Page 123 of Forever Defiant
Before I got a chance to speak, Jett squeezed her hip. “Not so fast,” he cautioned her. “The records are damaged? Check online.” His gaze swept the room. “But you would have done that, and I’m guessing you found nothing.”
“He was a freshman,” Dustin said gruffly. “Wasn’t there long.”
Ava’s eyes widened. “That makes it harder,” she mumbled.
“What’s your article on?” Gray asked me.
“Pressure from football programs on young athletes,” I lied smoothly.
Three football players looked at me with varying levels of disbelief.
The supermodel shook her head. “Okay, this is getting nothing done.” She looked at us all. “Player, player, player.”She pointed to Dante, Dustin, and Noah. “Dean’s daughter,” she said, looking at Savannah and then me. “Reporter.” She considered us all. “This is the start of a bad joke. Dust.” She gave him a look of reproach. “You were almost a Devil. They’re not going to buy this unless you’re honest. And all of this—” she gestured to us all — “is the furthest thing from honest I’ve seen since you told Katie Zuckerman you were a virgin in junior year in high school. Now cut the shit and tell us why you’re here.”
“Who are you?” I asked.
She gave me a look, and I thought I had mastered resting bitch face, but this girl? Totally a whole new level of cold.
“This is Quinn,” Dustin said with a smile of fondness. “I’d have pulled that off with Zuckerman if you hadn’t ratted me out, Lawrence.”
Dustin turned to Dante. “It’s a risk.” His eyes flicked to Savannah. “I trust them.”
“You have bad judgment.” Dante’s cool gaze was on Jett as he spoke to Dustin.
Ash had been quiet, his fingers tapping on his thigh. “When you say it’s damaged, how is it damaged? Encrypted? Or a virus?”
“Redacted,” Dante answered.
“Where’s the original?” Ash asked.
“Deleted.”
Ash’s eyebrows rose. “One semester?” He glanced at Jett. “One semester playing, or one semester at Wrighton?”
“Both,” Noah told him. He turned to Dante. “They don’t look like the kind of guys you can mislead.” He looked at Gray. “Tried to outsmart his run before, didn’t work.”
Gray grinned. “You hit like a motherfucker, though.”
Savannah rubbed her temples. “We can’t tell them everything,” she said with a sigh, and I wondered why she was being so loud because now she just told them there was morethan we were telling them. I didn’t think that was the best move with these guys. “They’re Santos — this is their school. Literally, this is their school.” She shot a glare at Dante. “It’s their families. Their parents are on the school board. Ruling majority.”
“As I said,” Quinn said coolly, “stop the BS and tell us everything. Or leave.”
“So you can dig for yourself?” I asked her.
She pointed to Ash and Mia. “I have two computer wizards. Nothing stays buried on the internet. Trust me. Ash will find it.”
“This is getting weird,” Ava piped up. “And confrontational, which we don’t need. We’re all friends here.” She seemed to be oblivious to the indignant stares from the two quarterbacks in the room. “I don’t need details. Just tell me the name. If I remember him, I remember him. I don’t know why you’d need his stats, though.”
“Mason Sterling,” Dante told her.
Ava tapped her chin. “Sterling... Hmm.” She started to pace, and we simply watched her. “Sterling...” She frowned as she walked. “You said four years ago?”
Dante nodded.
“I’m thinking...” She stopped pacing, and it seemed like everyone else in the room held their breath.
“He was a defensive end. Six five? I think,” she said after a couple of minutes. She bit her lip as she concentrated. “I think... it was four-point-seven-eight for the forty.” She tilted her head back and stared at the roof. “Not a starter, but his high school stats were impressive. I remember... do I?”
She bit her lip again as she resumed her pacing. “Yes, I do. He was cute. My mom even said he was a great fit for the Blues, and he wasfit.” She was in a world of her own as she thought about it. “Sacks, he had over fourteen. Fourteen and a half? Fifteen? Somewhere in there. Every game he was in the backfield; we were excited for him to be a Lion. Um, hurries...low thirties? He got double-teamed every week; we reckoned that’s why Coach Sutherland kept him on the bench so much. It was a shitty team that year.” She flashed a smile at Dante. “We needed a good QB to lift us.”
