Chapter 33
Noah
Sutherland held my stare, and I didn’t back down.
“Talk me through it,” I said, leaning back. “Tell me what happens to them.”
He didn’t blink. “I told you.”
I shook my head. “Yeah, you said a lot, let’s break it down.” I needed to think, and I needed space to do it, but I wasn’t leaving the room until I had him nailed down.
“Who are you worried about?” he scoffed. “Your QB? The girl? Or yourself?”
I wanted to say all of the above, but that would show him I was panicking. I couldn’t afford to lose control of this.
“She resigns, you never breathe a word of who she is, or what she may have provided to get the job.” His expression remained calm. “I mean it, she resigns, nothing blows back on her. I want it in writing.”
“In writing?” he scoffed.
I leaned forward and tapped the picture of me. “You like insurance, so do I.” I gave him a tight smile, without warmth. “I take my insurance in the form of words written on paper with a date and a nice signature.”
“No.”
“Fine.” I made to stand. “We’re done here. I’ll take my chances with social media and the NCAA.”
His jaw flexed. “You want a handwritten agreement for insurance for the girl?”
“For all of it.”
If looks could kill, I’d be incinerated. “What else?” he ground out.
“Mason Sterling.” He gave me a ‘what-the-fuck’ look, and I raised my eyebrows in reply. “There was a smear campaign, don’t give me bullshit there wasn’t. There is evidence to suggest that the athletic department blamed him for what happened to Tiffany. I want it rectified.”
He looked perplexed. “It was four years ago, no one remembers the kid. If he was ‘accused,’” he used air quotes, and I wanted to punch him on principle, “then he wasn’t accused by this department.”
“Bullshit. You sent him home with her.” He went to speak, and I spoke over him. “I didn’t know you had two daughters, but I do know you have a son, and the night before Tiffany’s attack, he and Mason got into it, and Mason broke his nose, am I right?”
Sutherland’s eyes narrowed as he considered me. “You seem to know a lot and also nothing at all.”
“I know that he punched your son, I know the next night a girl gets assaulted, and I know she went to someone she trusted. She was so distraught she couldn’t think straight.
She wanted to go home, Mason took her. While he’s gone there’s buzz that he did it.
He’s removed from playbooks. He’s removed from this team, any mention of him is erased. Why?”
Coach Sutherland didn’t speak for a long moment.
“That is some fucked-up conspiracy theory right there. Who the fuck came up with that? That’s the stuff of make-believe.
” He leaned forward. “Sterling was a good player with a temper, a bit like yourself. Volatile at times. My son’s like his old man, also a hothead at times.
He and Sterling got into it, and yes, I was pissed.
So when they said Mason took her home, I was pleased I didn’t have to see him for a few days. ”
He didn’t flinch, holding my eye the whole time.
“He got into an accident, which was a tragedy. He was good, he’d have gone far. But the rumors that he was involved with her alleged attack? They didn’t come from here. Or you’ve not been listening to a goddamn word I’ve said.”
“I have. I listened very carefully, and something doesn’t add up.”
“What?”
I didn’t know, and that was the problem.
“Why was his name removed? Why does it look like he was purposefully made to disappear?”
He threw his hands in the air. “I don’t know, and frankly, Matthews, I don’t give a damn about a kid from four years ago who’s butthurt he can’t play anymore.
Is this why she’s here? To uncover a whodunnit?
” he asked skeptically. “Because that’s just fucking sad and a colossal waste of her time . . . and yours.”
I ground my teeth together. I was no longer thinking he may have had something to do with it. I was more convinced he had nothing to do with it, but I just didn’t have the ability to think he was innocent in this.
“Your football program is crooked,” I bit out harshly.
“So?”
I blinked. “What do you mean so?”
“Show me a football program anywhere that doesn’t bend the rules.” He waved me off. “Bullshit and nonsense. What else you got?”
“If you get caught doing what you’re doing, the whole department suffers.”
He snorted. “So?” He laid his hand on the desk, the epitome of calm. “Programs get fined, they move on. You think that in thirty years, I don’t know how to work with the governing authority? Please, boy, wake up.”
No. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go.
“You truly don’t care? About Tiffany? About Mason being blamed? The blackmail you use to keep players in line? Your players are looking at you as the instigator of all the things wrong and corrupt. Don’t you care about their respect?”
His eyelid twitched.
Got him.
I appealed to his one weakness: his ego.
