The Sound of Us

Chapter Thirty-Five. “Pompeii” by Bastille

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

“Pompeii” by Bastille

SKYE

I went straight to the gym after my shift at the radio station the next day with my heart lighter after reconnecting with Dante. I was still buzzing with the thrill of knowing there was something big behind the story Blake had shared with me. Isla had left that morning on a field trip to see a chemical spill in New York, but I’d sent her multiple messages and received a wide variety of emojis in response.

“Hey, Skye.” Ethan folded his lanky frame onto a nearby weight bench as I did my hammer curls. He was wearing a Havencrest Warriors T-shirt that hugged his muscular body like a glove. “I see you training here every day now. I hope that means you’re planning to give up journalism and come back to playing ball. You were a great player. I think the team made a mistake not giving you another chance.”

“Uh… thanks, Ethan.” I wasn’t sure what that was all about. I hadn’t seen him since I’d blown him off at the bar when Dante had made mincemeat of three guys without breaking a sweat.

“I could put a good word in for you for next season,” he said. “And I’m always here to help out if you need a practice buddy.”

I put my weights back on the rack. “Thanks.”

“Anything for a friend.” He flashed his panty-melting smile. “I just want you to know I’m not the same guy from when we first knew each other.”

“I believe you.” He seemed almost desperate for assurance, and I hadn’t seen anything that would make me think otherwise. “You seemed different when we met at the hot dog stand, and I appreciated you coming out to help that night at the bar.”

He let out a breath that almost seemed like relief. “That’s what I’m talking about. I’m a good guy. I was going through some stuff that year, but I got myself sorted out.”

“I’m glad to hear it, Ethan.” I picked up another set of weights, hoping that he’d take the hint that I wanted to focus on my workout.

“Maybe we could go out for a drink sometime,” he said. “You’ll see I really have changed.”

“I’m seeing someone.” My heart gave a happy little jump. “But there are two soccer players on the mats who I’m pretty sure would be interested in a drink with the great Ethan Williams.”

His gaze flicked to the stretching area and he smiled. “Thanks, Skye. And thanks for understanding. Friends?” He held out his fist and I bumped him.

“Of course. Friends.”

Ethan made his way over to chat up his admirers. I finished my workout and quickly changed. Dante was meeting me after his class, and we were going to pick up some burgers and head back to his place to join Noah and Bella for dinner.

I had just left the locker room when Michael Sunderland, the men’s head basketball coach, flagged me down. He’d been head coach of Havenhurst’s men’s basketball team for fifteen years and had five national titles under his belt. “Skye. I was waiting for you. Do you have a few minutes to chat in private?”

I’d never had a conversation with Michael. He was college basketball royalty. I couldn’t imagine what he wanted to chat about unless my plan to flush out the cover-up story had worked too well.

“Um… sure.” I sent a quick message to Dante to let him know I might be late, and then followed Michael down the hallway.

“We can talk in here.” Michael opened the door to one of the sports meeting rooms, where five men in dark suits sat around a large table.

“Am I in some kind of trouble?” I gave a wary laugh, standing half in and half out of the open door.

“No. Not at all.” Michael gestured to an empty seat. “We just want to talk about an amazing opportunity for you.”

I was getting a bad vibe about the meeting, mainly because of the number of people in suits and that fact that no one was smiling about the “amazing opportunity.”

“Is this going to take long?” I asked. “I was supposed to meet a friend after my workout and if I’m going to be late, I need to let him know.”

Michael shrugged. “We need about half an hour of your time.”

I sent a quick text to Dante to update him, and then turned on the app I used to record my lectures. Although it was illegal to record a conversation in Illinois without the consent of both parties, my gut was telling me to do it, even if the only person who heard it was me. By the time I was seated at the table, another suit had joined the meeting.

Michael introduced the people in the room: two lawyers plus representatives from the university president’s office, public relations team, and conduct board.

