the dean’s watch list by learning how to behave. I survived by learning how to wait, how to watch, and how to choose exactly where to sink the blade.
“Game on, boys,” I murmured, sliding my strap over my shoulder as my confidence slid back into place like a loaded chamber.
I caught the linebacker’s eye on my way out — just a flicker, nothing more — but it hit like contact nonetheless.
He smirked.
I smiled wider. Not sweet or polite. Predatory.
“Game. On.”