Chapter 29
Briar
I took a long shower, fumed internally at the fuckery of it all, and then blow-dried my hair with a vengeance.
I called my brother back.
He didn’t answer.
I called my mom.
Yes, I was that sibling. She told me he had gone out early this morning. She then had a five-minute debate with herself about whether he had gone out or had just come home, then went out.
Mason didn’t live at home. Technically. He lived in space above the garage. Next to home. He made it very clear that he saw a distinction. I made it very clear that I wasn’t bursting any more of the fragile bubbles that were my brother’s life.
But he lived at home.
He paid no rent, little toward food, and Mom covered the house’s utilities in her bills. Which included the power to the garage.
I, on the other hand, lived alone. Because I was an independent woman who had a job. Mason had a job, but he spent his rent money on alcohol instead of taking responsibility.
Okay, that was really bitchy.
As I got dressed for my morning, I doubted my independent status as my gaze kept flicking to the bed, and I remembered what had happened between the sheets within the last twelve hours.
I pulled my hair back into a ponytail and dressed in jeans and a light sweater, and, armed with determination, I went to find Hadley.
I didn’t know which apartment was hers, but I knew it was in the next building, and if the layout was the same as mine, then I could figure it out.
One wrong knock later, I found her on the top floor. She opened the door, looking as frustrated as I felt.
She didn’t even seem surprised to see me; she just mumbled something about ‘liking cats’ before turning around and leaving me to enter her apartment.
I closed the door behind me and saw how small her apartment was compared to mine. I also saw the white, fluffy, pissed-off kitty that glared at me from a cage. I wasn’t surprised to see Savannah on the couch, or that she also looked pissed.
“How’s your morning?” I asked as I dropped down beside her.
The window was wide open, and Savannah had a tissue pressed against her nose.
“I have allergies.”
Ah, that explained the white ball of indignation in the cage.
“I take it you found out this morning?” Savannah asked me quietly.
“I did.” I watched the other girl, who was pointedly ignoring both of us, as she studied her phone. She stepped up to the couch, showed us the phone, and scrolled through the comments.
“Look.” Hadley pointed at the screen. “Look at all of those comments. Not everyone hates this. People are saying things.”
“I can say the sky is green, Hadley,” I snapped. “You need to be able to prove it before anyone really listens, let alone believes it.”
“If we contact these people, they might have proof.”
Savannah was already shaking her head. “Whatever they may have, if it isn’t documented, then it’s nothing. And I can bet the athletic department spent the weekend making sure all its paperwork was pristine.”
Hadley glanced at her. “You think?”
She nodded. “It’s what I would do. You think these people commenting aren’t getting their profiles checked, looked into, to see who they are, when they were here, if they were here?”
“That’s an operation,” Hadley conceded.
It was clear Hadley hadn’t thought of that. Which is why she was completely the wrong person for this task, and neither of them, including my stupid brother, should have done it without my input. The burn of betrayal felt deeper than I expected. This was my job, not theirs.
“I’m sure they have an army of people already prepped,” Savannah added bitterly. “They pass every routine investigation; they’ll pass this one, too. If it happens.”
I looked at Hadley. “Why did you pull the trigger so early?” I didn’t accuse. I didn’t reprimand. I was sure she’d heard enough of that already this morning. “Why did no one come to me?”
“We had so much information. Mason had more, and he insisted you weren’t to be involved before he helped us.” She looked between us. “And just because you, Dante, Savvy, and Dustin know now, it doesn’t change that we can still post.” She looked at me in earnest. “Will he really fuck it up for us?”
“My brother can’t always be relied on to be . . . rational.”
“But . . . You and Noah—”
“Nothing. He’s a guy I slept with,” I cut her off sharply. “Who also told Mason he had no interest in me. Mason doesn’t do well with liars.”
Because my brother was overprotective. The fact that I was more than a foot shorter than him apparently made me vulnerable. He’d never had to protect me in his life. I had enough sass, brains, and attitude to do that all by myself.
But nope, in his caveman brain, small woman must mean damsel.
Asshole.
“Have you spoken to him?” Savvy asked gently.
“No, he won’t answer because he’s a child.”
Savvy nudged me with her arm. “I meant Noah.”
Oh. I looked down at my hands. “No. I don’t have anything to say to him.” I remembered what else had happened to Noah that morning. “Did he talk to you about his brother?”
“Huh?”
“His brother got suspended for fighting,” I snorted. “Hotheads must run in the family.”
