It wasn’t right to use Samantha.
She’d already made the decision to sacrifice herself. The hope was to champion her as the underdog, and people would like me for ‘saving’ her. Maybe it would work. Or maybe it wouldn’t, and it would backfire completely. But I knew it didn’t feel right. I didn’t want to use the woman I loved. People would either like me or they wouldn’t, it didn’t matter to me.
And the truth wasn’t that I saved Sam.
Still, we made the decision to come out with our story before the article, and we all went home. Logan, Taylor, and Nate came to the house with Sam and me. We stayed up till early morning, just drinking and sharing stories. I don’t know why. It seemed like we were kind of memorializing my life or something. If this didn’t work, I’d still live, but a part of my dream would be dead. Our lives would definitely change. I didn’t know how. No one did, but we all felt it.
I held Sam on my lap, drank whiskey with my brother, and laughed with my best friend. This was my family, and as they talked about how this was going to be Sam’s official ascent into the public eye, I was doing what I always did.
I planned ahead.
I thought ahead.
I calculated, and I tried—I really did—to imagine using my girlfriend as a crutch to explain why I’d done all the shitty things in my life. But every time I went down that path, the same decision came to me.
There was no fucking way.
I loved this woman.
Sam was livid with the world when I first saw her. She had a stone-cold exterior, but I saw the fire inside, and I was drawn to her even that first night at the gas station. She looked at me, dead in the eyes, and I felt her message. A solid fuck you. I’d wanted her then. I wanted to take her, bend her over, and stick myself so far in she’d never feel another guy. The primal part of me had just wanted to claim her as mine, and I usually never gave two shits about that stuff.
I liked sex. It was what it was. It was a pastime for me, but I answered to no girl.
That changed the second I saw Sam’s fuck you attitude, when she looked at me and never looked away. She challenged me without knowing it. I knew then that Logan would want her, but no way. This one was mine. I felt her inside of me. I didn’t like that part of it. No one got in there, only Logan. But she’d gotten in, and she continued to get in deeper over the next weeks. I couldn’t get her out.
I tried.
God, did I try.
I tried to ignore her.
I tried to intimidate her.
I tried to fuck her out of my mind.
I tried everything except bullying her—I couldn’t do that.
I was an asshole, still am one. Bullying was not beneath me. If someone came at me, or came at someone I loved, I did what I had to do. I fought people. I fucked other girls. I didn’t give a damned thought or care about who someone was. I hated adults. That was why Nate’s parents took him away. They didn’t want me rubbing off on him, and I’d begun to.
I was not a good guy, nor am I one now.
I am the bad guy. I’m the asshole.
Sam is the one who saved me.
The only part of me that was good was her. She curbed my anger. She taught me how to love. She made me want to be a better version of me, but I only went so far. Even now, I wanted to fuck people up. I wanted to hunt down Adam Quinn, and I wanted to beat the shit out of him until he was in the hospital. I didn’t give a shit how much damage I inflicted. I wanted it. I almost needed it sometimes.
And my brother, I’d condemned him. I’d made him what he was today. Like at dinner when he needed someone to take his anger out on? I did that. I put that hatred and darkness in him. Logan lived for the fight. I used it to extract my demons, but not him. I raised him in that world of hatred, loathing, and violence. He’s addicted to it. I could walk away. He can’t. That’ll always be a problem in his life, and it’s my fault.
I couldn’t let anything else be my fault.
As they talked about my speech for the press conference, I already knew. I wasn’t going to let anything fall on them. Not even Nate, who wanted me to talk about how he’d joined the fraternity and how Sebastian became our enemy for two years.
This was me, all me. And this was probably the last time I’d make a decision for the group without consulting them. I was their leader, at least for one more day. I might not be after this, but it didn’t matter.
My life.
My history.
My faults.
My problem to fix.
“Are you ready?” Coach Broozer clasped a hand on my shoulder.
The next afternoon we stood outside the room where we did interviews for the team sometimes, and it was filled with press. I realized it was probably my last interview in there too. I could hear the telltale sounds like I always did after a game, but this time the reporters didn’t know the reason for the conference. They didn’t have questions prepared for me. I was the one to prepare them.
“Okay.” Coach opened the door and eased back out. Lights and voices filled the hallway before he shut the door again. “They’re all here.” He looked at me. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
I nodded. I had no other choice.
