Chapter 11
Briar
They both stood in my apartment like they’d been here before and expected to be there again.
Like it was . . . normal.
This was so far from normal that I didn’t even like thinking about it, never mind talking about it. But yet again, we were talking about Tiffany Preacher and how she was the catalyst that ruined my brother’s life.
I winced.
God, I was such a bitch sometimes.
Tiffany was not responsible for what happened to her. Mason was not responsible for what happened to her. The only people to blame were in this fucking school, living their best lives, while hers was over, and Mason was barely hanging on.
I rolled my shoulders to loosen the tension and found Noah watching me. His eyes were always on me, I noticed. I wished I hadn’t. Normally, when they looked that good and that fit, I wouldn’t have minded. But . . . he was a few years younger than I was. Still in college. And a footballer.
“How old are you?”
Whoa, where the hell did that come from?
He didn’t even blink. “Twenty-one.” He jerked his thumb at Dante. “Twenty.”
“Why didn’t you declare for the Draft?” I asked him.
It was a question I had wanted to ask all three of them.
Demand of all three of them really. Sure, the two younger ones might have been too risky for any team to take, but with the weight of winning the championship behind them, and all three of them being crucial to that win .
. . I reckoned they’d have been snapped up.
“Haven’t finished my education,” Noah said smoothly. “If I go pro, as a linebacker, I have what, eight to ten good years? That takes me to my early thirties, I have a whole lot of life ahead of me.”
I almost believed him.
“Bullshit.”
Even Diana turned to look at me in surprise. “Br—”
“You’ll be a millionaire. You don’t look like the type to waste it.” I had no background information to back that up, just a feeling. “You play well in those ‘eight to ten’ years, you’ll either be a commentator or a pundit. Especially the way you look.”
“And how do I look?” His mouth was curled up at the corner.
Hot.
“Smug.” I held his stare, knowing he probably saw through me. The pressure of her leg against mine told me Diana was definitely reading my mind. I needed to change the subject.
“Well . . .” He glanced at Dante, whose face was impressively blank, and Noah shrugged. “I can’t do much about that. This is the only face I got.”
“How did they get Mason to leave?” Dante asked, getting us back on track.
I switched my focus back to him. “They didn’t.” I saw both of their frowns. “Tiffany did. She wanted to leave. She wanted home. He took her. They just stopped him from going back.”
The two of them looked at each other, their confusion and surprise not hidden.
“I don’t . . .” Dante licked his lips. “I don’t understand.”
“Mason said she was a mess, she wouldn’t stop crying.” Diana’s voice took on that lifeless robotic tone she had when she was discussing things she didn’t like to discuss — which was basically anything related to Tiff.
“He was panicking.” I took over. “Mason is the best, but you put a hysterical woman in front of him and don’t tell him who to punch, he doesn’t cope well. He convinced her to go to a doctor, and she said she would if he took her home.”
Diana had picked up her wine and drained the glass. “You have to understand,” she said quietly. “Tiffany was prone to . . .”
“Dramatics.” I didn’t flinch from the looks the guys gave me.
“I know what you’re thinking. I’m a bitch.
I probably am. She and I never gelled. She was a pain in the ass to my brother the moment he put that helmet on.
But she was harmless. It was all . . . fluff.
” I let out a huge exhale and pushed myself to my feet.
“She was difficult,” Diana said quietly. “But difficult didn’t mean disposable.”
“Agreed.” I nodded emphatically. “She was over the top, eccentric in her own way, but she was harmless. It was an obsession, but it wasn’t a boil-your-bunny-in-the-pot obsession.
It was a follow-him-around-and-hope-he-sees-you obsession.
” I pulled my hair back. “From her behavior the night it happened, Mason knew she wasn’t lying.
The angrier he got, the more he wanted to kill whoever had done it to her, which only made her worse.
The only way to calm her down was to remove her from the grounds of this fucking campus. ”
Diana picked up my wine and took a sip. I leaned against the window and regarded the two men in front of me. “So he took her off campus. And then he never got to come back to campus.”
“But how?” Dante asked, looking between us both. “He’s been erased from this school. Any record of him is gone from what we can see.”
“Of course it is,” I told him, walking back to the couch. “The moment he left he gave them the opportunity to blame him.”
“That . . .” Noah frowned. “It just doesn’t work like that.”
“Why?” I challenged him. “Does your coach give you the impression he can’t wipe out your career before it even starts?”
They exchanged a look, and I knew they’d both experienced Sutherland at his worst. Or what they thought was his worst.
