Chapter 7
Savannah
I closed the shed door and leaned against it, heart still thudding.
What in the heck was that?
No, I knew exactly what that was — Dante Freaking Spence. At what point had I forgotten he was an athlete? I’m not saying he was a rocket scientist, but he wasn’t a schmuck either.
His whole career depended on reading people, on spotting weaknesses before they even saw him coming. And I . . . I’d just gift wrapped my biggest one by panicking and snatching my chisel off him.
God, I was stupid.
Of course he’d followed me. He’d heard me in the hallway, probably put two and two together, and then — perfect — trailed me straight to the one place I never wanted him to see.
“Damn it, Savvy,” I muttered, crossing the room to my workbench. “You might as well have handed him your ass on a plate and said, ‘Go ahead, take a bite.’”
I dropped onto my stool, buried my face in my hands, and groaned. Now he knew. Or at least, he knew enough to make my life interesting . . . and not in a good way.
I slouched forward, elbows on my knees, staring at the half-finished piece on my workbench without really seeing it.
A sheet of stained glass leaned against the wall, half cut and waiting for solder.
Next to it, the copper-and-steel project I’d been working on for weeks glinted under the low light, edges sharp, unforgiving.
What had he actually seen? Just me, in here, surrounded by metal, glass, and the mess I kept hidden from everyone else. The Savvy my father didn’t know existed. The one who wasn’t polished, composed, and on schedule.
I had to stop panicking. I needed to breathe. I took a few deep breaths, in for four, hold for four, out for four. I repeated it until my pulse quieted. I needed to think about this.
Dante didn’t have the whole picture. He might think he did — he struck me as the kind of guy who thought he was always two steps ahead — but I’d heard something too.
I straightened slowly, the tang of solder in the air grounding me.
I’d heard the edge in his voice. I’d been too flustered earlier to think straight, but he wanted me to keep quiet.
“Why?” I asked as I slowly stood. “What are you hiding, QB10?” I began to pace, chewing on the edge of my thumbnail. My mind replayed last night’s clipped conversation.
What had he said? He’d only sent twelve? What was sent? And then that comment about the insider tip. What insider tip? I walked back and forth. What would he need more than twelve of? What tip? And why did he sound like he resented doing it?
I’d sneaked a peek at his college application. It was something I had access to; I wasn’t entirely sure I was supposed to have it. I think it might have been an oversight on my level of access through the Academic Administration program, but I never spoke up to be told otherwise.
He came from a single-parent family; his mom was a nurse, and he had one older sister. They lived in a medium-sized town in Ohio, with no red flags or anything else to suggest Wrighton’s number one football star was shady.
But he was up to something.
If he wasn’t, why would he follow me? He had enough arrogance and confidence not to give a damn about what people thought of him. It was literally one of the things that made him hot . . . according to my roommate. I myself pretended not to notice.
Big, fat fibber.
But the most important thing in all of this was that I might not be the only one freaking out.
This wasn’t a one-way street.
Dante had something to hide. Which meant I needed to know what.
I had leverage. The question was what to do with it.
Part of me wanted to keep it close, tucked away like a card you don’t lay down until you know it’s the winning move.
The other part of me — well, the part still simmering from the way he’d played with me this afternoon — wanted to hurl it back at him first chance I got, just to watch that smug confidence crack.
But information was power. You didn’t waste it just to land a single blow — you saved it for when it could take someone down for good.
Was that what he was going to do with me? Keep it until the right moment? I groaned. I turned back to my workbench, running a fingertip along the jagged edge of glass until it bit at my skin. Maybe I’d keep my little discovery to myself . . . for now.
Let him think he was the one holding all the aces.
A scuff of movement outside the shed made me freeze, my gaze darting to the small, square window. A shadow slid across the frosted glass. For one heart-stopping second, I was sure he was still out there. Watching.
I spun toward the door, sure I’d locked it, but now unsure, and ran to confirm it was shut tight.
The door creaked open, and I exhaled when Professor Yates stepped inside, the smell of turpentine and scorched metal following him. His eyes swept over my latest piece — copper filigree laced with shards of deep blue glass — before landing on me.
