Chapter 10
Noah
I had just closed my door when I got a text.
I read the message again. Would Diana assume we knew where she lived, or was this Briar? And in any case, how did either of them get my number?
Me: Who is this?
Unknown: Seriously? Just be here at 8 or don’t. We don’t care.
Jesus, touchy much? I didn’t put that. I wanted to, but I decided diplomacy was better.
Me: See you then
I went and rapped my knuckles against Dante’s door; his muffled ‘come in’ had me pushing the door open.
“You free at eight?” I asked him, holding up my phone.
He read the brief exchange. “I am now.”
His books were open in front of him. He saw my look.
“I need to take my mind off it all . . . And,” he said with a wry smile, “I don’t want to give them a reason to come after me. Another reason at this rate . . .”
“Agreed. Was going to do the same thing.” I headed to my room. “I’ll see you for dinner?”
“Yeah, we’ll go down together,” he shouted after me.
I didn’t study. I spent forty minutes writing half a paper and the rest of the time trying to find information on Diana, Mason Sterling, and anyone who’d know them.
I wasn’t very successful. I found one picture of Diana on social media, and it was a Wrighton U post. She was tagged, but her account was private. Even I wasn’t so bold as to request to follow.
I texted Tate for a bit, shared the premise of my paper with him, got the green light that I hadn’t misunderstood the assignment, and then I pretty much sat on my bed, back against the wall, and replayed the conversations with Mason, Briar, and Diana again and again on a loop.
When Dante yelled, “Dinner,” I realized I hadn’t even taken off my sneakers since I came back to the room.
There was no sign of Dustin, and the shared look between Dante and me said more than words needed to. Dustin was with Hadley, and it was unlikely that he’d be in the dining area.
“At least we don’t need to lie to him,” Dante muttered as he opened the door to the athletes’ cafeteria.
“Just lying by omission then.”
Dante frowned, but he never denied it. We barely spoke during our meal, then wordlessly gathered up our trays afterward and left the building.
“Your brother really found her?” he asked me on the way to Briar’s.
I gave a slight smile. “My brother’s a genius — scary smart.”
“Handy.” He looked up at the sky as we walked. “How much did you tell him?”
“Very little, it’s not for him to get mixed up with.”
He gave me an amused look. “Not so low on the smarts yourself, Noah.”
As we rounded the corner to the street where Briar lived, Dante glanced at me quizzically.
“We’re getting Dust? We won’t be able to avoid telling Hadley.”
“Nah, to both.”
I opened the door to Briar’s building and heard Dante’s low whistle behind me as we climbed the stairs.
“Right next door?” I could hear his grin. “She is going to be so pissed she missed that.”
I couldn’t help it; I laughed. “Yeah, that’s what I thought too.”
The door opened before Dante cleared the last step. Briar looked up at me, her eyes fierce and narrowed in irritation.
“You’re a pain in the ass.”
“Evening to you as well.” I brushed past her as I walked inside, seeing Diana already sitting on the couch, a glass of wine in her hand. “Hey,” I greeted.
“Hey,” she said back. She nodded to Dante, who gave a casual wave in return.
Briar closed the door with more force than necessary, in my opinion, but I didn’t comment.
She walked past both of us without offering us a seat and sat beside Diana.
She gave me a pointed glare of accusation. “You hijacked a treatment session?”
“I . . . what?” I glanced at Diana, who took a sip of her wine, her eyes dancing with amusement. “You didn’t tell her the whole story?”
“I—”
Dante blew out a breath. “Diana was clearly uncomfortable with Coach Sutherland. I needed a treatment, and Noah stayed. Diana doesn’t like a one-on-one.”
Briar looked at her friend. “You need a chaperone?”
Diana leaned forward and put her glass on the table. “In that building? Damn right I do.”
Briar rubbed her friend’s knee. “I’m sorry it’s so shitty.”
I caught Dante’s eye, and his eyebrows lifted slightly; he was as surprised as I was.
