Chapter 30
Dante
Dustin shoved a hand through his hair. “Jesus, Dante . . .” He sat back and looked up at the ceiling. “Remember when the pressure was just who made a bad play call, and getting through finals?”
I huffed out a laugh.
Noah sat forward, forearms on his knees, eyes locked on mine. “So, what’s the play?”
I exhaled, slow and measured, like I’d been planning this all along.
“For the program? The play is we do what he says. We keep our mouths shut until we figure out who’s pulling the strings.
Hembry knows, but he doesn’t approve, and he’s doing nothing about it.
So . . . I don’t know. Do we do the same? ”
Neither of them looked happy. But after a beat, Dustin gave a short nod. Noah followed, steady and sure.
“If you think about it,” Dustin said slowly, “we never knew it was happening before, and we’ve already done two years, almost three. What’s the harm in one more year?”
Noah and I exchanged a look, and I knew we were both thinking the same. Too much harm, that was the answer.
Dustin threw his chips onto the table. “Fuck. This blows so bad. I feel dirty.”
“They can take it all from us.” Noah spoke so softly that I had to strain to hear him at first. “Like that guy Sterling.” He looked up at us both. “I worked too hard to be erased overnight by a bunch of fuckers who have no scruples about playing God with my future.”
“It’s terrifying,” I said.
“It really fucking sucks,” Dustin said, slumping back in his seat.
The weight of it hung over us for a few minutes until I couldn’t keep quiet anymore.
“What about me?” I asked them both.
“You stop,” Noah said immediately. “You want your family out of that situation, you don’t risk yourself to do that. You don’t become the ammunition for that to backfire.”
“What he said,” Dustin chimed in.
“But I don’t give a fuck if he comes after me,” I told them truthfully. “But if he targets—”
“Trust her.” Noah looked at me like it was that simple. “It was over a year and a half ago. She’s been clean since, right?”
“Yeah.” I thought about last night. “A joint now and then.”
“Trust your sister,” he told me.
“Trust her and tell her,” Dustin added. “Naya tells me everything, even the shit I wished she wouldn’t. Secrets fester. Especially secrets in families.”
For the first time since this mess started, I wasn’t carrying it completely alone.
“Yeah . . . maybe.”
Noah broke the silence, eating a handful of Dustin’s chips, and I waited for the fallout, but Dust was watching me.
“What happened with Savannah?”
“Oh . . .” I said it like I’d forgotten. I hadn’t. “I think she found out yesterday that they cover up the grades, thought I was in on it, went batshit.”
“But you sorted that out, that’s an easy fix,” Noah said, leaning back and kicking his feet up onto the coffee table.
“No . . .” I avoided looking at both of them. “I told her I didn’t know, and then she told me her father sent her to spy on me.” I glanced at them, seeing the look of surprise on both their faces. “Yeah. Pretty much how I reacted.” I cleared my throat. “Might have been more verbal . . .”
“She must have only found out yesterday,” Noah mused. “She was trying not to cry when I saw her. I think her dad’s involvement was too much for her.”
“He sent her to spy,” I reminded him.
“There’s a difference between spying on you for Daddy and covering up grades for a whole program.” Dustin shrugged when I widened my eyes at him. “What?” he asked with a shrug. “It’s true.” He nudged Noah’s leg. “Tell him.”
“He has a point.”
“I prefer it when you’re on my side,” I mumbled.
Dustin stood. “This is all too heavy for me,” he declared as he stretched his arms out in front of him, laced his fingers together, tightened them, and then rolled his neck. “I can’t do anything about any of it. So . . .” He blew out a big breath as he sat back down and looked at Noah. “Rematch?”
Noah took the offered controller, but he was still watching me. “You good?”
“Yeah.”
“Call your sister,” Dustin reminded me. “Tell her you’re an asshole.”
“Or tell Savvy you’re an asshole,” Noah offered. “Then tell your sister you’re an asshole.”
“Why do I have to be the asshole at all?” I asked them both as I stood.
“Only you can answer that,” Dustin said. “Hey, get me a soda?”
“Me too,” Noah called as I walked to the fridge.
I did as they requested and then left them to their game and looked up a few minutes later when my bedroom door opened, and they were both there.
“What?”
Dustin held his hand out. “Hand it over.”
“Hand what over?”
“You said there’s no trace, but you have to be contacting him somehow, so hand it over.” Noah looked as grim as Dustin did.
Dustin walked farther into my room. “The phone, we know you have one. Give it to us.” There were very few times in the time I’d known him when he was deadly serious, and it didn’t involve winning a game.