“You’ve been putting in the hours,” he said, voice mild but threaded with approval.
“I had some things to work out,” I replied, my eyes darting to the doorway to make sure it was closed properly.
“Mmhmm.” He stepped closer, leaning over the workbench. “Your lines are cleaner this week. More confident. You’ve stopped second-guessing yourself.”
I almost laughed. If only he knew how much of my life right now was second-guessing. “Guess I just needed to . . . focus.”
“Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.” His gaze softened for a moment, the kind of look I didn’t get from my father — not in a long time. “You have real talent, Savannah. Don’t waste it chasing dreams that aren’t yours.”
Ouch. My throat tightened. “I won’t.”
Professor Yates had been my quiet ally since my sophomore year.
Dad was determined to push me to follow in his footsteps; my love of art was ‘nonsensical’ to him.
A ‘fun’ freshman elective in sculpture had been tolerated — barely — before he shut it down entirely.
But it had lit a fire I couldn’t smother.
Not for clay or marble. For the overlooked and abandoned. Rusted iron beams from a collapsed barn. Bent bicycle wheels left to rot in alleys. Jagged shards of stained glass from forgotten churches. I wanted to drag the broken into the light and give it a shape no one expected.
Maybe it was because I knew what it felt like to be written off. Fixing the discarded wasn’t just art — it was proof that things weren’t always what they seemed.
Dad thought I was gluing shells to picture frames when, in reality, I was building a twelve-foot wind sculpture from scrap metal and glass.
At a pre-semester faculty function with staff and alumni in attendance, Professor Yates had caught me at the bar, almost accepting a glass of champagne despite being a few months shy of twenty-one.
We’d chatted, he’d lamented my absence from his class, and I had been all too conscious of Dad’s watchful eye as we exchanged pleasantries.
The next week, the professor “happened” upon me after a tutoring session.
Showed me this shed. Handed me the key. Told me to lock up when I was done.
The man deserved a medal.
This place had become my refuge. Here, I wasn’t Dean Cole’s daughter. I was Savvy — torn jeans, messy hair, calloused hands from materials that cut, bruised, and burned.
The professor lingered a beat longer, talking about other materials I was going to incorporate into it, and studying the piece like it held the answer to a question he couldn’t ask, then nodded and left.
The moment the door clicked shut, I glanced at the window.
The glass was still fogged with condensation from the heat of the workshop. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the shadow I’d seen hadn’t belonged to Professor Yates, but to someone I had no interest in letting see any more of me than he already had.
I couldn’t dwell on what-ifs. I had limited time here, so I could worry later. This was my happy place, and I’d be damned if some blond-haired, blue-eyed God of football ruined it for me.
I picked up my gloves, my goggles, and my glass cutter. It was time to create.
I ran the cutter across the deep blue shard, listening for that soft crackle that meant the score was clean.
A quick press with the pliers and the glass snapped in two.
I carried the piece to the grinder, letting the diamond bit hum away the edges until they matched the curve I needed.
Water trickled over my hands, carrying the glass dust into the basin, leaving the surface cool and safe to touch.
I set the piece down and repeated the process with the next shard. Clean. Methodical. Completely Zen — if I didn’t count the part where Dante’s voice kept threading through my thoughts, no matter how hard I tried to grind it out.
A couple of hours later, I blew out a slow breath, peeled off my gloves, and set them on the bench. I’d made progress, but not the kind I could hold up as finished. Time to scrub away the smell of must and glass dust, tame my hair, and leave my refuge for another day.
By the time I locked up and stepped outside, the late-afternoon sun was already dipping low, turning the campus into a pretty picture postcard. My phone buzzed before I made it ten steps.
Dad: Dinner with the Harringtons tonight. Seven sharp.
Ugh. The Harringtons were obnoxious racists, and stuck in 1950; I detested them. If Chuck Harrington told me tonight that women only got an education to support their husbands, I wouldn’t be responsible for my actions.
Even my dad didn’t like them. But they were big donors, and donors kept Dad happy.
I tucked the phone away and made for the library, weaving through a quad full of students in leggings and hoodies, coffee cups in hand.