“So—”
“You don’t get to speak,” Briar snapped at me.
“Why am I getting all of your aggression?” I demanded.
“Because it’s all your fault!”
“Pretty sure Mason is the reason we’re all standing here,” I snapped back.
She gaped at me. “How . . . Why would you say that?” She was on her feet. “If anyone’s to blame here, and there is so much to blame here, it’s not my brother, and if you think—”
“Can we start again?” Dante interrupted smoothly. He looked between us. “There’s, um . . . tension here. I don’t think we need the extra strain in an already strained conversation.”
Briar and I held the glare between us for a few more moments, anger dancing in her eyes, before she dropped onto the couch beside Diana again and refused to look our way.
The smart move would’ve been to let it go.
Instead, my attention kept drifting back to Briar, like my brain hadn’t gotten the memo that she was off limits.
“Mason really didn’t do anything,” Diana said in the silence that followed.
“What happened to Tiffany . . .” she cleared her throat.
“Tiffany never accused anyone because she didn’t know who it was.
” Her voice was firm and calm. “We asked her — we all asked her — the police asked her, and there was no one she could name. They took samples from her and went to where she said it happened, but found nothing. At all. No footage, no movements on the cameras outside, nothing. All there was to see was Tiff going into the building, clearly very drunk, and there was no one else before, after, or during.”
I watched Briar, who refused to look at any of us. “So—”
“So how did they know something happened?” Diana asked drily.
“Because Tiffany was a lot of things, not all of them good, but she wouldn’t lie about this.
And even those of us who may have doubted her, well .
. .” She looked away, her gaze on the window instead.
“They were silenced when she ended her pain.”
Tiffany took her own life? I hadn’t even considered the possibility.
The room tilted half an inch. Not enough for anyone to see, but enough for the old memory to wake up. Vegas. A garage. Blood on split knuckles. I pushed down the memory before it could show.
The silence was heavy; the only sound in the room was our breathing and the slight rustling of Briar’s hand moving from the side of the couch to hold Diana’s hand.
“We’re sorry for your loss,” Dante said softly. “Can I ask questions?” Diana gave a slight nod. “She took her own life?”
Diana nodded.
“I’m sorry.” He took a deep inhale. “She didn’t know who it was, but she was sure it involved someone on the team?”
Diana nodded. “It was in the athletic department where it happened. In the locker room.”
My eyes widened as I shared a look with Dante. “There are no cameras in the locker room—”
“You think we don’t know that?” Briar was glaring at me again.
“Okay, I know this is really shitty for you.” I was done with the glaring. “But why is all of your aggression aimed at me? I haven’t done anything to you.”
“You forced your way into this!”
“Hey, we didn’t even know this was a thing, okay?
Some stupid senior asshole started on Dante for no reason, and Dante, I don’t know if you know of him, but he doesn’t quit when something’s bugging him.
The more we looked into it, the more we uncovered.
Do you think we want to know this? Do you think we aren’t standing here wishing we didn’t know any of this absolute shitshow that’s happening here? ”
“So you don’t care?” Briar asked flatly with a gleam of triumph in her eyes.
“Of course we fucking care!” I snarled at her. “But caring and wanting to know are two very different things!”
“Oh. My—”
“Do not do that.” My voice was flat. “You’re acting like a child. This is your brother and your . . .” I glanced at Diana “. . . whatever you two are. This is serious. We are trying to help you.”
“So now I’m not taking it seriously?”
“I’m not here to fight you,” I said. “But if you keep swinging at me, I’m going to fight back.”
“Is that your thing, big guy?” She leaned forward, anger riding her hard. “Swinging back? Telling people to sit and stay?”
I licked my top teeth before I lost my fucking temper, because she was pushing and she knew it, and I would not lose my temper. Not here. Not with her.
“What Noah is trying to say,” Dante stepped forward slightly, taking over effortlessly.
“Is that we, as human beings, wish this had never happened to anyone. And yes, selfishly, I think everyone would say they wish it had never happened at all. To anyone. But it did, and it sucks that it did. But then we’d be liars if we didn’t admit that maybe we wished we didn’t know about it.
