Chapter 5
Savannah
By the time I got to the meeting room the next night, Dante was already there, slouched in his chair like this was a punishment instead of the only thing standing between him and losing eligibility.
He gave me a nod, and if I hadn’t known any better, I’d have said he was almost sleeping.
“Hey,” I greeted. “You good?”
“I’m fantastic.”
Delivered with a flat, dry tone.
“Right . . .” I set my bag on the table, pulled out my notes, and prepared to get comfortable as I watched him pull his phone from his hoodie pocket and smirk at whatever he was reading.
The clock on the wall ticked like it was personally offended by how long it took me to set up, and in that time, Dante Spence hadn’t looked up from his phone once.
His laptop was sitting closed on the table, and I saw that he’d brought a notebook.
I’d bitten my tongue to stop myself from saying something sarcastic, but I noticed that the only thing on it was a doodle that looked suspiciously like a play call, not educational policy.
I uncapped my pen. “You realize this is mandatory tutoring, right? Not optional office hours you can flake on when you get bored.”
Dante looked up and leaned back in the chair, that lazy grin settling into place. “I’m not bored, Cole. I’m learning.”
“From what? Your group chat?”
The grin twitched but didn’t fade. “From experience.”
My jaw tightened. “Experience doesn’t pass finals.”
Dante checked the time on the clock behind him, then turned back to me, cool as a cucumber. “Neither does babysitting.”
“Dante—”
“Can we cut the hour short tonight?”
I looked over at him. I’d barely been here five minutes. “Why?”
“Because I asked nicely?”
My eyes narrowed. “You didn’t ask nicely. You didn’t even say please.”
“Can we cut the hour short tonight, please?”
God . . . This man was going to be the reason I smacked a fellow student across the face with a textbook.
“Let’s see how much you remember from our last session, okay?”
“We were discussing, I should say you were talking — a lot — about education policy.” His eyes held mine as I uncapped my pen.
Fine, I’ll play along, asshole. “And what did I say as I talked . . . a lot?”
“Governance structures exist in educational institutions to make sure decisions aren’t just made for financial gain.”
Double asshole.
“And how do they do that?” I asked.
His gaze flicked to my notes, then back to me. “They create checks and balances. Bring in committees, oversight boards — people who pretend they know better than the ones actually doing the work.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” I said, making a note in the margin that he didn’t need to see.
Dante leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. “And the other way?”
“That they exist to protect students. To make sure the focus stays on education, not profit.”
He huffed out a laugh. “You really believe that?”
“Yes,” I said firmly. “And so will you, if you want to pass.”
Dante gave me a slow blink, leaning back in his chair. “Savannah, I promise you — no one cares about this in the real world.”
I arched a brow. “You’re literally in the real world right now. The NCAA has governance rules that could end your season if you break them.”
“Yeah, but if I break those rules, I’m not going to be rescued by knowing how a school board is elected.”
My patience was dropping from tolerable to non-existent. “It’s on the syllabus. You need to know it for the midterm.”
He smirked, infuriatingly calm. “You know what I think? I think that you just like hearing yourself talk.”
My jaw tightened. “And you like pretending this is beneath you when really, you’re just not putting in the work, when you can quite obviously do the work.”
That wiped the smirk for a heartbeat — then it came back sharper. “Maybe I’d be more prepared if my tutor didn’t look at me like she’s counting the seconds until she can bolt out the door.” He held my gaze. “Last night you had one eye on a book, and one on the exit.”
Well, that was just rude to call me out on it. I’d wanted to get to the studio. I thought I’d been subtle.
Defense was what I needed. “Says the guy who’s been reading his phone since I got here?”
“Since you got here?” Dante made a big show of looking at the clock over his shoulder. Again. “You mean the five, no, six minutes you’ve been in the room?”
“You’re being childish.”
“Childish?” He gave me that cool, impenetrable stare. “I’m stating facts.”
“Chapter twenty-three, let’s start,” I snapped at him, failing to hide my irritation.
“Shall I read it out loud for you?”
Do not scream in the library, Savvy. “Real mature, QB10.”
An uneasy silence stretched between us as he flicked open his textbook and started to read, as I berated myself for losing my control with him. I didn’t lose patience with students. Not like this. It was him — there was something about him that just made me . . . irrational.
