Page 187 of Forever Relentless

Just thanks for letting him know. And somehow that was the most unsettling result of today. He’d made the deal to protect me.

And now he was letting me go.

Chapter 35

Noah

The dorm was quiet as I left it the next morning.

I knew they hadn’t gone ahead to training. I’d been awake for hours. Staring at the ceiling, seeing nothing in the dark.

Over and over, my mind had one question. Had I done the right thing?

But it wasn’t the deal that kept me awake. It was the outcome of agreeing to it. She’d sent me a resignation text and gone to bed. I’d sent ‘thanks for letting me know’ and stared at the ceiling.

There had been no more social media posts. Hadley deleted both accounts. There were still posts, not from us, but like most things on social media, there’d be another scandal to come and attention would be diverted. For now, it was running with a life of its own, and I knew I couldn’t stop it, but also I knew I couldn’t add to it. I had to hope Sutherland saw it the same way I did.

There’d been a piece of paper on the countertop, a note from Dante. One word.

Agreed.

I didn’t need anything further. One word was all it took.

I bypassed the locker room and headed straight to Coach Sutherland’s office. I ignored Coach Holt’s question of why I was there so early.

I rapped my knuckles on the door to Sutherland’s office, and when he looked up, I went in and closed the door.

“Coach.” I sat down without being told to. The look on his face indicated he noticed and didn’t like it. My look said, too bad.

“Bright and early today, Matthews. You seem to have left your manners in your dorm room.”

“Mmhmm.” I pulled out a sheet of paper, placing it on the desk.

He picked it up and read my chicken-scrawl handwriting. This had taken me twice as long to write as it should have because I’d made it as legible as I could.

“Looks like a contract.”

“Thank fuck, it took me an hour to write it.” I handed him a pen.

“You want me to sign this?”

“We discussed it. That’s the agreement.” I gave him a hard look. “You changing the goalposts, Coach?”

His look told me he didn’t like the accusation. “I don’t recall agreeing to stop having one set of rules for others.”

I shrugged. “You benched us the other week because Dustin was hooking up with Hadley. You said it was because he was late. That was shit. We called you out for it.” I gave him a flat look. “Basically, stop being a cunt.”

His eyebrows were in his hairline. “You forget who yo—”

“Oh, I don’t,” I told him casually. “I know exactly who you are.”

I tapped the paper. “Sign. She resigned. The posts are down. Give me the hard copies of the photos, sign the paper, and we’ll never talk about this again.”

“I never agreed to give you the photos.”

“And I never assumed you were stupid. You know I want them.” I glanced at my watch. “You take any longer, the team’s going to ask where you are.”

He picked up the pen and pointed it at me. “You lose this attitude when I sign, and you walk out that door.”