Dante held my stare, and I saw him tilt his head slightly to the side as he considered me. I could practically see the gears turning in his brain.
“He told them,” he said, understanding. “He did what any of us would do. He reported it to someone with authority, and in our world, that’s your coach. He told his head coach what had happened. Right?”
And there it was.
“He did.” I glanced at Diana, whose head was down, her focus on her hands. “He called and told his head coach. Sutherland asked him what he was doing, and he told him he was taking Tiffany home. His coach told him to bring her in,” I snorted. “Like she was a suspect.”
“She gave her statement,” Diana spoke quietly. “Mason wasn’t allowed in the room with her. It was Sutherland, another coach, and some campus cop.”
“She wrote her statement three times,” Noah’s voice was soft but firm. “You think they pressured her?”
My temper flared. “I know they did.”
He nodded. “Yeah, sounds all sorts of wrong.” His hand ran through his thick, dark hair. “And then?”
“They told Mason to take her home. Like she wanted. And he did.”
The silence was thick and heavy, all of us no doubt considering the shittiness of the situation.
“When did they blame Mason?” Dante asked quietly.
“When he wasn’t here to defend himself.” I met the quarterback’s cool blue eyes and saw he believed me. I didn’t expect to feel relief.
“You get the girl they can paint as ‘obsessed,’” Noah spoke.
“A girl they can accuse of making a wild claim for attention,” he didn’t flinch in his blunt synopsis.
“You get the player who finally ‘plays’ with her, or so they say, and then you have one of them cry attack, and the other never gets a chance to defend himself.”
“But Tiffany came back,” Dante reminded him. He looked over at us and then back at Matthews. “They let her come back.” He turned to us. “Right?”
I didn’t look at Diana. “Right.”
“Why?” Dante liked to keep in the pocket when he played. It was his linebacker who made outside runs and thought outside the play call, and his next sentence proved me right.
“What if they paid her off?” Noah’s voice held a hint of uncertainty, which disappeared the longer he held my stare. “They could have paid her off, told her to stay quiet, and then the fact that they pinned it on Mason, she wouldn’t know until she had taken the payout and—”
“Sealed her fate,” Dante murmured with understanding. “Both of their fates.”
The silence felt heavier. Diana was back to focusing on her hands. I felt the familiar anger rising in my chest.
“And Mason?” Dante asked.
“They ruined him.” I needed more wine. I took both of our glasses and headed to the fridge. My hand shook slightly as I refilled the glasses. I kept my back to them. I didn’t look at either of them as I handed Diana her glass.
“The timeline must have been very tight,” Noah eventually said, and I knew, I just knew, he would be the one to see the holes.
I took a gulp of wine, relishing the cool burn at the back of my throat as I swallowed.
Diana answered for me. “Mason stayed with her.”
Noah kept his attention on me as Diana spoke.
“Tiffany wouldn’t let anyone near her, or talk to anyone, except Mason.”
“So he was away from school.” Dante shoved his hands in his pockets. “And in that time, they did what they needed to do to point the blame at him?”
Diana made a sound of agreement. I was still holding the stare of the middle linebacker, both of us waiting to see who’d make the next move.
“He had no friends?” Noah asked lightly. “No one was missing him? No one reached out to him to tell him what was happening? What was being said about him?”
“You’ve met him.” My smile was as brittle as I felt. “Does he look like he’s the kind of guy who makes friends easily?”
“I was assuming it was because I had hold of your arm,” he countered. “I didn’t realize it was because he was naturally . . . unfriendly.”
“He isn’t.” I knew I was contradicting myself. “He’s just cautious. His focus was on playing, training for playing, and schoolwork. He had no time for anything else.”
“Sounds familiar.”
I saw Noah glance at Dante, who gave him a slight smile back. I considered the taller of the two once more. Anti-social? Yeah, I could see that.
Noah rubbed his forehead. “If you get told at practice one of the team’s out, have you ever questioned it? If it wasn’t Dust or me?” he asked the QB, who shook his head in answer. “Ugh.” Noah walked over to the window. “This is a fucking mess.”
“Yeah,” Diana agreed, raising her glass in mock salute.
“So he’s off campus,” Dante said, his hand rubbing his jaw. “She’s off campus, won’t talk, won’t see anyone . . . but she must have seen someone?”
“They called her.” Diana changed her position on the couch. “They asked her to keep it quiet, to come in, talk, said they had a lead.”
“She went alone?” Noah asked dubiously.