Iced Out (Leighton U #1)(89)

“What does it matter to you who I’m sleeping with?”

“It matters when you’re literally fucking the guy we tried to take out earlier this season.” He shakes his head, tossing his arms out to the side. “I’m honestly surprised this didn’t blow up in your face sooner.”

“That’s fucking rich coming from the guy who set this whole mess into motion.”

“Me? You’re the one who gave me the fucking idea in the first place, Oakley! So don’t be coming after me just because you can’t—”

“It was my idea?” I wheel on his, eyes wide and temper blazing. “Please tell me when I’ve ever said ‘hey, let’s fuck with someone else’s drug test just because we don’t like them and see what happens?’”

“No, but you are the one who brought up high school and were all ‘too bad we can’t slip weed or booze in his locker.’”

I blink at him, trying to see how he made the logical leap from that singular comment to…to— “So the next natural thought you had was to drug him without him knowing?”

He frowns, confusion etched into his brow. “I didn’t drug him.”

Slamming my eyes closed, I pinch the bridge of my nose. All these non-answers are starting to give me a headache, and I’m fucking over it.

“If you didn’t drug him, then how the fuck do you explain the positive test then?”

“Shhh,” he hisses, glaring at me as he crosses the room. “Look, just keep it down, all right? Holden and Theo might be all the way downstairs, but Cam’s room is right next door, and the last thing we need is him hearing—”

He’s actually worried about that right now?

“Oh, fuck off, Braxton. Just say what you need to say, because this entire fucking situation can’t possibly get any worse.”

He gives me a dubious look before shaking his head. “Well, it started when Holden—”

“Jesus Christ, you pulled Holden into this too?”

Braxton glares at me, a clear sign to shut the fuck up, before continuing. “Holden found out about the testing from one of his buddies on Blackmore’s football team after a bunch of those guys failed theirs. I’d overheard him talking about when Leighton was planning to test us, and I figured…what better way to get de Haas out than that? So since I knew you had some leftover pills, I—”

Oh my God.

I drop my head back and slam my eyes closed.

“Stop.”

He cuts his words off mid sentence, then asks, “Do you want this fucking story or not?”

I do. I really fucking do, but as it’s unraveling before me, I can’t stomach to hear much more. Because I know what he’s gonna say. It all makes sense now, all the pieces fitting together.

He knew I had leftover pills from my injury because I rarely used them as it was. So he took them and framed Quinn for using them. Probably banking on a suspension, or worse, since he wouldn’t have a medical exception filed with the NCAA.

Goddamnit.

“So how did you manage this if you didn’t drug him?”

The next sentence he says damn near knocks me off my feet.

“I just took them.”

My eyes snap back open. “What?”

He shrugs in one of those what can you do ways. “I wanted to slip them to him directly, but I couldn’t figure out a way to without him noticing, so I just took them. And when the time came, the label with our names was on the lids of the sample cups, so I just…swapped the lids.” He shrugs again. “Made the whole thing a lot easier than having to swap the samples the way I thought I’d have to. Playing with piss is—”

“You really don’t need to finish that sentence,” I tell him, wrinkling my nose in disgust.

Fuck me running.

I can’t unknow what happened now. And like Braxton alluded when this whole thing started, I don’t want to know it in the first place.

Because now…I have to figure out what to do with it.

My fingers rake though my hair before I lock my hands on the back of my head. “This is really fucking bad.”

He waves me off. “You really think de Haas is gonna do anything about it this close to the tournament? There’s no way.”

I blink at him, floored by the sheer audacity he has. “No, Brax. I don’t think he will. But I’m sure gonna.”

His eyes bug out of his head like in those old cartoons. “Why the fuck would you do that?”

Again, I’m stunned into damn near silence. Staring at him like…he’s a complete stranger all of a sudden. “You’re really asking that question right now?”

“You’re really gonna sell me out when I did this shit for you?”

“I never asked you to!” I shout, tossing my arms out in front of me. “There was no time I ever asked you to do something like this.”

“You didn’t have to! This is what friends do for each other, Oakley. Or did burying your dick inside de Haas make you forget we are friends? You and me, not you and him.”

Oh, but he’s wrong.

Braxton and I…we’re not friends. Maybe we were at one point a few years ago. Hell, maybe even at the beginning of the season when all this shit started. But that ship has long since sailed with everything happening right now.