They got to finish their day sprawled in front of the TV or at a party.
Mine meant swapping one performance for another — student liaison, perfect daughter, convenient prop in my father’s networking plans.
First stop was the student services office.
I dropped off three folders — each for athletes needing extra monitoring — to Mrs. Lyle, the Academic Committee Coordinator.
When Dad showed interest, he showed it fully, and he’d sent a message with the ‘list.’ Dante’s folder sat right on top, his name in bold black ink, almost daring me to open it again.
I didn’t.
From there, it was across campus to the policy building for a late seminar on comparative education models. I took the back row, pulled out my notebook, and let the lecture wash over me. My notes were meticulous, my questions ready when called on, but my brain kept drifting back to the shed.
Back to that shadow.
By the time class ended, I’d managed to shove the thought aside, if only so I could make it through dinner. I headed to my dorm room, dumped all my stuff, and hurriedly got changed into the version of me that my father approved of: neat, low ponytail, pearl studs, a navy dress that didn’t wrinkle.
The girl from the workshop — the one with streaks of copper dust on her cheek — was long gone.
The Harringtons were already there when I arrived at the dean’s residence on campus.
Within moments, I knew the night was going to go exactly as expected: polite laughter at bad jokes, the same old ‘aren’t you dating anyone’ questions, and Chuck giving me that patronizing nod when I mentioned my studies — as if it was cute I had an opinion.
My dad greeted me with a squeeze to my upper arm and a warning glance not to say anything to upset them. I wanted to. But I kept my tone warm, my answers bland, and my eyes on my water glass.
It was exhausting, but that was the cost of being the dean’s daughter. And, unfortunately, of keeping my secret life just that — a secret.
My phone dinged, and the conversation at the table stalled.
“I’m so sorry,” I said with a flush, and reached in to silence it. I caught the message notification.
QB10: We need to talk
Shit.
“Savannah, phones are not permitted at the dinner table, you know that.” My father’s voice was soft, but the weight behind it could level a building.
There’d be a lecture later — behind closed doors, with that same patient disappointment he reserved for real transgressions. I knew it, and so did he.
“My apologies,” I murmured, tucking the phone away like it hadn’t just dropped a spark into the middle of my evening.
I forced my expression back into something pleasant while the conversation resumed, but my mind wasn’t on the Harringtons anymore. I was thinking about Dante, why he wanted to talk, and why the message felt less like an invitation and more like a summons.
Chuck Harrington droned on about the ‘right kind’ of people being admitted into universities these days, and my father nodded politely, his jaw just a little too tight.
I was nodding too, though for entirely different reasons — each one accompanied by a fantasy of dumping my glass of ice water into Chuck’s lap.
I couldn’t sit here for another second pretending I wasn’t vibrating from that text.
“Excuse me,” I said with a polite smile that fooled the Harringtons, but not my father. “Restroom.”
I stood and walked away before he could object. The air in the hallway was cooler, quieter, free of Harrington smugness. I slipped my phone from my clutch.
Me: This isn’t exactly a good time.
The reply came in seconds.
QB10: Make time. Where are you?
Me: I’m at the dean’s house at a dinner!
QB10: Sounds like something to skip. Meet you at the library?
My pulse kicked, and I wasn’t sure if it was irritation, curiosity, or both.
I shouldn’t.
I knew that.
Me: See you there.
I slipped my phone back into my clutch, smoothed my skirt, and stepped into the guest bathroom. A quick glance at my reflection — polished hair, careful makeup, the exact Savannah my father expected. She wouldn’t slip out of a dinner to meet a boy in the library.
But I wasn’t that Savannah tonight. Dante Spence made me react recklessly. React to him recklessly.
Ten minutes later, I’d made my excuses about a student I tutored, not knowing there was a test the next day, and they were underprepared and panicking.
My dad bought it because I’d never given him a reason not to.
Soon I was walking across campus, heart thudding as the lights from the house faded.
Somewhere between here and the library, I needed to decide if I was going to lecture Dante .
. . or demand to know what he’d seen in my art shed.
Either way, I already knew this wasn’t going to be a normal conversation.
I also knew . . . I was looking forward to it.