Chapter 54
Gage
Trying to wrap my head around what Caleb had just said, I fished my phone out of my bag The screen lit up with my uncle’s name. Normally I wouldn’t answer a call this close to practice–you don’t pick up unless it’s an actual emergency–but my uncle never called for small talk. If he was ringing, it meant something mattered. It meant answers.
“Uncle,” I said, swiping to accept.
Caleb’s eyes never left Oliver; he was still fixed on the rookie like a coiled spring, ready to snap. The sight of him doing it made me feel steadier, like I had backup even before I heard a word.
“Gage, my favorite nephew,” my uncle answered, keyboard clicks faint behind his voice. “I got the answers you wanted me to find.”
Relief hit me like a shot of adrenaline. My chest eased a little. Finally. I could actually start to piece together what had happened–why Bree’s life had been torn apart, who’d done it, and how to make that bastard
pay.
My gaze flicked to Oliver again. The kid was laughing, oblivious, like he was untouchable. If
Caleb was right and the truth had been hiding in plain sight, I was going to lose it when I
found out.
“Who was it?” I asked, clipped. My free hand balled into a fist before I could help it.
My uncle’s voice carried a half–laugh, part admiration for the cleverness of the jerk who’d done it. “The fucker was actually pretty smart about it,” he said. “Didn’t use his own computer. Made a fake account to cover his tracks. Tried to make it hard to trace.”
Of course he had. Of course the coward did it in a way to hide his prints.
“I traced the account,” my uncle went on, “and it was made from a library computer. Normally that’s like finding a needle in a haystack–public terminals, no personal IP to pin down.” I could hear the pride in his tone, and it worried me in a good way. He like ne hunt. “Lucky for you, one of my people recognized the school’s system. The library logs require a card scan to use the machines. I got into their backend.”
My breath started coming faster. The locker room noise dimmed to a hum around me. Everything else blurred; Oliver’s laughter, the clack of cleats–they faded into the background
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like white noise.
“Who was it?” I asked again, my patience gone thin as wire.
There was a little scoff over the line, an amused eyeroll I could hear even through the call. “I’ll put up with your tone and you can thank me later,” my uncle drawled. “The library card used to log into the system belonged to an Oliver Camden.”
My hands went numb with cold fury. For a heartbeat the world stopped; the bench, the
lockers, the whole room condensed into that name. Oliver Camden. The same smug face
across the room. The same kid my sister couldn’t seem to avoid. The same kid sitting there
like he’d done nothing wrong.
I closed my eyes for a second, tasting the metallic tang of rage at the back of my teeth. That soft chuckle on the phone turned to a flat, satisfied tone. The hunt had turned up his scent.
Now it was my turn.
My knuckles cracked as I clenched my fist harder, the sound sharp in the noisy locker room. My heart hammered, each beat a thunderclap that seemed to race through my ribs–horses on a track, all of them galloping. My vision blurred at the edges, hot and red, and all I could see was the kid who’d f****d up my girl.
“The name rings a bell,” my uncle said on the line, voice calm like always. “Can’t place it for
some reason.”
“Thanks, Uncle,” I spat, the words tasting like iron. “I’ll remember to mention your company in my first interview.”
He chuckled, too laid–back for someone dangling a looming verdict over someone’s head. “I know you will, Gage. If anything happens, you know we’ve got the best lawyers on hand. Good luck.”
He logged off, and the call cut out. The dead screen glared back at me in my palm, but it might as well have been a match igniting the whole locker room. My hand was shaking so badly I could feel the phone slipping; everything in me was vibrating–cold, hot, tight. Anger pooled and boiled under my skin: raw, pure, unadulterated.
This kid–Oliver Camden–had done more than embarrass Jenna. He’d wrecked Bree. He’d taken something sacred and private and shredded it in front of everyone. He’d laughed while stepping on her heart, then tossed it away like trash. That alone would have been unforgivable. But to hurt her–my girl–was a different kind of sacrilege.
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He was a dead man walking.
“He did it,” I ground out, feeling the phone crack slightly under the pressure of my grip. The plastic seemed brittle under my rage.
“You sure?” Caleb asked, the man at my shoulder suddenly a hard presence–stone–cold, ready. He was like iron next to me, steady, a twin in the way his temper sharpened. “Are you absolutely sure?”
“One hundred percent,” I said, and I meant it. I pitched the phone like a grenade into the nearest locker and slammed the door. The sound echoed, a punctuation mark that set every head in the room to swivel. “And he’s f*****g dead.”
“I’m with you,” Caleb said, low and immediate. Loyalty, simple and fierce.
“Who are we killing?” Kenneth asked with a casual grin, like he’d missed the memo and was filling in the blanks. He always had a warped sense of humor about these things.
“Camden,” I said, and watched him glance over his shoulder toward the kid who looked, at that moment, impossibly oblivious.
“Good,” Kenneth said, satisfied. “I hated his face anyway.”
Coach’s voice cut through then, loud and raw. “Ladies! Get a f*****g move on!” he barked, and the team started to stir, the pre–practice ritual snapping back into motion.
Oliver walked out with a couple of his friends, laughing, unaware that the air around him had changed–thickened, charged. He kept his head high, thinking nothing had happened, thinking no one knew the truth. He didn’t see the way a dozen eyes tracked his exit, or how hands
tightened, how shoulders squared.
But I knew.
And he was going to pay.
44
Emilia M
I’m so sorry about these short chapters! I know you guys deserve more, but my personal life has blown up and honestly, the drive to write hasn’t been there… I might not be able to update tomorrow, but you’ll get an update again Monday, I promise!
