Page 79 of Forever Defiant
Thrown like a grenade into my living room and left to detonate.
I paced. Then I stopped pacing because I was shaking too hard to walk. Dante Spence — golden-boy quarterback, king of the team — had barged into my apartment, taken one look at the lip-lock situation, and ripped Dustin away like I was some kind of threat.
He had implied I was getting closer to Dustin to use him to get closer to the story.
Usehim?
I wanted to strangle someone. Specifically, someone over six feet tall who played QB10 for the Alabama Lions.
I hadn’t started digging because ofDustin. I hadn’t kissed him because of the story. I kissed him because he infuriated me, challenged me, pulled truth out of me I didn’t want to say out loud — and because I wanted him.
Badly. Honestly. Inconveniently.
And Dante’s implication — that I was manipulating Dustin — hit harder than any other insult he could have flung at me. It made me feel dirty and wrong. It was the patio behind the bar all over again — the moment I had pulled back because mixing desire and an agenda felt wrong. I’d resolved that. And now Dante Spence was implying that’s exactly what I was doing.
I had stopped anything with Dustin then because it felt wrong to move forward when I wanted to pump him for information.
‘Pump’ is not the right word, Hadley.
This time, I wanted Dustin because Iwantedto have sex with him. Dante Spence did not get to judge me for that. He definitely did not get to insinuate I was using Dustin.
I sank onto the couch, touching my lips, still swollen from Dustin’s kiss. I could still taste him, and that only made the heat in my chest burn hotter.
Dante had it backward. I wasn’t using Dustin; if anything, Dustin was the distraction pullingmeaway from the story I should be focusing on. And that realization pissed me off even more.
I grabbed my notebook and snapped it open. Fine. If Dante wanted to make me the villain of this story, I’d earn it. I was going to follow this wherever it led, and I wasn’t going to feel dirty about it. And nothing — not professors, not the department, not Dustin’s stupid, perfect mouth — was going to scare me away from the truth.
For all I knew, they were playingme. Maybe they’d given me just enough to think I had something to throw me off the trail. I’d heard of institutions doing it before. Well, too late. I was already onto it. And now I was angry, which made me very, very dangerous.
I opened my laptop and reviewed everything I already possessed. I checked and double-checked my thoughts, my information, and what little I had learned. I spent hours reviewing everything.
I didn’t sleep.
I lay on the couch — the same one Dustin had practically ruined for me emotionally — staring at the ceiling, replaying the night like a film I didn’t remember auditioning for. Dustin’s mouth on mine. His hands on my waist. The heat, the pull, the way every ounce of common sense evaporated when he touched me.
Then Dante stormed in like a self-appointed morality police officer and dragged Dustin out of my apartment while implying I was the problem.
Using Dustin as an in. Not cool.
That line looped repeatedly until my blood pressure could have powered a small city. I wasn’t using Dustin. But apparently, everyone thought I was either a liability or a seductress with a notepad, and if those were my options?
Fine. Let them choose wrong. If they wanted to treat me like the threat in the room, I’d happily become one.
Screw them all.
By sunrise, I was upright, caffeinated, and still vibrating with indignation. Anger was good. Anger was clean. Anger cut through the noise. And right now? I needed the noise gone.
I’d dug out the Sterling file — the roster, the redacted student-paper draft, the internal disciplinary code numbers I’d scribbled at two a.m. — and laid everything out on my bed like a detective in a crime show whose life was spiraling off the rails. Except mine wasn’t spiraling. I was lining up the next shot.
Someone erased Mason Sterling from the system. Did that same person shut down the article to protect him? Or the girl? Or the university? Either way, it meant that this person had power.
I had made a list before; I made it again this morning. Find out who wrote the draft for the paper. Track down the academic staff from that year. Cross-reference every athletic withdrawal in the campus police records. Identify anyone who could identify the girl.
Find the girl.
That last one was the most important to me. That’s why I went to Savannah. Working backward might make things easier, but if I had to take the hard route, that was okay too. Because if I was going to tell this story, I had to tellherstory.
I circled the line. Twice.
