The Deal (Off Campus #1)(58)

"Hannah. Look at me."

I can't tear my eyes off Rob, who hasn't made it out the door yet. The  group of friends he's with stop to talk to a few people, and he tosses a  panicky glance over his shoulder, paling when he realizes I'm still  staring at him.

"Hannah. Jesus. You're white as a sheet. What's wrong?"

I guess I'm pale, too. I guess I look like Rob. I guess we've both just seen a ghost.

The next thing I know, my head is wrenched to the side as Garrett's hands clutch my chin to force eye contact.

"What's going on? Who is that guy?" He's followed my gaze, and now he's watching Rob with visible mistrust.

"Nobody," I say weakly.

"Hannah."

"It's nobody, Garrett. Please." I turn my back to the door, effectively eliminating any temptation to look Rob's way.

Garrett pauses. Searches my face. Then he sucks in a breath. "Oh fuck. Is it … ?" His horrified question hangs between us.

"No," I say quickly. "It's not. I promise." My lungs burn from lack of  oxygen, so I force myself to take a deep breath. "He's just a guy."

"What guy? What's his name?"

"Rob." Nausea circles my belly like a school of sharks. "Rob Delaney."

Garrett's gaze moves past my shoulder, which tells me that Rob is still here. Damn it, why can't he just leave already?

"Who is he, Hannah?"

Hard as I try, I can no longer pretend that my whole world hasn't been knocked off kilter.

My face collapses and I whisper, "It's Aaron's best friend. He's one of the guys who testified against me after the-"

Garrett is already stalking away.





38

Garrett


MY BLOOD ROARS between my ears. I hear Hannah calling after me but I  can't stop moving. It's like I'm watching the world through a red mist.  I've gone on autopilot, turning into an asshole-seeking missile that  travels in a straight path toward Rob Delaney.





  

The bastard who helped Hannah's rapist get off without so much as a slap on the wrist.

"Delaney," I call out.

His shoulders tense. Several people glance our way, but there's only one  person I'm interested in at the moment. He turns around, dark eyes  momentarily flickering with panic when he notices me. He saw me talking  to Hannah. Probably figured out what she told me.

He says something to his friends and takes a hasty step away from the  group, and my jaw turns to stone as he warily approaches me.

"Who the hell are you?" he mutters.

"Hannah's boyfriend."

His expression conveys unmistakable fear, but he still tries to play it off cool. "Yeah? Well, what do you want?"

I draw a calming breath. It doesn't calm me down. At all. "I just wanted to meet the asshole who aided and abetted a rapist."

There's a long moment of silence. Then he scowls at me. "Fuck off. You don't know shit about me, man."

"I know everything about you," I correct, my whole body trembling with  barely-restrained fury. "I know you let your friend drug my girl. I know  you stood by while he took her upstairs and hurt her. I know you  committed perjury afterward to back him up. I know you're a piece of  shit without a conscience."

"Fuck off," he says again, but his bravado wavers. He looks stricken now.

"Really? Fuck off? That's all you have to say? I guess that makes  sense." I swallow the acid coating my throat. "You're a fucking coward  who couldn't defend an innocent girl. So why would you have the balls to  defend yourself?"

The bitter accusations trigger his anger. "Get out of my face, man. I  didn't come here tonight to get railed on by some dumb jock. Go back to  your slut girlfriend and-"

Oh hell no.

My fist snaps out.

After that, everything is a blur.

People are shouting. Someone grabs the back of my jacket, trying to yank  me off Delaney. My hand throbs. I taste blood in my mouth. It's like an  out-of-body experience that I can't even describe because I'm not  there. I'm lost in a haze of unchecked anger.

"Garrett."

Someone slams me into a wall, and I instinctively release a right hook. I  glimpse a flash of red, hear my name again, a sharp, emphatic  "Garrett"-and my vision clears in time to see the blood spurting from  the corner of Logan's mouth.

Oh shit.

"G." His voice is low and ominous, but there's no mistaking the worry swimming in his eyes. "G, you've gotta stop."

All the oxygen in my lungs shudders out in a rush. I glance around and  find a sea of faces staring at me, hear hushed voices and confused  whispers.