Smiles. Waves. “Nice to meet yous,”s and a casual, “Dev from legal has an NDA we need you to sign.”

Uh-uh. Nope . I’d learned in my journalism classes that we should be wary of signing NDAs. “I can give you a pinky promise,” I said, crossing my fingers behind my back, “but I’m not signing any legal documents without a lawyer.” I was pretty sure it wasn’t easy to juggle schedules to get so many suits around a table at once, so I moved to stand, calling their bluff.

The lawyers huddled. Nodded. Dev took back his NDA. I called it a win for Journalism Law 201.

“So, what is the amazing opportunity?” I decided to take charge since I was already tired of being in the dark.

“We’d like to offer you a guaranteed place on the women’s basketball team for next season,” Michael said. “We’ll send you to a training camp over the summer to get your skills back up to where they were when you first joined the Warriors, private coaching during the season, guaranteed playtime during games, and you’ll have our focused efforts to get you picked in the draft. This isn’t an offer without teeth.”

Whoa. I felt like the floor had dropped out from under me. Everything I had ever wanted handed to me on a silver platter. It was almost too good to be true.

“We have a contract prepared.” Dev slid another document across the table, along with a pen. “You can sign it now, but I do have to recommend you get independent legal advice.”

One of the suits glared at Dev and then shifted his gaze to Michael, making some kind of silent entreaty.

“We’ve never made this kind of offer before,” Michael said quickly. “But we’ve seen you training here every day and we don’t want to lose someone with your skills and that kind of dedication. I had to do a lot of convincing to get everyone to sign off. If I were you, I’d lock that down before someone changes their mind.”

There was a curious, almost desperate, vibe in the room that made my skin tingle. I studied all the people at the table, trying to figure out what was really going on. First the lawyer talking to Dante, then Ethan acting odd, and now Michael and his amazing opportunity…

Blake tells someone I’ve got the evidence to run a story and that person tells someone else and soon the people who are the most worried will crawl out of the woodwork…

It had gone exactly as I’d planned.

“What’s this really about?” I leaned back and folded my arms the way Isla did when she was bluffing. “There is no way you’re that desperate to have me back, considering I failed the tryout, I’ve got a wonky leg, and you’ve got hundreds of young aspiring basketball players out there just waiting for their shot.”

A few sideways glances. Shifting in seats. Someone drummed a thumb on the table.

“We understand you’ve been looking into rumors that may involve one of the players on the men’s basketball team,” Michael said. “We’re concerned that you may have been misled or that you may release unsubstantiated information that could damage his reputation or indeed the reputation of the team or even the university. We just want to make sure we’re all on the same page.”

My offer wasn’t an offer. It was a bribe. They didn’t need my skills. They needed my silence. If I signed the contract, I would be part of the team again and with that came an NDA that would prevent me from speaking up. The lawyers had just taken a gamble that I’d sign on the dotted line and the NDA Dev had given me earlier wouldn’t be necessary. They’d also taken a gamble by throwing an “amazing opportunity” at me to stop me from releasing “unsubstantiated information,” which suggested that the information they believed I had was most likely true. Otherwise, why we were all here? And who was this about? They assumed I already knew.

And I did. I could feel it in my gut.

No wonder Ethan was so desperate to be friends.

“If I accept your offer, what happens to Ethan?” I asked, taking a calculated risk. “Does he just get away with it? No repercussions?” I’d played a lot of poker with Mom and Jonah during my recovery, but no one had taught me more about bluffing than Isla.

“Who said anything about Ethan?” Dev asked.

“I was just talking to him in the gym. He wanted my assurance that we would still be friends.” It was a less-than-subtle attempt to suggest Ethan had tipped his hand, but Michael took the bait.

“Ethan’s a good guy who got in a bad situation and just made some poor choices,” Michael said. “He’s got a bright future ahead of him. He doesn’t deserve to lose a chance at a successful NBA career because of a fifteen-minute mistake two years ago.”

“Michael.” Dev shook his head, attempting to cut Michael off, but it was too late. I had my confirmation.

