Page 44 of Forever Defiant
“What if they need pulling?”Whoa, Hadley, why don’t you just tell him your plan like aScooby-Doovillain?
Dustin looked back at me sharply. Too sharply. “If there was something that needed to be pulled, let someone else handle it.”
“Like who?” I demanded, stepping closer, I’d caught the scent of a story now. “The program that buried those threads in the first place?”
Dustin’s jaw clenched.
We stood there in the dusty little room, the air hot and crowded despite the space between us. My hands tightened around the folder — the one I wasn’t supposed to see, the one he hadn’t yet demanded I hand over.
“Dustin,” I said quietly. “What do you know?”
His eyes snapped to mine. For a fraction of a second — barely there — something slipped. Recognition. Calculation. Whatever it was, he shut it down fast.
He took a step closer. Not aggressive, but deliberate all the same. Enough that the air shifted again, enough that I felt it in my chest.
“You don’t want to ask me that,” he said. His voice was calm, flat... final.
“Why not?”
His gaze dropped to the folder behind my back, lingered there, then lifted back to my face.
“Because I said you don’t want to ask me,” he said, “which means,don’t ask.”
I swallowed. “You know something.”
His mouth tightened. “I know enough to tell you this needs to end now.”
He reached past me, took the folder from my grip — not roughly, but not gently either. Like it was already his. “This? In here? Not smart, Peterson.”
“I—”
“Go home,” he said flatly.
“Dustin—”
His dark eyes caught mine. “I’m not asking, Peterson.”
He opened the door and held it, waiting. Not looking at me, making it clear that the conversation was over because he’d decided it was.
I turned back to the cabinet, shoved the drawer closed, and walked past him without a word. I didn’t look back, but I heard the door close, and I walked up the corridor quickly in case he decided to look into my bag.
I walked right into Mike, who was half finished with his protein shake, and he looked relieved to see me.
“Phew, thought I’d lost you,” he said with a smile. “Coach would have chewed my balls off if I hadn’t found you.” He flushed bright pink. “Um, chewed me out, not, um...”
“It’s okay, Mike,” I told him with a smile. “I curse a lot myself.”
He grinned. “You’re too pretty to swear,” he said, and his flush deepened.
He was just too innocent for this program to turn him into whatever it did to these players. “You’re very sweet to say so,” I told him, patting his hand.
Mike was now a bright shade of red, and in his attempt to change the subject, he blurted out a question I wish he hadn’t, because Coach Sutherland was walking toward us. “So, what were you doing down there?” He looked at the corridor I’d just walked up.
The head coach’s gaze narrowed on me like a laser, and I tried not to appear intimidated.
“Bathroom,” Dustin said, already moving past us.
“Yeah, bathroom,” I said. I looked back down the short hall and saw the door that led to the women’s bathrooms. “I needed the bathroom.” I turned around and almost stepped back as I saw how close Sutherland was to me. “I found one,” I said with bright, fake cheeriness. “He was kind enough to show me.”
