Chapter 24
Savannah
I didn’t plan on going to my father’s office. My feet carried me there anyway.
The admin building was quiet, sunlight slanting through the tall windows, the halls lined with framed photographs of Wrighton’s proudest moments.
Championship teams. Donors shaking hands with university presidents.
My father, front and center in half of them, stern and polished, the picture of authority.
I pushed open his door without knocking. He was at his desk, tie loosened, glasses perched low on his nose as he read a stack of papers. He looked up, surprised.
“Savannah. Did you forget how to knock?” He frowned as he looked me over. “Everything alright?”
I closed the door behind me. “Depends.”
He sat back, eyebrows arched. “Depends on what?”
I crossed the office, trying to keep my voice steady. “I just had a call with the Academic Association. I had to send my students’ progress reports. Dante’s wouldn’t load.”
“Maybe a glitch,” he offered.
“Mmhmm, not a glitch. I spoke with the lady on the phone, and she cleared it all up for me. But you know, it was so unbelievable, I thought that cannot be right, I must have misunderstood. So, I spoke with others. And . . .” My throat worked as I forced the words out.
“And they basically told me it doesn’t matter what I do regarding tutoring athletes.
That the athletic department has its own way of making sure certain players pass. ”
A shadow flickered in his eyes.
“Savannah—”
“You knew,” I cut in. My hands curled into fists at my sides. “Tell me it’s not true. Tell me I’m imagining this, that I misheard, that it’s just bitter grad students making up stories.”
His expression didn’t change. That told me more than any words could.
I laughed, hollow. “God. It is true.”
“Savannah, listen—”
“Don’t you dare tell me this is complicated,” I snapped. “You’ve preached about integrity my whole life. About rules and reputation. And now I find out you’re part of . . . whatever this is?”
He stood, buttoning his jacket like armor.
His tone dropped to the cool, warning one he used in board meetings.
“What I’m part of?” He assessed me coolly.
“What I am part of is keeping this university running. Do you think donors pay millions to see us lose? To see our star playmakers benched because of an exam?” He squared his shoulders.
“Sometimes sacrifices are necessary for the greater good.”
The ground tilted under me. I gripped the edge of a chair. “Sacrifices? That’s what you call lying? Cheating?”
His jaw tightened. “I call it survival of an institution.”
“I cannot believe you! You hypocritical—”
“Savannah Annabeth Cole.” His voice cracked like a whip. “Watch your tone with me.”
I gaped at him. “My tone? My fucking tone?” I don’t think I’d ever been so angry at my father. Not even when he let my mother walk all over him. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Savannah.” His voice was low and even, his fingertips pushing into the desk as he leveled me with a look. “Do not embarrass yourself by insulting your intelligence with such foul language.”
I bit back the words that basically told him to go fuck himself; anger never won arguments. Logic did. Ironically, it was my father who taught me that.
I took a deep, calming breath, my body vibrating with rage.
“You said you call it survival?” My voice cracked.
“Don’t be na?ve, Savannah.” His tone cut like a scalpel, sharper than the ones my mother used, I was sure.
“The athletic program feeds this university. It keeps the doors open, keeps the lights on in your precious art department. Without football, without hockey, without half of these sports programs, more than half of this campus wouldn’t exist as you know it. ”
I blinked at him. “So that makes it okay to bend the rules? To break them?”
His eyes narrowed. “To protect what matters, yes.”
We stared at each other across a few feet, but it felt like miles were between us.
Dad sighed. “Every athlete here, no matter their sport, is on a full scholarship,” he explained, carefully, like I was a cornered animal and he was afraid I’d bite. “There are hundreds of eligible athletes—”
“I know this,” I snapped at him, my temper still throbbing at my temples.
“And do you know that for every two of those top-tier scholarships, I can grant an academic scholarship to people who deserve a higher education? Who will benefit from it? People whose talent, whose opportunity to go further in life, is their mind? Their brains? We give them that chance, Savannah, here, at Wrighton. So if the defensive end struggles with economics, should the academic student miss out because that player loses eligibility?” He fixed me with a firm stare. “It’s about checks and balances.”
“You mean those checks you chase at every dinner, every fundraiser?” I asked him scathingly.
