Penalty: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (Alpha Second Chances Book 3) (9 page)

It’s super late at night anyway—probably just a few hours before the sun peeks out.

I have a one-track mind, one purpose—get to the car, then get out of here.

And don’t come back.

I’m still sort of in a daze as I get in the driver’s seat, my belongings all stuffed between the trunk and backseat.

I know exactly where I’m going—I have only one destination that came to mind.

Nothing else pierces my consciousness, even as I turn the key.

It seems my mind blanks except for the final program running—the one focused on getting to my destination.

I plug in the location on my GPS, so I don’t even have to consciously think about this interstate or the next.

Turn left here?
You got it. My robot brain can do that.

I don’t even turn on music; I don’t bother with the radio at all.

I am dimly aware of scene changes as I travel on, and it is only when I arrive at my final destination several hours later that another object, another thought finally pokes in.

Abe.

Despite my general numbness, my chest throbs a bit at the name, but I can’t quite put into words or a cohesive thought why.

I just know it aches when I think of him, and I can’t bring myself to do anything about it, can’t bother with doing anything but say goodbye silently, acknowledging the brief beautiful time we had.

Our worlds are too different; Abe has too much noise in his.

Where I am now is where I’m most comfortable.

I blank my mind again as the car shuts off, then finally push off of the wheel and move to exit the car.

Dimly, I’m aware I could be walking into danger—there could be squatters or god-knows-what-else lurking in the back or inside the structure or in some of the overgrown foliage, but I’m not afraid, and it has nothing to do with the fact that the sun has long risen and beautiful early daylight sits.

I survey the building and its surroundings before I move to unpack my car and take a deep breath.

A new start.

And I know exactly how to get my mind off of everything.

I have a lot of work to do. And I look forward to it.

M
addy didn’t come
to class today, which was my first sign that something is way off.

And now, after a few unanswered texts and calls, I know something’s wrong; she always answers my messages.

She doesn’t play it cool like Bethany sometimes used to, and even Bethany never waited more than a few hours to respond—she just always liked to pretend she was busy or had to make it clear she had a life outside of me. She didn’t want to appear too desperate.

Maddy doesn’t bother with that trick; she follows up as soon as she has the time. If she didn’t answer right away, I knew it was because she had just popped in a bathroom, or she was in the midst of a meeting with a professor, or she’d accidentally left her phone behind or something.

I give it a few hours because maybe, uncharacteristically, she forgot some assignment—a paper or something—and she’s reading or writing or studying like mad for it and can’t be interrupted.

I get it; I’ve had to do a rush paper before.

But for almost a whole day to pass without hearing from her—something has to be wrong and the sinking feeling in my stomach widens.

My mind flips through a few possibilities—there really aren’t many to consider.

I know she likes to go for drives when she needs a break—maybe something happened…

I violently shake off the thought of an accident. I refuse to think that way.

But where could she be?

I frantically call then text her again while trying to talk myself down.

Maybe she left campus to find some quiet corner and read and she lost track of time.

She could have turned her phone off and is completely unaware she’s been gone for hours and hours.

* * *

I
’m definitely worried now
that evening is approaching.

What if she’s in a ditch somewhere, stranded, and time is of the essence, and it totally becomes my fault if things get worse because I couldn’t bring myself to imagine anything bad happening?

She must have run into a problem somewhere, somehow, because other than simply losing her phone, she would have gotten in contact with me by now.

She didn’t say a word about needing a break or anything, so I know it’s not that—she’s not suddenly tired of hanging out with me and deliberately avoiding me.

I need to talk to her roommate—if anyone knows anything, she will.

Problem is, I know Maddy’s schedule, but I don’t know her roommate’s.

Maddy once told me her roommate’s usually gone for most of the day, unpredictably popping by the room throughout the day, returning for good at night, but I don’t really have a choice and mentally prepare myself to pop by a few times during the day in case I miss her this time around.

I’m a little nervous as I show up to the dorm room since I’m still hoping Maddy’s actually around and took a long-needed rest or something.

I’m hoping she opens the door, bleary-eyed and apologetic, mumbling something about having to take Benadryl and getting knocked out, but when the door swings open, it’s some pale girl with black hair and cold blue eyes.

The look on her face changes a bit when she sees me, but I can’t read it.

“Hey, ah… Judy, right? Have you heard from Maddy? She wasn’t at class today and…” God, I hate to say this part out loud. It’s like I actually have to acknowledge that something could really be wrong, and I still can’t imagine something happening to her; my heart can’t take it. “…she hasn’t been answering my calls or texts or anything. And I’m afraid something might have gone wrong.”

“Oh, boy. I actually feel bad now,” Judy says, briefly looking off to the side. “Um, I don’t now how to say this, but she dropped out—as in, she’s no longer a student here. It’ll be official soon, but she already packed up and took off. She actually left me a message to give you, knowing you’d stop by here. Verbal, not written, and it was basically just—don’t look for her. She’s not coming back. For anything. And I guess that includes you.” She shrugs. “Sorry about that, pretty boy. First time for everything, I guess.”