I needed to mend this before it broke any further, or else I would never be able to lie to myself and say I’d given it my best.
“This isn’t personal, Spence,” I said, closing my notebook, ready to start again.
“Could’ve fooled me, Cole.”
Oh fuck off.
My voice was as flat as his. “You know what I think? I think you don’t like the fact that you need help with this class.”
“Or maybe,” he said, completely ignoring my jab as he pretended to read, “you just don’t like anyone calling you out.”
“You’re not . . .” I looked away, shaking my head, remembering my father wanted me close to Dante. Damn it. I breathed through frustration. “You need to work with me, Dante, if you want to pass.”
“You just said I didn’t need you.” He leaned back, chair tipping on two legs, the picture of insolent defiance.
“No, what I said was you’re smart enough to do this in your sleep and you haven’t bothered, which is why you need me.”
“Guess we’re both going to have a long semester, then.”
“Guess we are.”
We stared each other down for a beat too long before I broke it, flipping my notebook closed.
“Fine, let’s call it. I don’t think you’re in the right mood to study.
” I glanced up at him and saw that usual impenetrable stare, only tonight, instead of intimidating me, it made my stomach flip.
“Same time next week,” I snapped at him, wincing internally at how harsh I sounded.
“Lucky me,” he drawled, but there was an edge under it now. He shoved his chair back, the scrape loud in the small room. The textbook and laptop were placed with care into his backpack, meticulous even in temper, I noted.
He slung the backpack over his shoulder, and I saw him wince slightly.
“You okay?” I asked, and for one brief moment, I thought I saw a look of panic in Mr. Ice’s eyes.
“See you later, Sav.”
By the time the door shut behind him, my pulse was still pounding. “Of course you have somewhere else to be,” I muttered bitterly. “Heaven forbid the golden boy risk being accountable. Or that I might have somewhere to be.”
I sat there, pulse thudding harder than it should have. Then I reminded myself I didn’t care if he failed out of the program. It wasn’t my job to save football’s favorite son, no matter what the student liaison description said.
Dad’s words from yesterday kept echoing in my mind: to keep him posted on anything unusual. Was this unusual? A student failing a class they clearly disliked, cutting a tutoring session short.
No. It wasn’t. I’d had plenty of students walk out on me. Dante was just more . . . irritating than any of my previous students. Possibly more irritating than them all combined.
God, I hated what Dad had asked. Hated feeling like a spy. But then, after that, it was easy to dislike Dante for just being . . . him.
I stayed seated until I was sure my temper had cooled, my fingers curled tight around my pen.
The room felt colder without him in it, the faint scent of his cologne lingering just long enough to annoy me.
I stacked my notes with more precision than necessary, slid my pens into their case, and tucked everything into my bag like the extra order would keep my thoughts from unraveling.
It didn’t help as much as I thought it would.
I picked up my bag and headed to the door, blowing out a breath as I did so. Next week would be better, I was sure. We just needed to find a rhythm that suited us both.
Out in the hall, I noticed as I passed a window that the rain had turned the quad into a smear of silver.
Through the glass, I thought I spotted him — hood up, head down, moving fast across the courtyard.
A cluster of his teammates had fallen into step beside him.
I couldn’t hear them, but their very behavior seemed loud and reckless, all swagger and noise.
Dante didn’t quite fit with them the way I expected.
I watched as he lifted his head and turned to laugh, but it looked forced, unnatural, like he was playing a role, even with them.
“You’ve met him three times, Savvy. You know nothing about him,” I muttered as I resumed walking to the main doors.
Outside, I took a moment to pull my hood up, my eyes automatically drawn to the players some distance away from me.
Dustin Slater — the one who always seemed to orbit him — said something that made Dante laugh again, and I watched the way his head tipped back as his laughter burst free.
That was who I was looking for when I watched him from inside.
Not the guy he was a mere moment before, but this one, the one who laughed out loud, who didn’t care who heard him.
Dante dipped his head to speak to Slater, and then I watched as he peeled free of the group and kept walking, head back down.
For someone who owned the spotlight, he sure seemed desperate to get out of it.
I needed to stop watching him, but I couldn’t. I was just curious, I told myself, that was all. Curiosity, not interest.
