Chapter 35
Savannah
I woke up Monday morning, and my body was still aching in places it hadn’t ached before.
Dante had left yesterday evening, when it was darker with fewer people likely to see him. I want to say we made it out of my bedroom, but I would be lying. I even got food delivered to us.
He didn’t eat junk food. He reluctantly shared a chocolate bar, but his wrap was healthy, and even then, he inspected the contents as if it were sent to poison him. He’d asked for a side of chicken, not fried, not seasoned, just a plain chicken breast. And salad. Lots of salad.
I’d made a comment about it being offseason, and his reply was that there was no offseason for his food plan, which only reminded me how invested he was in his future. He was twenty years old, and he was locked in for the years to come.
He’d texted Noah or Dustin, I wasn’t sure which one it was, but whatever they’d replied, he’d laughed, but it wasn’t sleazy. He never made me feel slutty. God knows he’d done enough to me to make me blush this morning, but I still felt . . . good.
We’d taken separate showers — there just wasn’t the space to do so together, and when we were fed and clean, we’d put on a movie. I couldn’t tell you what happened in it. It was background noise to what was happening in my bed.
I smiled in remembrance and then got out of bed and stretched. Nope, scratch that. I didn’t feel good, I felt fantastic.
I took longer in the shower, and when I was ready for my morning classes, I carefully took the trash out, trying not to count the used condoms. The man was a machine.
I practically skipped to my first class. I settled into my seat, checking my phone was on silent, and saw I had a text message from him.
QB10: Morning beautiful
Me: Morning handsome
QB10: Yeah, that’s cheesy, let’s not do that again
I grinned at the message.
QB10: When’s your first class?
Me: Now.
And then I realized it was nine in the morning, and Dante had already been up for hours.
He told me yesterday afternoon he missed Sunday’s practice and would likely face punishment for it, but he wasn’t too bothered.
He mentioned that between the two coaches, there was enough tension, and he could brush them off by saying his shoulder was recuperating.
I hadn’t even known his shoulder was the issue, and he’d been putting his weight on it, and when I panicked, he laughed and told me this was the kind of light exercise that they would encourage.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about being termed ‘light exercise.’
QB10: See you at the shed later?
Me: Absolutely
My morning classes passed fairly quickly, and as I headed to the library for my normal between-class studying, I began to turn over the problem in my mind of the grades being altered. So what if it was the ‘norm’? It shouldn’t be.
I sat down in my usual booth, but as I stared at my laptop screen, I couldn’t shake the fact that I needed to know more.
This was supposed to be simple. But ‘simple’ had gone up in flames the second Dante put his mouth on mine and made me forget every reason I shouldn’t be getting involved with him.
Which left me with the only thing I knew how to do when the ground shifted under me — dig.
The Academic Liaison login I’d been given gave me a wider window than most students would ever see. Mine was a wider access than most, I knew that. Not everything — not the files I knew were locked under levels of clearance — but enough. Enough to spot the cracks if you knew where to look.
And, God help me, I wanted to look.
I told myself it was professional. I told myself it was about protecting my role, about staying one step ahead of my father, about knowing more so Dante and the others could be prepared.
Underneath all that was something simpler and less noble; if I didn’t dig, someone else would, and they’d be ahead of me.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard before I finally typed in my login.
I checked Dante first. I’d looked before, but then I hadn’t known everything.
His academic record looked clean at first glance — and after a few more minutes, I knew what I’d told him was true.
He was getting by in his classes by himself, except for the one I was tutoring him in. Noah and Dustin were also fine.
I weirdly felt proud of them, and I pushed the strangeness aside because, as I clicked through other football players, I started seeing the same patterns. Shifts. Gaps. Places where one file had one grade and the next had a completely different one.
I told myself I’d only skim, that I’d just get a sense of the scope and shut it down before I lost my nerve.
But once you start tugging at threads, you can’t stop.
At first, it was the overwrites — professors quietly changing F’s to C’s or granting ‘independent study’ credits that didn’t exist in the course catalog.
There were some who had reasons for retakes of tests, and a medical waiver attached as the reason they’d been ‘allowed’ a redo.