It takes me a few seconds to process her words.

What the hell is she talking about? Is she saying I got dumped?

Maddy wouldn’t do that.

Something major happened, and I’m pretty sure Bethany has something do with it.

That’s it—that’s what I need to do—talk to Bethany again.

I bet she’s the key.

I thank Judy emptily and take off, checking my phone again.

* * *

“
I
knew
you’d come crawling back,” Beth says with a smile as I close the distance between us once I catch sight of her leaving the cafeteria.

“Get off it, Beth. What did you do to Maddy? Her roommate said some shit about her dropping out.”

“Your girlfriend couldn’t hack it? Hm. That’s weird. She seemed the book-smart type. Not too bright otherwise, though.”

“Beth, this is serious. What did you say to her? How did you make her leave?”

“You know, it’s best she left before things got worse for her. She wasn’t exactly adjusting well or fitting in, you know? And all those things I heard about her… ” She fakes a shiver.

Then she moves closer to me.

“And now that she’s gone, maybe we can…”

I swat her hand away from my chest.

“Forget it, Beth. Not happening.”

“Suit yourself,” she says, her face tightening, her voice with a sudden edge.

* * *

O
nce Maddy’s
phone turns up as disconnected, my panic rises exponentially.

I have no clue where to start looking for her, and my emails are also still unanswered.

No updates on her Facebook page or anything.

Where the hell is she? Why did she leave?

Judy’s words come back to me and I shake them off.

There’s no way what her roommate said is true, is there? It just doesn’t make sense.

Maddy wouldn’t just leave me—not like that. Not with what we have.

I can’t bring myself to accept it.

I just know Beth is behind this somehow, but I don’t know what she could have said or done to finally scare Maddy away from me.

Did she make up something about my past?

I need answers, and I pester the P.I. again, unable to help myself.

Then, as I hop in my car, planning to check the Arboretum I took her too, and even the hotel we checked into our first time together, a conversation I had with Maddy on a drive comes back to me, and it finally occurs to me where she is with such certainty, a calm immediately settles over me.

I’ve found her.

It takes all my willpower not to go there immediately since I quickly realize I need to handle business like I said I would, first.

I don’t know what made Maddy run, but she feels unsafe here, and I don’t blame her one bit.

I promised her she didn’t have to worry about Beth, and I failed to deliver.

I need to take care of this problem for good—I can’t show up and plead my case to Maddy until I do.

* * *

E
ach day
that passes without seeing Maddy feels like a month, so by the time a week has gone by, I feel like I’ve aged almost a year.

I’m hoping the P.I. comes through, and I’ve also tapped other sources—I have plenty of dirt to uncover in a short period of time.

I finally get a break when another of my three missions succeeds, leaving just one more.

I work on cornering Judy.

When I finally catch her in her room, my smile is wide and bright as she pulls the door open.

She stares at me warily.

“May I come in?” I ask.

She shrugs and widens the door.

I step inside.

“You know, I found out some pretty interesting things about you,” I begin.

It’s almost imperceptible, but her eyes widen a bit.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, and I can see why you would… work pretty hard to keep it under wraps. Although the way you walk around, looking like that—people wouldn’t doubt it for a second if they heard about it.” I pause. “So where do you get your supply? And is it just human blood or…?”

She just stares at me.

“Anyway, the good news is that once it gets out, you’ll probably get to keep your dorm room all to yourself! Lucky.”

“What do you mean if it gets out?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that sort of thing to you. But you should probably answer a few questions for me anyway. How well do you know Bethany?”

She shrugs. “Not well at all.”

“Let me rephrase—have you and Bethany made any deals between you? And let me remind you, I haven’t told anyone what I’ve uncovered about your iron-heavy appetite, and I have no plans to. But I do have a best friend I tend to share things with, and I can’t control what he does with the info. He’s fascinated by… ”

“God, I can see why you two dated each other,” she says with an exasperated breath. “Okay, fine—Bethany sort of… convinced Madison to leave.”

“She ‘convinced’ her. How?”

“She… scared her a little.”

“What do you mean she scared her
a little
? It obviously had to be
a lot
—something huge—to make her take off and…” I shake my head. “How did she scare her?”

“Look, it’s no big deal. She just got a surprise haircut.”

Fuck.

I’m not a girl, but I have the strong sense a bad haircut or overzealous hairdresser trim can cause serious stress.

“What do you mean by a surprise haircut?”

“Okay, fine. They cut off all her hair!”

Fuuuuck.

Poor Maddy. I can’t even imagine.

“Who is ‘they?’ And you know that’s assault, right?”

“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” she says quickly. “I just gave them the key, that’s all—Beth’s friends or whatever. When I got back, Madison was gone. All that was left was this.”

She goes over to her desk and reaches into one of the small drawers.

She pulls out what looks like folded hair, then lets it fall down like a set of wallet pics—long, dark, and curly.

“There’s probably a lot more where this came from, but this was under my bed,” she says.

“So you kept it,” I say evenly, on the verge of saying so many other things.