“Tate was fighting?” Savannah asked, looking at me with confusion. “I’ve seen one picture of Tate, and I’m pretty sure I weigh more than he does.” She turned more in her seat. “Are you sure he said he was fighting?”
“Got suspended for breaking the guy’s arm. I heard him on the phone — he was going to ask Dustin for air miles to fly down there.”
“Like that’s gonna happen,” Hadley muttered darkly. “Slater’s all butthurt he got left out. Noah has a better shot at asking Coach Sutherland for help than Dust right now.”
“The guys are writing him off?” I asked them in surprise. “I mean, I know I’m angry, but that’s because he went behind my back and involved my brother, and the fact it is literally my job to post on social media, but it’s not an end-of-friendship thing.”
“Bro code.” Hadley and Savannah said together. “No ‘I’ in ‘teamwork’ and all that,” Hadley elaborated.
“Only an immature numbnut thinks like that.”
“Good, you can tell that to Dante.” Savannah smiled widely at me.
I looked between the two of them. What was happening here? Did they think I was one of them? I got to my feet. “I just came by to see if you’d heard from Noah or my brother,” I told Hadley.
“I’ve never heard from your brother. If you want, you can give him my number.”
Wow. This girl just didn’t quit.
“I’ll pass on the request.” I headed to the door. “My advice, keep a low profile, and also, stop this. It won’t work, and the only people who pay will be you.”
Savannah gave me a small wave, and Hadley went back to her phone. I left her apartment and headed over to Diana’s.
Sometimes, rarely, my brother went to one of his hook-ups to ‘work out’ his frustrations. I was hoping this was one of those times. Even if it was an hour-long drive for his booty call.
I found TJ Hembry instead.
I wanted to ask Diana if she was serious, but instead, I had to bullshit my way into a reason why I was there.
“This is awkward,” TJ looked between me and the wall. “Um, this . . . ugh. This just kind of happened.”
I had zero shits to give, but I also had to pretend to be the Briar he was used to. So I kept my head down and thought frantically about why the fuck I would be here on a Sunday morning.
“Briar?” Diana came out of the bathroom, putting in an earring, and looked like a startled rabbit in headlights.
“Hi, Diana. I think I pulled something in yoga,” I blurted. “I know you’re not, like, um, my trainer, obviously, but I wondered if you knew how to fix it?” I flexed my foot in my sneaker. “It hurts,” I added lamely.
“Those heels you had on last night wouldn’t have helped,” TJ said, settling onto her couch. Now that he knew I was ignoring the fact he was here, he’d relaxed.
“You saw my shoes?”
“Hard to miss,” he gave me a smile that looked too oily for my liking.
“Yeah, the heels may have been a bad idea,” I mumbled. Hard to miss? What else had been hard to miss? Had he noticed I disappeared, and so did the middle linebacker?
“Let me check,” Diana said, moving forward. “This way.”
She was in a two-bed apartment, and I followed her into the second bedroom, where she had a massage table set up. She closed the door.
“You can’t call first?” she snapped at me. “Sit up here.”
“What if I’d been Mason?” I hissed at her, looking over my shoulder as I got onto the bed. “Why is he back? I thought he was persona non grata?”
“We talked.” She didn’t make eye contact. “He made a lot of sense.”
“It’s not my business,” I relented. “I’m not slut-shaming you, you know I wouldn’t, but you need to stop whatever damage you and Mason have going on between you.”
“I know. I will.” She pretended to look at my foot. “It’s just, he’s so sexy and sooo good in be—”
“Nope. Not today.” I hopped off the table. “Today is a car crash, I can’t add what my brother’s like in bed into my head.”
“TJ told me there were more posts during the night. Do we know who it is?”
Two days ago, I would have told her. But TJ Hembry was sitting on her couch like he lived there. Dressed in chinos and a polo, and the two of them quite obviously together? Not a chance.
“No. I know nothing.” I rolled my eyes. “Same old story.” I edged toward the door. “Sorry I barged in. I’ll text first next time.”
“Okay.” She pulled my arm. “Will you tell Mason not to . . . You know?”
I stared at her, hardly believing my ears. “You want me to dump my brother for you?” I asked her in a low, furious whisper.
“Not dump, we were never official.”
I walked out.
I think I may have said goodbye to Coach Creepy on the couch. He took far too much interest in my heels last night. Had he been perving on me? Or did I just associate every coach in that building as a number one suspect?
I walked around campus, and three times I tried to contact my brother, the suddenly elusive one. In the end, I went for brunch at a restaurant just off campus, which I’d been to once before. It was popular with students’ families more than just the students.