Students carrying an injury they’d conveniently picked up on the day of a test. Alone, it looked feasible; together, there was a pattern.
The more I looked, the more I realized that the re-sits were never actually taken.
They were just blatantly altering the grades.
I leaned back, my pulse rapid. It was clear they were being ‘helped,’ and the terrifying part? If I could see it, someone else could too.
But then I went deeper.
Buried three subfolders down in Athletic Academic Reports, I found medical waivers. Not classwork, not tutoring logs — actual injury assessments. One, two, six of them, all stamped with the same note: Not filed.
I froze, pulse roaring in my ears.
These weren’t no-names. Some were starters, guys I’d watched play hurt and assumed it was ‘just part of the game.’ But here was the proof: they should’ve been benched. Instead, their records were scrubbed clean, never submitted, never flagged.
I clicked on another file. Financial Aid Disbursement. At least, that’s what the header said. But the ‘student recipients’ didn’t exist in the registrar’s database. No enrollment, no ID numbers. Just names. Fake names.
Jesus.
This wasn’t just about Dante skating by with a C-minus. This was systemic.
The worst part? Someone had tagged these files ARCHIVE — DO NOT DELETE, like they were meant to be hidden but not erased. A trail, if you knew where to look.
I closed my laptop and pressed my palms to my eyes, willing my heart to slow.
If I could find this in an hour with an access code they barely monitored, then so could anyone else. Which meant one of two things: either they thought no one would dare look. Or they didn’t care.
I sat there, laptop closed, my mind reeling. I shouldn’t look anymore. But curiosity was a sickness. I should’ve stopped there and walked away. Pretended I hadn’t snooped, told Dante what I uncovered, and let him know what was happening.
Instead, I kept digging.
I opened my laptop and went back to the files labeled Financial Aid, and soon I was seeing that they weren’t just stipends. Some were larger — tens of thousands wired out under the guise of scholarships. But they weren’t going to new scholarships.
They were going to players — players who were already on full scholarships.
I scrolled further and froze.
Buried in the metadata was a link. Not another file, but an archived blog post. The kind of thing most people would miss, if they weren’t already looking for shadows.
Wrighton’s Hidden Ledgers: What Are They Covering Up? was a blog post written by Hadley Peterson.
My stomach dipped.
The blog post had been published early last year. The page was stripped bare, nothing left but a headline and an error message. But the internet never forgets, and the cached version is loaded in fragments.
Scholarships to students who didn’t exist. Payments that never hit real accounts. Academic funding was diverted into ‘anonymous donors’ for athletics.
Hadley had been asking the same question I was asking now: why were the numbers so clean when the records behind them were anything but?
The post ended with a note that made my throat go dry.
Update: Administration has asked me to remove this post pending review.
No follow-up. No second piece. Just silence. Her blog hadn’t been updated in months. That was what happened when you asked the wrong questions here.
I sat back hard in my chair, the edges of the laptop pressing into my palms.
Someone had already dug. Someone had already tried to shine a light. And someone had shut her down fast.
Now I knew two things. The money wasn’t just covering grades. It was buying silence. And Hadley Peterson had maybe already paid the price for asking the wrong questions.
I knew I should stop and bury what I’d found. Instead, I copied the link, tucked the fragments of Hadley’s post into my notes section of my laptop, and contemplated telling Dante right away, or marching straight into the one place guaranteed to make my stomach turn.
My phone buzzed, and I jumped, already nervous about someone realizing what I’d learned.
Dad: You missed the art show. Can we please talk?
Decision made, I packed my things quickly. Yes, we could, Dad. Just not about what you think it’s going to be about.
Dean Cole’s office smelled of polish and corruption.
I knew I was being dramatic, but I think I was justified, considering the circumstances.
Dark wood, deep carpet, shelves lined with books that were more for display than reading.
My father didn’t look up from the papers on his desk when I came in.
“You came,” he said, like it was the only thing that mattered.
I closed the door behind me, my pulse thudding. “What is this?” I asked, tossing my phone on his desk, open to the blog post.