He disappeared out of sight, and that was when I realized I’d been standing there, practically stalking him from where I stood, for about two minutes.
“You need to get a grip,” I scolded myself as I walked down the steps.
The rain fell heavily as I made my way to my art shed. Dante’s rudeness had given me an extra hour, and I wasn’t one to let an opportunity pass. The place was kind of creepy at nighttime, but I knew how to defend myself, and once inside, I always made sure the door was locked.
My project stood tall in the middle of the floor, dominating the room.
Here, I didn’t need to hide my smile as I admired the smooth, cut lines and the intricate twist of the metal I had molded to frame the glass features.
Rolling my neck, my bag dropped carelessly behind me as I walked to my workbench and picked up my hammer.
My phone buzzed just as I peeled off my wet coat.
Bev: Made pasta for dinner, leftovers in the fridge if you’re hungry later.
Me: Awesome! Thank you, Roomie
I grinned as I set my phone down, picturing Bev’s smile at my use of the word roomie.
We weren’t best friends, but we were close enough that my using roomie wouldn’t throw her.
The truth was, I didn’t have a large social circle.
The most sobering fact was that my social group was my dad’s.
I attended so many functions, dinners, and banquets at his request that there was little time for anything but school, tutoring, and my art.
My phone never seemed to stop beeping, but it wasn’t for me, the student.
It was people needing Savannah, the tutor, or Savannah, the dean’s daughter.
Which is why here was my refuge. A place to lock it all out, lose myself in the soothing calm of crafting, and let all the noise and demands fade away.
I started setting up, letting the easy familiarity soothe away my tension. With the materials lined up where I wanted them to be, I reached for my tools, eager to start. With a frown, I dug deeper into my bag, looking for my small chisel.
“Where are you?” I murmured as I pulled my textbooks and notebooks out.
It wasn’t there. I checked the workbench. Had I left it here? I checked the floor and the sculpture.
“Where the heck did I put it?”
My head raced, considering everywhere I’d been since I last held it in my hand as I scanned the room, hoping I’d simply overlooked it.
I knew I hadn’t.
“It’s in the library.” I closed my eyes at the sinking realization.
I could leave it; they weren’t hard to replace. But a chisel, in the library, after I’d been there. It would raise questions. Especially if that question was posed to my dad. I could hear it now, innocent in itself, “Is this Savannah’s?” but the answer would hold no innocence.
My father would investigate.
He always investigated.
“So much for an extra hour, Savvy.” I picked up my coat with a sigh and headed back to the library, hoping that no one else had seen it and handed it in.
By the time I stepped into the hallway that led to the meeting room, the building was settling into after-hours quiet. Doors shut. Lights dimmed. My footsteps echoed back at me.
I heard a low murmur from the room as I approached, and I slowed down. The voice was familiar, and I recognized that low tone.
“You only sent twelve.”
I stopped walking as I leaned forward to listen.
His voice was unmistakable. Lower than in our session. Sharper. All the lazy charm was stripped out.
A pause.
“Twelve’s not going to see me through the next month, and you know it. What the fuck are you playing at? I gave you a tip already. Place your money right, thank me later.”
The words held a weight I didn’t want to unpack.
What the hell was he involved in? Twelve what? What kind of tip?
Another student rounded the corner and stopped in surprise to see me. “Oh, hey, you scared me.”
Shit.
I forced a smile, muttered a quick “Sorry,” and kept moving, praying Dante hadn’t heard us, like I’d heard him. I didn’t look back to find out.
I left the library and headed across campus toward the arts building, walking faster than usual. To hell with my chisel, it wasn’t worth going back for. I’d plead ignorance.
The night air was cold, but not cold enough to erase the sound of his voice from my head.
I bypassed the main entrance, taking the gravel path around to the back. My fingers were stiff as I slid my key into the lock of the shed, the familiar scent of metal and sawdust wrapping around me like armor.
His words kept coming back. Twelve’s not going to see me through the next month, and you know it.
Twelve what? What tip?
I let myself into my shed and locked the door behind me. I stood in the dark for a moment before I turned the light on.
For the first time since being assigned to him, I wondered if my father’s suspicions might actually be justified.