“The program we can’t do anything about,” he said resolutely.
“Saving you from yourself, we can totally do.” He eyed my bag.
“Hand it over — the pills too — or I’ll let the bloodhound here sniff it out. ”
I met Noah’s half-amused, half-serious look. “Side pocket,” I said.
He walked over, rummaged through my bag, and then pulled out the small, compact burner and the orange cylinder with five pills still inside it. He handed the pills to Dustin, turned the phone over in his hand, and then, within a few moments, had the SIM card extracted.
“This is the smartest thing to do,” he said as he snapped it in half.
Is it? “I know.”
The toilet flushed, and Dustin came out of the bathroom. “Don’t be this fucking stupid again,” was his only warning before his foot came down on the cylinder, cracking it and breaking it.
“What’s the guy’s name?” Noah asked me. “The dealer.”
“Knox Ward.”
He nodded. “I’ll look into it.” He walked out of my room.
What the fuck did that mean?
The room felt quieter without the phone in the side pocket. I noticed it immediately. I got up and walked over to the trash can, staring at the two halves of the SIM card.
“Shit.”
I went back and sat on the bed, picking up my other phone, my ‘real’ phone, as I stared at the pocket where the burner used to sit.
They’d both given me the ‘we’ve got your back’ speech, and I believed them . . . but handing the phone and the pills over felt like cutting out a piece of my armor.
The silence in their place made me twitchy. But I did what they advised me to do. I called my sister.
“What’s up, superstar?” Jiana asked me brightly when she picked up.
“Everything?” I sighed. “Nothing?”
“Oh.” I heard her moving. “Well, you are in luck, because I am in a parking lot, with five grocery bags, a can of soda, and a bag of chips. Lay it on me.”
“Where’s Nicky?”
“It’s Wednesday, he’s with Andy.”
“Right.” I hesitated. “How you doing?”
“No one cares, I’m alone, so tell me what’s wrong with my little brother.”
I fought the smile at her ability to see through my bullshit. “I think I fucked up.”
She was silent for a moment, and then I heard the pop of a can being opened. “Okay, talk.”
I told her everything. In detail. When she hung up on me, I had a moment of true panic that she’d given up on me, and then she FaceTimed me just so she could see my face as she shouted at me.
And Christ, could my sister rage with the best of them. Our mother’s Italian roots manifested in Jiana’s temper, and by the time she was done, I’d been ripped a new one.
“You done?” I asked as I watched her strumming her fingers off the steering wheel, her gaze locked on something outside.
“No.” She took a deep breath. “You are so lucky you are hundreds of miles away from me.”
“I miss you.”
“You don’t trust me,” she said bitterly, glancing toward the phone and shaking her head. “I get it, I do. I fucked up before. But Jesus, D. This is your whole life.” I saw her wipe away a tear. “What did you tell me when I woke up in the ICU?”
“Ji—”
“What did you tell me?”
“Knox had too much power over you,” I mumbled.
“Then why the fuck would you give him that power over you?” She inhaled shakily. “I will never ever forgive you if you fuck up your future because of him. Or me.”
“Ji—”
“Don’t talk to me.” She looked momentarily guilty when she heard my grunt of surprise. “I’m going home to unpack the groceries, then I’m going to go get Nicky from his father’s, and then I’m going to call you later.”
“To yell more?” I guessed.
This time, she did look at me. “Of course I’m going to yell more, are you stupid?”
She hung up. I sat there for a minute, half expecting her to call me back, but when she didn’t, I — selfishly — hoped the hours between the calls were enough for her to calm down.
I got off the bed, put my shoes back on, and headed to the front door.
“Where are you going?” Dustin asked.
“Thought I might go out for a walk and maybe a coffee. Want anything?” I asked them both.
I left the room with their coffee orders, knowing I had no intention of heading to the coffee shop. I did what I always did when my head got loud. I found a ball, a field, and an excuse to burn myself down until I couldn’t think anymore.
I let myself into the training field. Floodlights threw long shadows across the turf as I worked through passing drills with no receivers — just me, the pocket, and the arc of the ball cutting through the night.
Drop back. Plant. Release. Over and over again until the unrest settled.
I had no one coming to me, no one running to catch, so I could keep my throws light, my shoulder moving but not straining.
When I wasn’t throwing, I was running suicides until my lungs clawed for air. Every rep, every yard, every spiral burned off the anger.
Noah had asked earlier, So, what’s the play? The answer I’d given him didn’t sit right. Keeping quiet didn’t feel right, but I didn’t have an answer. All I had was this — training, routine, until exhaustion drowned out the noise in my head.