Chapter 2
Briar
“Dead?” Hadley asked, her brow furrowed in confusion. “How?”
I watched my brother storm out of the garage. My mom huffed about him being late and hurried after him, leaving me with five curious pains in the ass.
Wonderful.
Just what I needed today.
An inquisition.
And they’d done more than enough damage for one afternoon.
I’d had enough.
I’d need to peel my brother off the ceiling or drag his ass out of a holding cell. Either way, I didn’t need this shit, and Mason definitely didn’t need this shit.
“Look it up,” I snapped at them. “You like to dig, go find a shovel.” I pointed to the street. “Mason told you, and I’m telling you, we’re done here. Go away.”
“I—”
“Let’s go,” Dante said smoothly, talking over Hadley. He watched me as we all heard her snap her mouth shut. “You’re right,” he gave me that media smile he wore so well. Full of shit and zero substance. “Are you still employed at school?” he inquired politely.
“If you don’t leave in the next two minutes, I’m calling the cops.”
Dustin sniffed as he walked past me. “I liked it better when you were hiding behind your hair,” he said.
“Yeah?” I challenged him, my mouth turning up in a smirk. “I liked you better when you couldn’t remember my name.”
One by one, they filtered past me and down the short driveway to the street. Noah was the last one, and the other four never looked back to see if he was following them.
He wasn’t.
“What?” I asked him, feeling the fight leave me as he lurked behind. “I’ve nothing left to say.”
He nodded, his face showing he didn’t believe me. “You haven’t said much of anything at all.”
He wasn’t trying to be charming. His voice was smooth but flat. Unimpressed. I’d seen him be amiable. I’d watched it work on people from across the field. He wasn’t doing it now, and I wasn’t sure whether that was better or worse.
Whatever.
“And yet you’re still here.” I turned away from him; maintaining eye contact was unnerving. Out of habit, I reached for my hair to pull it forward, forgetting it was in a ponytail today.
“Answer me one thing,” he murmured, and I could feel the heat of him at my back.
“What?” My voice held a slight wobble, and I didn’t like it. I rolled my shoulders back.
“Do they know, at Wrighton, who you really are?”
If I told him, I risked my job. If I didn’t, the fuckers would probably dig anyway. It was a lose-lose for me.
“No.” I risked a look over my shoulder, and saw what looked like a quick glimpse of understanding. “You try and blackmail me, you’ll be sorry.”
When he laughed, I knew I must look as harmless as the threat I had just made.
“I have zero interest in blackmailing you.” His gaze moved down me once. Unhurried. “I have zero interest in you at all.”
I didn’t believe him, but I caught myself from saying it out loud.
“Your friends are waiting.” I sounded dry and croaky, and I hurriedly cleared my throat.
“We won’t tell them who you really are,” he assured me, ignoring my not-so-subtle hint to please leave me alone.
“Why?”
He didn’t blink as he held my gaze. “Figure you’re there for maybe the same reason we were here today. To get to the truth.”
“I know the truth,” I bit out with more bite than intended.
“Yeah, I reckon you do.” He stepped back, his presence no longer looming over me. “It’s a bitch trying to get to the bottom of it all alone though, isn’t it?”
He walked past me, his arm brushing mine, and I stepped back from the contact, the hairs on my arms standing up like I’d been electrocuted.
“You were a transfer,” I blurted as he reached the door. He looked at me over his shoulder. “If you get the chance, go back.” I shook my head. “Go anywhere. There are other teams.”
He was quiet for so long, I didn’t think he’d speak, and then he gave a slight nod. “Yeah, there are.”
I watched him walk away with long, confident strides, and my eyes fell on his ass once. I told myself I was checking that he had actually left, not that I was checking him out. I didn’t even believe myself. When I looked up, I met the quarterback’s stare.
Dante smirked, dipped his head, and he and Noah walked away. His friend had waited for him, and I was too caught up to notice.
I edged to the side of the garage and watched them get into a car, and after a few minutes, they drove away.
“Well, that was a shitshow.”
I almost jumped in the air and whirled around to face my friend, Diana.
“Where the hell did you come from?” I demanded.
Diana smiled and pointed to the small closet behind Mason’s weight bench.
I stared at her. “You were hiding in the closet?” I demanded incredulously. “Seriously?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, because seeing the PT of the Lions football team is exactly what the three players on the Lions football team needed to see today.”
I let out a sigh. “True, but still. The closet?” I looked outside to make sure they were gone. “Why the hell are you here anyway? Shouldn’t you be at work?”
“Shouldn’t you?” she taunted back.
“Yeah.” I rubbed my hands over my jeans. “I didn’t think anyone would notice I was gone,” I admitted. “Social media management is more . . . fluid than you think.”
“Yeah, well, they noticed.” Diana followed me into the house, dropping her ass onto my mom’s couch.
I shook my head. Here we were, two women who’d spent the last however many months embedding ourselves in the program that had destroyed our families — and today, the program had come to us.
Diana sniffed. “Mason didn’t handle it well.”
“Does Mason ever handle anything well?” I grumbled, sitting down across from her. “Especially about your cousin?”
“Do any of us?” she asked quietly. “We didn’t need this today, not on the anniversary of her death.”
“We did not.” I closed my eyes briefly. I swallowed hard. “I didn’t think there was anyone left to know about her?” I heard that back. “I’m sorry, that came out wrong.”
She shrugged and looked away. “It’s fine. Nothing about any of this ever came out right. But . . .” Her gaze drifted to the window, where Mom was coming back up the driveway, sans Mason. “Tell her I just arrived?”