Fifteen minutes. Two years ago. Something was niggling at the back of my mind and it was becoming difficult to breathe.

“Ethan did the right thing and reported it to us right away,” Michael continued, seemingly oblivious to the consternation of Dev and his legal buddy whose sole function seemed to be writing everything down on his legal pad. “We had a long talk and he understood that kind of thing could never happen again. He made some promises, and he’s kept them—no drinking, no drugs, no dating, low profile—so I think on that front nothing else needs to be done.”

My brain was putting the pieces together and the picture that was forming was making my heart hurt. I tried to take a deep breath, but my lungs were seizing up and my vision was blurring and my ears were filled with white noise.

“Skye?” Michael’s voice seemed far away. “Are you okay?”

I dug my nails into my leg and the jolt of pain pulled me back into the room. “He raped someone,” I said bluntly. “How could you possibly think nothing else needs to be done?”

“No one said anything about rape,” Dev interjected, trying to shut down the runaway train. “There have been no allegations, no accusations, no charges, no witnesses, no proof…”

Marisa Staples likely had proof. She’d been working for Michael when this whole thing went down. I would have to find a way to convince her to talk.

“That’s right,” Michael said. “It was just a fumble in the da—” He cut himself off at the warning hiss from Dev.

“Well, I guess that’s it.” Michael pushed the document across the table as if I were all ready to jump on the “amazing opportunity” to play basketball for a university that had covered up a sexual assault. “Once you sign, we’ll need one more thing from you to make this official. You’ve stirred up some bad rumors with all your questions and we need Ethan going into the draft with a squeaky-clean image, and that includes him being in a stable, happy relationship. We thought you, being the daughter of an NBA player, would be excellent PR.”

“You want me to go out with Ethan?” I asked, incredulous. “The rapist?”

“Maybe let’s not use that word,” Michael said. “It’s got some bad connotations—”

“You don’t say.”

“It would just be for show,” the PR dude said, piping up for the first time. “We’d plant a few stories, spread some rumors, get a few pictures of the two of you together… that kind of thing. After the draft, you can go your separate ways. We’re just asking you to play your part.”

“If it’s a safety issue, let me assure you there is nothing for you to worry about,” Michael said. “He was young and he’d been drinking, and he thought he was with his girlfriend—”

“Michael.” Dev shook his head in warning, but Michael waved a dismissive hand. “I’m an up-front guy and it’s better if she knows the truth than the false information she was going to spread.” Turning back to me, he said, “It was a case of mistaken identity, and he’s had to live with the guilt for the last two years. He’s worked hard to get to where he is. We don’t want a little thing like this to derail what promises to be a very successful career.”

Dev’s legal buddy leaned over and whispered something in his ear but I wasn’t listening. I wasn’t breathing. I wasn’t moving. A case of mistaken identity. The final piece of the puzzle slipped into place.

“You’re not her.”

My ears rang. The room dimmed. Bile rose in my throat. I doubled over in my chair and tried not to throw up all over the floor.

“You’re not her.”

No. Isla wasn’t me. But we’d shared a room two years ago in the freshman dorm. I’d gone away for the weekend a few days after I’d turned Ethan down for the third time that month. He’d been angry. No one had ever turned him down before. I never imagined he’d break into our dorm room intending to sexually assault me and assault my beautiful Isla instead.

“I need to leave.” My eyes watered and I grabbed my phone and the contract off the table. “It’s a lot to think about and I need to get some legal advice.”

I needed more than legal advice. I needed all the advices. What was I going to say to Isla? How was I going to tell her without breaking her all over again? Did I go to the police? Did I tell my friends? Should I call my mom? Where should I go?

I ran out of the building, tears streaming down my face, until I hit something solid and warm. Strong arms wrapped around me, and I breathed in Dante’s familiar scent.

“I’m here, Skye.” He hugged me tight. “I came as fast as I could. Who do I need to kill?”