Chapter 34
Dante
When she came back in and handed me a fresh coffee, I didn’t start talking immediately.
I liked this, what I had with her. I took a drink, the hot coffee burning the roof of my mouth, making me wince.
“It’s hot,” Sav said with a small smirk. She seemed to pick up on my reluctance to start. “You don’t need to tell me, if you don’t want to.”
“I do.” I did. But how much should I tell her? All of it? Fuck, I saw the look of disappointment on her face when she spoke of her mom. What if she looked at me in the same way? I didn’t need to tell her everything, but then . . . I’d be lying to her. “Fuck.”
Her eyes widened a little. “That bad?” she asked tentatively.
“Maybe?”
“Your sister can’t be worse than my mom,” she offered, and I knew she was trying to lighten the mood.
“Ji’s great,” I told her, only making her frown even more. “We have a really good relationship.”
“Oh. Then I don’t understand why we needed more coffee?”
It was her straightforwardness, no game-playing, that would make me fall for her. And I had fallen for her. Completely.
“I come from a town in northeast Ohio,” I told her simply.
“Not much to do there, except talk football, hockey, and you know, stuff.” I sipped my coffee.
“We don’t live in the best area of town,” I continued.
“Mom’s a nurse, Pops is retired. We’re not poor,” I added.
“We’re also not rolling in it. We get by. ”
I took another drink, watching her watch me in that way she had. Like I was the only person in the room that she wanted to be listening to. The fact that I was the only person in the room was irrelevant.
“High school parties can be dumb,” I said, seeing the small frown at what she thought was a change of subject. “Jiana is eleven months older than me. She’s also funnier, and she makes friends easier.”
“She sounds great,” Sav said with an encouraging smile.
“She is.” I smiled as I thought of my sister. “She’s also incredibly fucking stupid sometimes,” I added with more bitterness, thinking how stupid both of us could be. “She hooked up with the guy, the stereotypical numbnut asshole who talked the talk, walked the walk, and dealt in poison.”
“Oh . . .”
I nodded. “Yeah. Oh.” I finished my coffee, wishing it were something stronger. “He’s not smart, but he’s sleazy, controlling, and apparently fucks really good.”
Savannah choked on her coffee.
“There’s not much Ji and I don’t share,” I told her bluntly.
“So when I realized my sister was hooked on shit, I demanded to know why. Apparently because one of his better qualities was that he fucked like a rockstar.” I saw her wide eyes.
“She’s over the sex. I bought her a vibrator, the ones with the ears. ”
“You bought your sister a vibrator?”
“She made stupid decisions because she wasn’t getting good dick. I got her something reliable that delivered when she needed it.” I shrugged. “She says it does the job.”
“Your family is very . . . open.”
I could imagine Sav having this conversation with her father and grinned. “We’re close. She was my best friend when I was growing up. Then dipshit happened and we grew apart.” I didn’t like thinking of it. “She cleaned herself up, Mom shipped her off to rehab, and we got our Ji back.”
“That’s good,” she said, watching me intently. “I feel like there’s a but . . .”
“Oh, there is,” I told her easily. “Jiana’s usually popular wherever she goes, and can also be . . . wild.” I picked my phone up and opened my camera roll, scrolling to a picture of Nicky. I held it up to show Savannah. “This is Nicolai Spence. He’s three.”
She leaned forward, a smile on her face. “He’s so cute.”
“Don’t let him hear you say that,” I warned her. “He inherited his mom’s ability to make anyone love him, and his uncle’s ability to manipulate.”
“Your sister got pregnant in rehab?” she guessed.
“Touchdown, Cole,” I murmured, looking at my phone before putting it back down.
“In his defense, Andy wasn’t in rehab, he was one of the electricians — apprentice electricians — at the time, fixing something in the kitchen or whatever the fuck it was.
Long story short, Jiana came home clean from rehab, but she brought more baggage with her than we thought she would.
” I cursed. “Baggage sounds so wrong. Nicky’s the best.”
Savannah gave me a small smile to say she understood. “She’s so young.”
“She was seventeen going on eighteen, going on thirty.”
“That’s a lot,” she murmured sympathetically.
“We all got through it, but some dipshits are harder to shake than others.” I looked down at my empty mug.
“She had a bad birth; Nicky was difficult in coming out, and she didn’t bond well with him to start with because of it — well, that’s what my mom thinks.
” I swallowed against the lump in my throat.
“Knox was eager to reclaim one of his favorite customers, and she was in a bad place.”
“Oh no.”