“Of course,” I said quickly. “Telling my mother you were in the closet while she talked about Tiff as if she were the problem? No, that’s not the drama I need right now.”
“Thanks,” Diana whispered as Mom swept into the room.
“Well, your brother has stalked off to God knows where, all because—” Mom saw Diana. “Diana? Honey, I never knew you were coming home today.”
Diana got up from the seat and smiled, accepting the hug from my mom, who was looking at me over her shoulder with a ‘where did she come from?’ look in her eyes.
“Diana just came in through the kitchen,” I lied smoothly. “Mason?”
Mom pulled back and shook her head. “Mr. Hothead has stormed off, no doubt to do hothead things.”
“Why is Mason a hothead?” Diana asked with fake innocence.
Mom gave her a familiar look of weariness. “Because he takes after his father, and his father was a hothead too.”
“Is a hothead, Mom,” I corrected softly. “He’s still alive.”
“More’s the pity,” she mumbled under her breath.
“Super appropriate,” I grumbled.
Mom looked at Diana with an apologetic smile. “Shoot. I’m sorry—”
“It’s fine,” Diana waved her off. “We all get a little wound up.” She looked between us. “But what is he upset about?”
“There are some kids from Wrighton hanging around.” My mom looked at me expectantly, and I realized she didn’t know why they were here either.
In fact, she was the only one in the room who didn’t know. Awkward. I tried my best to keep it brief.
“I think there’s some trouble in the football team’s ranks. One of them is dating a wannabe journalist who thinks Mason is a story. They seem to have found evidence of Tiff’s . . . episode.”
My mom looked at me in horror, no longer caring that Diana was in the room. “The bullshit she made up and got Mason kicked out for?”
Diana’s head went down, but mine didn’t.
“We’ve told you a million times, Tiffany didn’t make it up, Mom.
She never named Mason. No one named Mason.
Those evil bastards pinned it on him because he knew Tiff.
She was attacked and couldn’t name anyone.
They knew who it was, but they pinned it on Mason! ”
“It sounds more and more far-fetched every time you say it,” Mom muttered darkly as she sank onto the couch. She glanced at Diana. “She never told you?”
Diana had been asked the question a trillion times, so she just shook her head.
“They threw my boy out like garbage,” Mom muttered. “They ruined his whole career.”
I bit my tongue to keep from saying anything.
From saying that Mason hadn’t helped himself by going as quietly as he did.
That if Mason hadn’t had a fistfight the night before with the head coach’s son, he wouldn’t have been the one they picked on.
If Mason hadn’t broken the guy’s nose, they might not have broken his heart by taking his scholarship away.
Although there were other circumstances at the time that meant he wasn’t putting up a fight.
I exchanged a look with Diana, who gave a subtle shake of her head, telling me to let it go.
“Will you go find him?” My mom asked me with a sigh.
“Sure.”
I got to my feet, and Diana stood as well. She saw my look and turned her head away.
“He’ll be at a bar,” she mumbled.
Wasn’t that the truth? “Let’s go.”
My car was parked further along the street, and we headed there quietly. It’s where I’d been going when the others caught up with me earlier.
Diana slid into the passenger seat as I started the car. “She’ll never believe something happened to Tiffany,” she said bitterly.
We’d had this conversation many times over the last three years.
“I think she does, she’s just more protective of Mason because . . .”
“Because he was accused of something he never did,” Diana said with resentment. “If only he’d made a fuss,” she muttered. “He knew she was telling the truth better than anyone. He knew she’d break if she was bullshitting.”
“She wasn’t.” I leaned over and grabbed my friend’s hand.
“Your cousin was a lot of things, not all of them good.” I held her stare.
“But she would never lie about this, Diana. Isn’t this why we’re both at Wrighton?
You in the actual fucking pit of hell, and me skirting the edges?
We’ll find out which one of those bastards hurt her, and we’ll get him dealt with. Isn’t that the plan?”
She looked down at my hand and nodded. “Are we crazy?”
“Undoubtedly.”
She smiled. “I mean, about this, are we crazy to think we can do this?”
I thought about it. I shook my head. “No. And if we ever doubted it before, those doubts were gone today.”
“Because they turned up?”
I nodded. “They think they have a story. We know they have a story.” We shared a look. “We steer them away from Mason but right to where we want them to look. Agreed?”
Diana seemed conflicted, but when I lowered my head to look into her eyes, she nodded.
“Tiffany deserves justice,” I told her. “No matter how we get it, she will get it. We owe her that.”
“And Mason?”
I looked out the car window as I pulled away from the curb. “My brother can handle his own shit. We’ll handle this.”
“And if it blows up in our faces?”
“Then we take every fucker in that football program with us. No mercy.”
“They’re just starting out in their careers,” Diana protested softly. “Dante, the QB, is actually a nice guy. If he’s right and Sutherland’s gunning for him, they can take him down with them.”
I’d forgotten she was his PT. But it didn’t matter.
“Yeah, well, my brother is a nice guy. Mostly. And for all her faults, so was Tiffany. If any of them go down with the program, well, they knew the risks.”
Diana sat back in her seat and closed her eyes. “I hate it when you go psycho-crazy.”
I grinned even though she couldn’t see me. “No, you don’t.”
Her slight smile was my answer.
They fucked my brother over for no reason when they let the rumors circulate he had something to do with Tiffany. They messed Tiffany up so badly that she killed herself.
I didn’t give a fuck who was decent in that building. They were all going to pay for the injustice. Even if they didn’t deserve it. I’d made my peace with that.
No mercy meant no mercy.
Wrighton U didn’t show mercy to those who needed it when they needed it.
And neither would I.