Coach took a deep breath. The nerves were getting to him. He kept squinting—that’s what he did when he was agitated about something.
“I’m going to do everything possible to keep you on the team,” he said. “You might have to do some suspensions, but I’m still going to try.”
It wouldn’t matter. If that happened, no NFL team would touch me. This was the only card I had to play, if I even wanted to attempt to stay in the game. I knew the odds. They weren’t good. I was just hoping for hope right now. That was all.
“I’m ready.”
“Okay.”
Coach reached for the door, but I heard a slight hitch in his voice. That wasn’t normal. He never showed emotion, and hearing that now, I hung my head.
“Mason.” Broozer touched my shoulder, holding me back. “Are you sur—”
“I’m sure, Coach.”
“No, I meant, are you sure you don’t want Logan or your girlfriend here? I understand that you’re trying to spare them in some way, but if Taylor were going through something like this, I’d want to be there for her.”
“That’s your daughter. You’re being a good dad.”
“She’s family. They’re your family.”
Maybe. Maybe I should’ve told them when it was happening. They were at home, expecting me to come back after talking everything out with the coaches, and then we’d call a press conference later tonight. But when I left the house, I knew it wasn’t going down that way. I told the coaches and asked them right then and there to call the media. I wanted it done before Logan and Sam had any idea.
Coach was still waiting, ready to open the door, and I said again, “I’m ready.”
We stepped out, and the room grew quiet. The flashing lights remained constant. The press room was usually hot and stuffy, but not this time. A cool breeze swept through the room like someone had propped the door open, or maybe it was just me. Maybe this time I wasn’t hot and sweaty from a game.
It didn’t matter. None of that did.
I’d expected to be alone when I walked out here. I wasn’t. Both coaches sat beside me. They didn’t say anything. This was all me, but it meant something that they were there. It meant a lot, and I was man enough to wish that either of these guys had been my father. Maybe then I wouldn’t have been in this position. But that wasn’t right. Maybe I wouldn’t have had Sam if that was the case, and if there were a choice between her and anything else, I would always choose Sam.
She was the only direction that made sense to me.
“What’s this about, Coach?”
It was go time.
The reporters jostled to get their mics closer.
Coach pointed to me. “Mason asked you guys to be here. This is his show, and no matter what you hear, I ask you to remain respect
ful.” He glanced to me.
That was my cue.
I looked at the room, but I didn’t speak right away. This was the end of one part of my life. Emotions surged up in me, and I stomped them down. My problem. My mess to clean up.
“Mason?” It was the same reporter who asked the first question. He had a friendship with Coach, and as he’d softened his tone a bit, I had a hunch he already knew what this was about.
This reporter, he was being cautious right now, but he’d called me by my first name. He acted like we were friends. I didn’t even know the guy, and I looked over the rest of them. They were all the same. They’d been like this since I came to Cain U. They called me by my first name. They gave me friendly smiles, joked like we were all pals. Then they’d go back and write whatever kind of article suited their magazine. Some were scathing, some were reluctantly respectful, and yeah, sometimes they were nice articles.
Okay. Fine. They wanted to act like we were friends, then I was going to make them my friends right now. Or I was going to try.
I cleared my throat and leaned toward the mic on the table.
“Tomorrow, a magazine is going to print a story that says I was given special privileges because of my athletic ability and because of my father’s wealth.”
An interested buzz started to filter through the room. Any dull or glazed eyes sharpened now. Almost as one, everyone moved a little closer.
“I wanted to come out before the article appears and tell you what part of it isn’t true.” I paused. The one reporter’s frown deepened. “And I wanted to tell you what parts of it are true.”
Both my coaches turned to me.
Broozer hissed under his breath, “Mason!”
The mic caught it, and the room shifted once again. An underlying seriousness filled the air. This was a real story, and as I watched, one by one, they drew out their notepads.
“Mason.” That first reporter again. “What exactly will be in that article?”
“My father is James Kade,” I told him. “He owns and runs a multimillion dollar company, and he has a lot of off-shoot companies. I interned for him this summer. I was placed on a joint project with a guy named Adam Quinn, Steven Quinn‘s son. My father wanted me to get close to Adam to see if I could find out anything illegal his father was doing.”
