Page 73 of Forever Relentless

He was right. I knew that, but still. “Well, she’ll be gone soon enough.”

I felt him watching me. Didn’t need to feel it, really — his player had stopped moving, and mine was racing up the field with the ball.

“Your stare is making me think you have something else you want to say to me, or have you just stopped playing?”

“Shit.” He paid attention to the game, and the silence grew once more.

Until he decided he hadn’t finished.

“If I were Dante, I’d be giving you a lecture right now.”

I straightened my spine a little. “I don’t need a lecture.”

“But he won’t give you a lecture because he’s still hung up on the whole misunderstanding you two had.”

“Misunderstanding?”

“Yeah, you know, you punched Savvy, he punched you, you both stopped talking. That misunderstanding. And he’s being all sensitive and shit.”

“We resolved that and moved on.” I paused the game and turned to look at Dustin. “Did he send you in here instead?”

Dustin made a face at me and picked his bag of chips up again. “No. If Dante had sent me in here, I’d have a whiteboard and props.”

I didn’t hide my snort of laughter, and Dustin grinned in return. “Can you see it? Me in glasses and—”

“A blazer,” I joked. “And a pointer so I could follow the diagram.”

Dustin was laughing now. He sprang to his feet, straightened his hoodie, and assumed a formal pose. “Now, Matthews . . .” He pitched his voice unnaturally high.

“That sounds nothing like him!”

“Shut up, I’m in character!” He cleared his throat. “Now, Matthews,” he deepened his voice to a gruff baritone. “I know you’re looking at the Sterling girl with intent to play the horizontal tango, but you need to remember this is not for the good of the team. The Sterling girl has her own agenda for being here, and you need to focus on yours. We need to work as a team. Only as a team will we succeed!”

I was laughing so hard my eyes were watering. “‘The horizontal tango?’ Fuck me, I haven’t heard that phrase since my grandfather died.”

Dustin grinned at me as he dropped back onto the sofa. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard it used. I don’t know where that shit came from!”

We laughed harder, and Dustin sobered quicker than I did. “You know, for the fact that I was mocking him, he would say that, or something like it, and . . . he might be right.”

I lost my smile. “I think her agenda is pretty much our agenda, no? Expose the corruption, make them accountable, clear Mason’s name?”

“I don’t—”

“I’m pretty sure that’s Hadley’s agenda. Savvy’s too.”

He scratched his beard. “Look, you’re right, but their agenda isn’t to clear Mason. Mason did nothing. No one except this program removed him. He isn’t on their radar, or ours, especially now that we know he did nothing. But Briar? He’s her whole focus.”

I thought about it. He was right. Mason had been dealt a shit hand and accepted it. No one remembered him because he’d let them forget him. Yet somehow that didn’t sit well with me.

“I asked her to help me with my social media stuff.”

Dustin looked surprised but waited for me to give him more information.

“I don’t have a presence or whatever the hell you want to call it. They could have thrown me out weeks ago and made up some bullshit excuse, just like they did with the guys we were fighting. If I’m more known, if I have a . . . a following, like you and Moore and Dante, I reckon it’s easier for me to stay viable.”

“Absolutely.” Dustin picked up his controller and moved the one beside me closer. When I picked it up and resumed the game, he continued. “Do you think it needed to be Briar that helped you with that?” he asked carefully.

“She’s the media girl — social media is her job title.”