Chapter 17 #2
“If they’re covering up injuries?” Dustin looked between us. “Or making people play when they shouldn’t be, that could fuck up careers.” He blew out a breath. “Fuck,” Dustin muttered. “I feel sleazy, and I didn’t do anything wrong.” He looked between us. “What do we do with this?”
“What do you mean?” I asked him cautiously.
“Do we raise it with someone?” he asked, getting up and pacing. “Coach Sutherland, maybe?”
“Probably already knows,” Noah said easily. “The one person who needs to know who’s on his team and fit, it’s the main coach. So, Sutherland probably knows.”
Dustin and I exchanged a look. I felt sick, but I remembered too well the way Bobby Ray watched me yesterday.
Noah stood, taking his empty bottle to the trash. “Assume all coaches know, and most of the PT staff.” He turned back and rested against the counter.
“That’s a whole lotta people,” Dust mumbled uneasily.
“The dean?” I asked, watching Noah.
He shrugged. “The dean doesn't strike me as someone who'd dirty his hands. He's too invested in being seen as clean,” he told me with a shrug. “I watched him at that event, he does not like jocks, at all.” He grinned at me. “Or maybe just QBs who follow his daughter to the restroom.”
“The dean’s daughter?” Dustin asked me. “Seriously, dude, it’s complicated enough without you making it more.”
Noah opened a cupboard, reached to the back, and came out with three protein bars, completely ignoring Dustin’s squawk of protest.
“They’re mine!”
“If you didn’t want to share them, you’d hide them,” Noah reasoned as he threw me one across the room.
I unwrapped mine and bit into it, hoping it hid my grin as Dustin lectured him on stealing. It didn’t stop Noah from eating his bar in two bites.
“I’m starving. Dining hall?” he asked, dropping the wrapper.
“You drop this on us and then say ‘dinner’?” Dustin asked incredulously. “I don’t know what to do with this. Seriously, do we tell what the fight was really about? Do we pretend we don’t know? I . . . this is shit.”
“Which is why I wasn’t going to tell you,” I reminded him, scrunching up my wrapper.
“I don’t know what to do. We say something, we may be the next Mason Sterlings.
There’s enough money and power on the alumni list to wipe us from college history, and we kiss the Draft goodbye.
And I’m not going to lie, that fucking terrifies me.
I worked too hard, for too long to get fucking erased because there’s shady shit happening on my team. ”
They both nodded in agreement.
“But . . .” I hesitated, my conflict reflected in their eyes.
They both nodded again.
“Yeah,” Noah grunted. “It’s a huge fucking but.”
No one spoke for a long moment.
“I say we say nothing, and we stay watchful,” I said to them both. “Don’t let on you suspect something, just keep our wits about us, and keep our heads down. We don’t even know if it’s real, or I’m adding two and two and getting five.”
Each of us looked at the others until we’d all nodded.
“I don’t like it, though,” Dustin said as we got ready to go to dinner. “It feels wrong. If they’re covering up injuries, what else are they hiding?”
“I don’t think I want to find out,” Noah admitted quietly.
“Agreed,” I mumbled, knowing I was covering up an injury too and feeling like shit for it. “Let’s just . . . keep our eyes and ears open, and if we see something that stinks, we discuss the next step. Together.”
“I like that better,” Dustin admitted. “I don’t want to be caught up in this, but at the same time, I don’t want to be guilty by association.”
Noah was nodding, but he was frowning at the floor. “You could ask your girl,” he said when he looked up.
“What girl?”
Noah rolled his eyes at my question. “Savannah Cole, you know, the girl you’re pretending you can’t stop watching. She’s a tutor. The tutors will know who is passing when they shouldn’t be, wouldn’t they?”
The thought that Sav knew about any of this made me feel uneasy. “I didn’t even think of her.”
Dustin knocked my arm gently. “See? Another reason why that blonde drink of water isn’t what you need. She’s shady.” He looked at me, his brow furrowed. “You could work her.”
“Work her?” I asked him. I didn’t like the sound of this.
“Yeah, flash that famous QB10 smile of yours at her, find out what she knows.” He glanced at Noah. “She’s the dean’s daughter, she’s bound to know something.”
"I don't think that works," I said. Not because she wasn't capable of knowing something.
I already had her close for that very reason.
If she figured it out — and she would figure it out — I'd lose the only person on campus who knew enough about me to blow everything up.
You didn't work with someone you needed to stay quiet. Not like this. “You don’t know anything about Sav.”
“Sav? Nicknames? Really?” Dust gave me a look I knew well. “Maybe I don’t know her, but I know you, and you don’t like people who play games,” he said confidently. “Can you honestly say she isn’t shady? I say you test her.”
Noah shrugged. “If she’s nothing to hide, where’s the harm? She never needs to know you doubted her,” he reasoned.
Was she shady? No, but I couldn’t say that for sure, and that sucked worse than anything else that had happened this weekend.
“Fine, but I think we’re wrong.”
Now I just needed to figure out where Savannah actually stood.
And if she was a problem, I'd deal with her the same way I dealt with everything else.