Chapter 9 #2
Diana looked like she was going to protest, and then her shoulders slumped. “I thought I was careful,” she said with a sigh.
“You knew her? Or Mason?”
Diana peeled off her gloves, her eyebrows raised as she looked at me. “Why can’t it be both?”
Fuck, wasn’t expecting that.
“I think you need to tell us more.”
Diana looked between both of us and gave a light huff of laughter. “I really don’t need to tell you anything,” she said with an arch of her brow. “In fact, I can tell you both to leave and mind your own business.”
“You can tell us nothing,” I agreed. “But then we all walk back into that building with guesses. And guesses get people hurt.”
“I am exactly who they think I am,” she corrected coolly. “I haven’t lied about my name, my age, or my credentials.” She gave me a smile as cold as Dante’s. “I was hired on the merit of my training and my work, nothing you say to them will change that.”
“If that’s the case, then why are you hiding?” Dante asked softly as he slipped his feet into his sneakers.
She gave him a flat stare. “I haven’t lied to them, but that doesn’t mean I want them to know more. It’s called a private life for a reason.”
“He finds out you’re associated with one of them, or both of them, you’re done here,” I reminded her just as flatly. “You’re here for a reason, and I don’t think it’s for the benefit of your résumé.”
Her face didn’t change, but her thumb twitched as if she stopped it from moving, and she saw me notice it.
“This just needs to be a quiet conversation,” Dante spoke softly, breaking the tension. “We aren’t going to tell him anything,” he gave a half-shrug, “you already know that.”
Diana bit her lip as she looked towards the closed door. “Not here, okay. I . . . just not here.”
“Where?”
“Off campus.” She saw our looks and rolled her eyes. “Come on, what am I going to do? Go for a beer with you? Be realistic — I’m older, I’m staff. I don’t associate with students in my spare time.”
“So your idea is to take us off campus, which is not the perfect place to accidentally run into you outside of here, and meet you in town, where it won’t look suspicious at all?”
Diana flushed. “Okay, that would look worse.”
Dante scratched his ear. “So . . .”
She looked at me, and I looked back. “I’ll talk to Briar,” she mumbled. “Just you two, though, okay. I don’t need the whole tag-team act you five have going for you.”
I frowned. “She told you already?”
She gave a slight shake of her head. “Just go. Ask your questions later.”
Dante held back, but then he nodded. “See you soon.”
I followed him out wordlessly, and he rolled his shoulder as we walked back to the locker room. Whether he was selling the act of having had treatment, or he was loosening his shoulder up, I wasn’t sure.
On the walk back to the dorm, he gave me a look. “Never would have put that together,” he admitted.
“Between Hadley’s ‘ticks’ and Briar’s defensiveness, I think I was more attuned to it than I would have been if I hadn’t dealt with either of them first, know what I mean?”
“You noticed Briar hides behind her hair,” Dante said, and now he was almost smiling, the bastard, even in the middle of everything that had happened. “That’s a very specific thing to have cataloged about a woman you told to sit and stay.”
“Drop it,” I told him, without heat.
He laughed out loud, and I pretended I couldn’t hear him, and when he nudged me with his elbow, I tried not to roll my eyes, which only made him laugh louder.
Dick.
We showered and changed in silence. That was the good thing about Dante: when he wasn’t being an ass, unlike Dust, he didn’t feel the need to fill the void with narrative.
We left the locker room together and headed to the dorm building. Dante’s head was lowered as we walked. “How do you think she’s involved?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, I just know she is.” I blew out a loud breath. “Man, everywhere we turn we uncover something else under the rock named Mason Sterling.”
Dante nodded. “The way things are going, at this rate, I’m ready just to sit on the steps of the NCAA and tell them to do their worst.”
“Really?” I tried to hide my look of surprise, but I didn’t succeed.
“No,” he said with a sigh of defeat. “Because there’s still a part of me that hopes we can avoid all of the fallout and declare and just get drafted and never, ever, think of here again.”
I nodded grimly. “Yeah, I know what you mean. When they show the games during the season, and the team comes on and says their college, do you think we can lie?”
He grinned at the foolishness of my question. It would be impossible not to say what college you came from, especially since being national championship winners would only put us more in the spotlight and give us higher Draft value.
“We can’t let him win. He could bench us all next season just because of who he is,” he reasoned, knowing what I was thinking.
“Need my Draft value to be the best it can be,” I told him with a grunt.
“Yeah, same.”
We walked the remainder of the way to the dorm in silence. I was selfishly relieved Dustin wasn’t in his room when we got in, and with not an ounce of guilt, I plucked one of his bags of candy from their hiding spot and shared them with Dante.
“He’s really shit at hiding things.” Dante was leaning against the counter, his duffle bag at his feet, munching on the candy with the same precision he threw the ball. I doubted he was tasting the chocolate.
“He is, but then again, he’s short,” I smirked. “Probably thinking the four inches I have on him doesn’t mean I can see into the cupboard better.”
Dante laughed, tossing the last handful of candy in his mouth. “Heightist.”
I frowned. “Is that a word?”
“Yep.”
“I don’t think it is.”
Dante shrugged, scooping his bag off the floor. “I know what it means, you know what it means, so . . . it’s a word.” He pushed his bedroom door open. “I’m going to do some schoolwork, or try to at least.”
Yeah, because in the middle of all this shit, we were still college juniors, and we needed to study and do all the things to keep us eligible.
And with that reminder, I went into my room to do the same.