“Yeah, she got high, drove the car right into a wall, and ended up in the ICU for a week.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah, not fun. But . . .” I took a deep breath and met her stare. “She is one hundred percent okay, and a great mom to Nicky.” I smiled, but Sav saw more than I was telling.
“But?”
“But he’s a fucking cunt and I hate him.”
She looked uncomfortable at the use of the C-word, but she nodded. “I get that you hate him.”
“He uses her against me,” I told her quickly. “I was never a fan, he knows how much I hate him, but when I got injured in the championship game and didn’t want to tell anyone how bad it was . . .”
“Oh no.” She was looking at me with wide eyes. “The pills I saw?”
I nodded once. “Yeah, not my smartest moment.” I set the coffee mug down. “Plus, he knows exactly where I am and what I have access to.”
She was frowning. “I don’t understand.”
“He runs drugs, his mouth, and . . .” Fuck it. “Places bets with insider information.”
Savannah made the connection immediately.
“He’s who you were on the phone with. Not just for the pills.
” She stood. “You’re telling him insider stuff and he gives you pills?
” she guessed. I watched her put it together.
“Are you so arrogant?” she demanded. “He could tell anyone at any time. Or wait until you’re drafted and blackmail you, or anything! ”
I didn’t get up. I watched her as she paced. “I know. I worry that if I don’t give him tips, now that I started it, he’ll turn his attention back to Jiana. He backed off after I beat the shit out of him last time, but I’m not there. I’m not at home.” Saying it left a bad taste in my mouth.
“And your sister—”
“Avoids him at all costs, but she’s . . . fragile.”
“She’s a mother.” Savannah gave me a hard stare. “You’re risking your entire future for someone you love, I get it, but if she’s not willing to help herself, why should you be sacrificing everything?”
“Sav—”
“No.” She stopped pacing, her hands on her hips.
“You’re twenty years old, Dante, your sister is older, and an adult.
She has a little boy and a family that loves her, supports her.
She does not need you to be her knight in shining armor because she’s made bad choices, and if she hasn’t learned from them, well, you can’t make her. ”
“That’s pretty harsh—”
“No. It isn’t.” She looked across the room at me. “You’re a hero on the football field. Off it, you’re just a man.”
“Ouch.” I rubbed my chest to try to get that fierce glare to soften.
“I told Dustin and Noah,” I told her as I got off the bed and took the two steps to stand in front of her.
“They took the burner phone I used for Knox off me. They took the last of the pills. They reacted like you did, but were maybe not as hard on Ji.”
Sav sniffed. “Well, they’re your friends, I’m your girlfriend, I get to call bullshit.”
“And I talked to my sister and told her everything.” I saw Sav’s look of surprise. “And she said exactly what you did, only with more shouting and more swearing.”
I huffed out a laugh as I saw her try to process it all, and I pulled her into my body.
“I do trust my sister,” I told her as I kissed her temple.
“I don’t trust him. I will never trust him.
And I guess a part of me thought that if I kept him .
. . appeased, I’d have that extra layer of security for Ji. ”
Savannah looked up at me, a frown marring her forehead. “Honestly, you’re supposed to be smarter than this.” She pushed away from me with a shake of her head. “I can’t believe you didn’t see that was just enabling him.” She looked over at me and faltered as she saw the truth in my eyes. “Oh.”
“I knew exactly what I was doing, but she’s my sister.”
She sighed, her head dropping down, her gaze on the floor. “I don’t have siblings, I don’t know . . .” She looked up at me. “I’m sorry, I spoke out of turn.”
“Nah,” I said with a smile. “You said what Noah and Dust said, and I already knew.”
“Do they know about the grading?” she asked quietly, and I nodded.
“To be honest, Sav, I think you may be the only one who didn’t know players get off easier.”
She glared at the floor, and I tried not to make it worse.
“But like you said, all three of us still work our asses off in class, most of the guys on my team do, no one is here expecting to sail through a four-year scholarship.”
She played with the hem of her PJ shorts. “Ugh, I hate that it happens at all.”
“Yeah.” I tilted my head and rested it against hers. “Did I tell you too much?”
“No.” Her answer was immediate and full of conviction. “I don’t want there to be any secrets at all.”
I didn’t comment on that being her parents’ fault, but I couldn’t help but push against the fact that she hid her art from her dad.
“So since we’re all open and stuff . . .”
Savannah didn’t move away, but her tone was as dry as the desert. “I did not sleep with Professor Yates.”
I blinked. “Not where I was going at all,” I admitted.
“You already accused me of it,” she reminded me.