And then Coach appears, and I'm suddenly hit with the gravity of what I've just done.


TWO HOURS LATER, I stand in front of Hannah's door, and I barely have enough strength left to knock.

I can't remember the last time I reached this level of intense  exhaustion. Instead of a post-game celebration with my team tonight, I  sat in Coach's office for more than an hour and listened to him shout at  me for starting a fight on school property. Which, by the way, earned  me a one-game suspension. To be honest, I'm surprised the punishment  wasn't stiffer, but after Coach and a few other Briar officials got the  whole story out of me, they decided to go easy on me. Hannah had given  me permission to tell them about her history with Delaney, insisting  that she didn't want them to think I was some psycho who went around  attacking random hockey fans for no good reason, but I still feel like a  shit for sharing her trauma with my coach.

One-game suspension. Jesus. I deserve a helluva lot worse.

I wonder if my dad has heard about the suspension yet, but I know he  must have. I bet he has someone at Briar on his payroll to feed him  information about me. Luckily, he wasn't around when I left the arena,  so I was spared from dealing with his wrath tonight.

Logan was there, though, waiting for me outside, and I've never been  more ashamed in my life as I apologized to my best friend for hitting  him. But Hannah had also given me the okay to share the truth with  Logan, and after I told him who Rob was and why I went after him, Logan  was ready to go after Rob himself, and then he apologized to me for  pulling me off the bastard. That's when I realized how much I fucking  love the guy. He might be crushing on my girlfriend, but he's still the  best friend I've ever had. And hell, I can't even fault him for the  girlfriend-crushing part because why wouldn't he want to be with someone  as incredible as Hannah?

I'm nervous as hell when she opens the door to let me in, but she  surprises me by immediately throwing her arms around me. "Are you okay?"  she says urgently.





  

"I'm fine." It sounds like I'm speaking through a mouthful of gravel, so  I clear my throat before continuing. "I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry,  baby."

She tilts her head to look up at me, regret etched into her face. "You shouldn't have gone after him."

"I know." My throat closes up. "I couldn't stop myself. I kept picturing  that bastard sitting on the witness stand, calling you a whore and  saying you took drugs and seduced his friend. It made me sick." I weakly  shake my head. "No, it made me crazy."

She takes my hand and leads me to her room, closing the door behind her  before joining me on the edge of the bed. She reaches for my hand again,  and gasps when she sees the state of my knuckles. They're cracked and  caked with blood, and even though I washed my hands thoroughly before  coming here, the little cuts have opened up and are now dribbling with  blood.

"How much trouble are you in?" she asks.

"Not as much as I deserve. One-game suspension, which shouldn't hurt the  team too bad. Our record is solid enough that we can afford a loss if  it comes down to that. And the cops weren't called because Delaney  refused to press charges. The Buffalo coach tried to get him to change  his mind, but he told everyone that he provoked me."

Her eyebrows shoot up. "He did?"

"Yeah." I let out a breath. "Too much of a hassle dealing with the  police, I guess. He probably just wanted to go back to whatever hole he  crawled out of and pretend it never happened. Just like how he pretended  that his best friend didn't hurt you." Bile bubbles in my throat. "How  the fuck is that fair, Hannah? Why aren't you angrier? Why aren't you  furious that your rapist is walking around free? And his slimy friends  are the ones who helped him get off."

She sighs. "It's not fair. And I am angry. But … well, life isn't always  fair, babe. I mean, look at your father-he's every much a criminal as  Aaron is, and he's not in jail either. If anything, he's still revered  by every hockey fan in this country."

"Yeah, because nobody knows what he did to me and my mom."

"And you think if they knew, they'd stop idolizing him? Some of them  might, but I guarantee you that a lot of them won't care, because he's a  star athlete and he won lots of games, so that makes him a hero." She  shakes her head sadly. "Do you realize how many abusers are walking  around unpunished? How many rape charges are dropped because of  ‘insufficient' evidence, or how many date rapists get away with what  they've done because the victim is too scared to tell anyone? So yeah,  it's not fair, but it's also not worth agonizing over."