“I felt for the girl. She was a flighty thing by all accounts; she followed Sterling around like a lapdog, and he didn’t treat her any differently than a fan.
I admired that about him. I knew they had a history; they came from the same town.
When she wanted to go home, she asked him, and he took her.
That week, he got in an accident. It’s a sad story, Matthews, but it doesn’t make me a villain. ”
“It doesn’t make you the good guy, either,” I snapped. “I want you to acknowledge he didn’t do anything. I want his name back in your books as a player who dropped out due to an injury. I want him not to be slandered with a rumor of assault.”
“And how the fuck do you propose I do that?”
I smiled widely. “Let Hadley have the story.”
“No.”
I nodded. “You made her take the post down about all your other shit, which you are guilty of, and she’s all in on this story. Give her Tiffany and Mason, give her the side you just told me, make it nicer, but you give her this . . . victory, and she’ll back off on the other things.”
“You think I’m stupid?”
“No. I think you’re really very clever. I think you know as well as I do that she isn’t going anywhere. You have a rock and a hard place with her, you’re the rock, move.”
He sniffed as he looked away. His fingers drummed against the desk. “Fine.”
I almost crowed with victory.
“But I see it before it gets printed.”
“Fine.” I felt like I was breathless. “It gets put in writing, too.” I tapped the photo again. “Insurance.”
“It seems you’re trying to blackmail me,” he mused. “Isn’t that a turn up for the books?”
“Your books aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on,” I muttered. “I want you to lay off Dante and Dustin,” I paused. “And Jason.”
His grin was predatory.
“Yeah, I think we both know who’s behind the pictures my friends received.
” I sat back. “I want them deleted. I want you to remember you’re a coach, once a damn good one.
You don’t need to blackmail your players into behaving.
They know this program is . . . different.
Let’s leave it as an unspoken agreement — you stop threatening players to dance to your tune, and they’ll stop looking for ways to bring this shit down on your head. ”
His lips pursed as he thought about it. “And what do I get?”
“You get your captains back on your side, and you get to focus on the next season where we’ll win the championship again.”
“Coach and player?”
“The way it’s supposed to be.”
We sat in silence while he digested it.
“And you can control them, can you?” he asked doubtfully. “Spence, Slater, their women? Your woman?”
I had no idea if I could or not. “I’ll do my best.” I held up my hand to stop him from interrupting me. “You don’t need to sign anything until I am sure that I can.”
His eyes gleamed. “I like that better than blind faith,” he said with a chuckle.
“I thought you would,” I reasoned.
“They won’t like this,” he told me almost conversationally. “They’ll think you turned against them.”
I nodded. I knew that. I knew it the moment I stayed in his office and started talking terms.
“I’m willing to make that sacrifice.”
He looked at me in approval, and I wanted to punch him so many times. I didn’t want his approval. I wanted nothing to do with him at all.
“You have this evening to work it out.”
I didn’t expect anything else. I made to stand.
“Social media stops now. The girl resigns. You get your boys in line. You get them to remember who the fuck they play for, and I’ll give you a story and an assurance that the Sterling girl can leave as quietly as she came in.”
I swallowed. What had I missed? Was that all? I didn’t know.
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” I reached for the door.
“And Matthews?”
I turned.
He pointed to the chair.
“That there, what you’ve just done, that’s what leaders do. You didn’t win, and you didn’t lose.” He gave me a nod. “Remember why you’re here. To play ball and get drafted. Everything else is a distraction.”
“A distraction?” I huffed out a laugh. “I call it morality. You should look it up — maybe shock us both, and try it sometime.”
I walked out of his office and kept walking until the evening air filled up my lungs. I held it together all the way to the dorm room. How the fuck did I tell them what had just been agreed?
They’d never accept it. I had to make them accept it.
For Briar.
For Mason.
Jesus, for Tiffany Preacher, who was still a victim in this. I don’t give a damn that he said it didn’t happen in his house, but it sure as hell happened somewhere.
I know from experience, suicide doesn’t stem from nothing.
I took a few deep breaths before I entered the building.
I had done this for them. That’s what mattered.
I was also doing it for Dante, Dustin, Savvy and Hadley. The fact that he mentioned siblings, I had to assume he knew about Dante’s self-medicating. I would not let him use that against Spence. This deal would protect Briar and give Mason some closure, but I needed to protect my friends too.
Even though I knew they would hate me for it.