That got his attention. His eyes flicked over the page, then up to me, cool and unimpressed. “Where did you get this?”
“Don’t play dumb. It was buried in the academic files. Scholarships that don’t exist, money that disappears into ‘future projects,’ students who never got a cent. And this—” I jabbed the headline with my finger — “a blog post written by Hadley Peterson. Why did it get buried?”
His mouth thinned. “You shouldn’t be digging where you don’t belong, Savannah.”
“I do belong,” I snapped. “I’m your liaison. I tutor students. I’ve spent the last hour up to my neck in their grades and schedules, and now I see it’s not just tutoring — it’s protecting an entire system of lies. How far does it go, Dad? Did you know about all of this?”
He leaned back in his chair, folding his hands like this was just another negotiation. “You don’t understand the pressures a university faces. Donors expect results. The NCAA expects compliance. Sometimes you have to move pieces on the board to protect the whole.”
“You’re talking to me about chess?” I snatched my phone from his desk. “This is against the law!”
“Keep your voice down,” he scolded me. “This is not illegal, it is simple governance of an academic institution.”
“Governance?” I knew my mouth was hanging open. “By silencing students? By burying this blog? By paying for projects with money meant for education?”
His eyes sharpened. “You’re talking about things you don’t fully comprehend. And if you’re smart, which I know you are, Savannah, you’ll know when to stop.”
I swallowed hard, but anger kept me upright. “You told me to keep an eye on Dante. To report if anything was unusual. Well, guess what, Dad? I found out something really freaking unusual, and it’s not about the Lions quarterback.”
For the first time, I saw it — an actual crack in his composure. A muscle ticked in his jaw.
“Savannah,” he said, voice lower now, quieter, deadlier. “I asked you to observe, not to interfere. If you push this, you’ll ruin more than just your reputation. You’ll ruin this program. You’ll ruin him.”
The weight of those last words hit like a blow.
Him. Dante.
I stared at my father, my throat dry, my phone feeling like a grenade in my shaky grip. “What does that mean?”
His silence was my answer.
I don’t know how I got out of his office.
One minute I was staring at my father, his stern look louder than any confession, and the next my boots were clicking too fast down the marble hallway. My phone clutched in my hand, sharp edges biting into my palm.
By the time I pushed through the heavy doors into the cold afternoon air, my chest felt like it was splitting.
He’d said it. You’ll ruin him.
Dante wasn’t just a name in the file. He wasn’t just QB10 on the stat sheet.
He belonged to them — valuable so long as he kept winning, disposable the second he slipped.
And me? I was just supposed to sit back and let it happen.
Pretend like I didn’t see the strings pulling at him, see that his defiance was already putting him in danger.
The wind cut through my coat, but I barely felt it. All I could hear was my boots on the cold stone, the roar of blood in my ears, and my own thoughts circling like vultures.
How deep did this go?
How long had Dad known?
And how much should I tell Dante?
I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes, furious when the sting of tears threatened.
But as I stumbled across the quad, the truth hit hard and mercilessly: I wasn’t just reeling from what I’d uncovered. I was terrified of what it meant for the one person who was unknowingly tangled in all of this — and who I cared about far too much to let them destroy him.
I needed to warn him. Dustin and Noah, too. They needed to know. They thought it was grade altering. How did I tell them it was so much more?
I stopped outside the coffee shop. I had no idea what to do. Tell him everything, or sit with it until I know exactly what I have.
My phone burned like a hot coal in my hand, Dante’s number right there, one swipe away.
If I told him now, I risked setting off a fuse neither of us could put out. If I stayed silent, I was no better than his coach or my father.
The door to the coffee shop opened, and laughter spilled out, normal and easy, like the world wasn’t cracking under my feet.
I shoved my phone back into my bag, dragging in a shaky breath. One thing was clear: I couldn’t keep this to myself. Whether they liked it or not, I was about to become the kind of distraction neither of us could walk away from.
Because if the program didn’t bury him, the truth would, if and when it came out, and I would set it all alight before I let them blindside Dante Spence and everything he had worked for.