“Do you think I’m the first dean to look the other way? Do you think Chuck Harrington aced his finals?” My dad’s tone was as scathing as mine.
My chest tightened. “And what about the players? What about Dante?”
“Not every athlete here needs help, Savannah,” he said with a scowl.
“These men and women are fighters, they have the brains, they have the ability, the majority of them will never need the aid of tutors, and those that do, most of them just need direction. It’s not like some places where some players never even turn up for class,” he scoffed.
“Oh my God . . .” I was breathing hard. “Did you just try and give your cheating standards?”
“Savannah, you aren’t a fool—”
“You’re the dean. You’re supposed to set the example, not—”
“Grow up.”
Two words that stunned me. His stare was hard and unyielding. “I’m almost twenty-one, I’m not a child.”
“Then stop acting like one.” He sniffed.
I wasn’t touching that right now. I stayed focused and refused to get distracted. Another trick taught to me by the man in front of me.
“Do you care what happens to them when you cover things up? When you put a donor check above a human being?” I asked softly.
“You always tell me that college prepares you for the real world. How are you preparing the ones you help? How are you, Dean Cole, serving your students best by lying for them?”
For the first time, he faltered. Just slightly. Then he straightened. “This is about the quarterback, isn’t it?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Dante Spence knows the stakes. They all do. No one is forcing them into this.”
I shook my head, heat rushing into my face. “No one is forcing them? Dad, you’ve built a machine so big it chews them up, and you’re pretending they volunteered for it.”
His hand slammed against the desk. “Enough. You don’t understand the responsibility I carry.”
“No,” I snapped back, startling even myself.
“I understand perfectly. You’ve chosen the program over the truth, over integrity.
And you’re asking me to lie by pretending I don’t see it.
” I thought back to the girl David was tutoring earlier, about his remarks regarding her, and the frustration I felt was no longer able to be contained.
“How many times have you told me the real world isn’t easy?
Yet here you are, setting up every single one of those athletes to fail.
Because you made it easy. You didn’t teach them that they need to work to survive. ”
His jaw locked, his silence screaming louder than words.
I took a shaky step back. “You’ve always told me rules mattered. That fairness mattered. Was that all just for me? Something to keep your daughter in line while you looked the other way for everyone else?”
“Savannah—”
“No.” My voice broke, but I held my ground. “I don’t even know who you are right now.”
The air between us turned brittle, sharp as glass.
“You knew this was happening, you allowed it,” I spoke softly, my mind racing.
“Why did you make me stay on as his tutor if you knew it would never matter? You’re so desperate to make derogatory remarks about the quarterback but if you knew he was never in danger of failing, why make me give up my time?
I give you everything, Dad. I go to the lunches, the dinners—”
“Savannah—”
“—the banquets, the insufferable intimate dinner parties with buffoons like Chuck — I do it all. And it’s not enough.
” I wiped away a tear. I refused to let emotion take over.
“I don’t go to college parties, I don’t hang out with friends.
You know why? Because I have no friends.
I have tutoring and your agenda. Your timetable.
Was the fact that I had two free nights of my own time so abhorrent to you? ”
He sighed. “Savannah . . .” He almost looked apologetic. “You know why I asked you to tutor him.”
I nodded. “To spy. Right. To report to you, not if he was going to struggle to pass, but to report to you on anything else he might do? Right?” I needed to leave.
“I don’t have anything else to say to you right now, Dean Cole.
Please don’t call me for a few days. The other engagements we have, I’m giving you advance notice, I’m sick. Sick of this shit.”
He didn’t answer, didn’t move to stop me when I turned for the door.
But his final words followed me out, cold and deliberate. “Keep this to yourself, Savannah. For your own good.”
I didn’t trust myself to answer. If I opened my mouth again, I’d either scream or break.
So I walked. Fast. The heels of my boots struck the polished floor like thunder, each step ricocheting down the hall. I didn’t look back. I very much doubted my father would follow me out.
I couldn’t shake the look that I saw on his face — stern, unyielding, convinced of his righteousness — he truly believed this was right.
The cold air outside hit me like a slap. I gulped it down, hard and desperate, until the burn in my lungs was sharper than the one in my chest.
Keep this to yourself. Who in the hell was I going to tell? I didn’t even know where to start. How did you unpack this?