I was about to confess to corporate espionage. This was one charge I’d be found guilty of, but I had no choice.
“I didn’t find anything, at first. And I didn’t get close to Adam. I don’t like the guy, never have, but I did go to his family’s cabin, and I found files on a computer there.”
“Were you invited in?”
“What?” I frowned at a different reporter. He had his pen ready and poised against his notepad.
He asked again, “Did you break in?”
“No. It was unlocked.”
“Did anyone mention the cabin to you?”
I wasn’t following his line of questioning. “Yeah.” I overheard it, but I did remember a time Adam brought it up in conversation with me.
“Did they maybe suggest spending time there at one point?”
Did they?
“Did they?” Broozer asked, giving me a meaningful look.
“Uh . . .” I rubbed my throat. “Yeah, I think Becky and Adam both suggested it at one point.” I couldn’t remember.
“So maybe you got confused? Maybe you went there and just wanted to check your email or something?”
He was giving me an alternate storyline. I could only sit there, dumbfounded. I didn’t even know this guy, and he was throwing me a line.
“Uh . . .” I dipped my head back to the microphone. “Maybe. I’d have to ask my lawyers about that.”
A smattering of laughter rippled through the room.
I kept going. I had to. “I found emails that showed he illegally paid off officials for permits. Steven Quinn was also paying one of my father’s employees to harass and threaten my girlfriend at the time. When this was taken to the police, Adam retaliated against me by showing a video to the police where I protected my girlfriend. The video was edited to make it look like I was assaulting a guy. I was picked up by the cops, but I wasn’t officially charged. They held me over the weekend, and during that time, Adam Quinn’s fiancée gave the full video to my girlfriend. It showed that the guy was about to hit her. She took it to the police, and I was released. No charges were brought against me.”
“That’s it? That’s what that article is going to say?”
My throat started to burn. “No. The magazine is going to say that the coaching staff was notified of this incident, and they should’ve done an investigation. They did not do that.”
“You were never charged.”
“What?” We all turned to the first reporter.
He lowered his notepad. “They can’t do an investigation if you were wrongfully picked up by your local police. It seems to me they did the right thing.”
I frowned. What? But . . .
The reporter asked, “Who do you think leaked the information for the article to this magazine?”
“The Quinns.”
“Why?”
“Because they blame me for Steven Quinn’s arrest, and my guess is they’re trying to distract attention from his own case.”
“What facts do you have for this claim against them?”
“Adam Quinn always wanted my girlfriend in high school. I told him to fu—screw off on more than a few occasions.”
A few reporters cracked grins.
“Anything else?” The same reporter looked like he was getting at something, like he already knew.
“The guy the Quinns paid to harass my girlfriend attacked my best friend, my brother, and me with fifteen guys.”
The buzz started to grow. People began getting out phones and texting.
“Any other run-ins?”
“He and ten of his friends attacked me and my girlfriend at an event in Roussou, California.” I paused. This guy did know. He was leading me there. I leaned down again into the microphone. “And Adam Quinn broke into my house here in Cain.”
All the heads snapped back up.
“Can you say that again?”
“Adam Quinn broke into my home two weeks ago. My girlfriend and I were the only ones home. The police came and caught him.”
“Did they arrest him?”
“No. I didn’t press charges.”
“Why not?”
“Because I knew he wouldn’t be honest about why he was really there if I did. After they left, he confessed that he wasn’t there to steal anything. He was looking for my computer because he wanted to load a virus onto it so he could monitor my email, and everything else I had on there.”
“Why did he want to do this?”
“He said he wanted to make my life hell.” I waited a beat. “His fiancée broke up with him after he tried to get me arrested for assault and battery. He blames me for his dad, and he blames me for his broken engagement.”
“You said there was bad blood between you two in high school? That was over your girlfriend?”
“Yes. He wanted her. She chose me.”
The second reporter, the one who’d led me toward a different storyline about how I got on the Quinns’ computer raised his hand. “Is there anything else you want to tell us today, Mason?”
I didn’t even have to ask myself. I said without hesitation, “I’m not a nice guy. I have a history of fighting and protecting people I love. I called you guys because I wanted to come clean about that, and I wanted to share my side before you read all about how I’m privileged and wealthy and another prick who got off easy.