” He ran a hand through his hair. “This kind of thing, it changes lives. It changed your lives. Is Wrighton U really where either of you want to be?” He didn’t wait for an answer.
“Do you think either of us, or Dustin, can play in that team, can sit in that locker room or in the film and look at our peers, our coaches, and not question every fucking thing that was ever said or is said to us?”
I’d been doing that for weeks and didn’t realize he’d been doing the same until now.
Dante looked at me and back at the two women. “We want to help you. We know what we’re risking.” His gaze landed on Briar’s. “Maybe the question isn’t what we’re doing, or looking into, but what we are risking by doing it.”
The look in Briar’s eye didn’t change when she turned to me, but when she turned back to Dante, she gave a slight nod.
“We know that,” she conceded. “We’re just . . . protective.”
“Defensive, more like,” I muttered under my breath. Dante heard me, and his elbow in my ribs hit harder than I liked.
My oof was loud enough that she caught it. Her glare narrowed on me. Diana reached for her wine, blocking her friend’s view of me, and I took the slight reprieve to glance at Dante, whose look told me he was as on edge as I was.
Diana sat back and exhaled loudly. “Tiffany was my cousin,” she explained. “Younger cousin, obviously.”
I didn’t think it was obvious at all, but I wisely said nothing.
“She was . . . a lot.” Diana exchanged a look with Briar, who nodded.
“Yeah, it wasn’t unusual for someone to describe her as . . . difficult.” Briar’s cheeks flushed when Diana gave her a pointed look. “Yeah, okay, I would be the one to say she was difficult. Because she was.”
Diana smiled slightly but sipped her wine.
“She was obsessed with Mason. I mean that sincerely, she was obsessed. She followed him everywhere. She had his school shirt, his actual school shirt; she took it off the washing line. Mason thought it was funny. My mom thought it was . . . tacky.”
“Did anything ever happen between them?” Dante asked, and I admired his diplomacy.
“Happen between them?” Briar asked in confusion.
“Did they hook up?” I asked bluntly.
Briar shook her head vigorously. “No. Never. He was never mean to her, but he was never interested in her like that. He knew she liked him — she was not shy about it — but he took most of what she said with a pinch of salt.” She rolled her eyes.
“Tiff kind of lived in her own headspace, she didn’t take his rejection as, well, rejection. ”
“He didn’t just say no?” I asked dubiously.
“No. Because Mason is nice,” Briar growled.
Unlike his sister. I kept my mouth shut. Barely.
Diana spoke. “When everything happened, Mason had been fighting with his teammates. There was a prick who had said too much about Tiffany and how she was obviously . . . easy. Mason overheard his plans to ‘score’ at a party, but didn’t like the way the guy spoke.
So Mason, being Mason . . . he hit him. Broke his nose. ” Diana rolled her eyes.
“As he should have,” Dante said with a grunt, and I nodded in agreement. “Who was the guy? Was he questioned?”
Briar rubbed her palms over her thighs. “He is Sutherland’s son.”
Dante’s lips twitched. “Ah.”
Sutherland’s son? There it was. Not proof, not yet, but a shape in the dark finally had edges.
“So after . . .” Diana was staring out the window. “After the attack happened, she went to Mason.”
“Because she knew he would keep her safe and she trusted him,” I said with understanding.
“Exactly.” Diana stared into her wineglass. “But all it did was make things worse.”
The room went quiet.
I looked at Briar then, really looked at her. She didn’t seem angry or defensive. She seemed terrified, and beneath that, furious. I understood those emotions better than I wanted to.
Sutherland’s son had been involved. Somehow. Mason had taken the blame, and Tiffany was dead.
There was no proof. Not yet. But it was enough for the anger in my chest to stop burning wild and start turning useful.
For the first time since I’d stepped into this mess, I stopped thinking about how to get out of it.
I started thinking about who needed to pay.