Page 17 of Under the Lights (The Big Boys of BRU #2)
Fifteen
Sierra
The beauty of a shared drive? You can make copies of it without anyone knowing about it. I had days to gather as many potential resources as possible.
Now it was just a matter of sifting through them.
The apartment was quiet and hollow, amplifying every tiny sound — the tick of the fridge and the soft hum of my laptop. I hadn’t unpacked even half of my boxes.
Filling up my water bottle, I settled in.
From the looks of it, this was going to be a long night. The sheer number of files was nearly overwhelming.
I knew discerning everything, filtering out potential duplicates, and identifying what could be used as evidence would be tedious work.
Not time-consuming at all.
I’d even called the local food bank where some of the donations from the semester-end charity were supposed to go. They’d never heard of the event — not a single donation had come their way.
It wasn’t long before my eyes were burning.
“Fuck all of you,” I mumbled under my breath. “Fuck all of you for forcing me to do this. I hope all of your pillows are warm, on both sides, every single night.”
I wasn’t even supposed to end up here. Now look where it got me.
With my jaw set so tightly that I feared I might crack a molar, my mind jumped right back to that defining, heartbreaking day.
The screen door slammed behind me, its smack echoing through the house like a gunshot. I didn’t mean to slam it so hard, but I wasn’t exactly in control of my hands at that moment.
Nor was I in control of my heart, which felt like it was going to burst out of my chest.
I rushed into the kitchen, clutching the acceptance letter to my chest as if it were the most precious thing in the world.
I fucking made it! They wanted me in their program. UCLA wanted me on their volleyball team. ME! I’d manifested this. Honestly, I would have sacrificed all my favorite things on an altar if it had gotten me in.
The kitchen was lit in amber, and the late afternoon sunlight bled through the blinds in long, lazy stripes. Dust motes hung suspended in the air, caught in the golden beams, like they didn’t want to land.
Restraining from jumping on the spot and squealing like a lunatic — again — I hastily scanned the space, meeting my parents’ puzzled gazes. I held out the embossed envelope with my dream school’s logo, waiting for their reaction.
“What’s this, honey?” My Mom sounded bemused, and my stomach sank as the sting of disappointment hit me.
For years, this logo had adorned my bedroom wall. I even had a sweatshirt with the logo emblazoned across the chest. I wore it so much that the colors had already faded.
Was it too much to expect that they’d remember this was my dream school? I pushed the pang of disappointment down, didn’t want it to taint this moment.
“It’s my acceptance letter!” I couldn’t stop my voice from going all high-pitched. Silence.
“My acceptance letter from UCLA!” I clarified, thinking maybe now they’d catch on, expecting excitement … or at least some kind of reaction.
“The volleyball program,” I added because somehow they weren’t connecting the dots. “The program I’ve been busting my ass for since middle school?”
My parents exchanged a glance — tight, uneasy. Maybe they didn’t understand?
“Mom, Dad! This is huge! I got into my dream school. They actually accepted me! Gosh, I can’t wait to start buying stuff for my dorm. It’s going to be so pretty! And the beach! I’ll actually get to go and see the ocean.” I rambled.
Excitement buzzed through my veins, albeit dampened by their lack of reaction.
“Sierra.” I stopped short when Mom finally spoke up. She wasn’t smiling. Why wasn’t she smiling?
“What?” My voice wavered with uncertainty as a knot formed in the pit of my stomach. “What is it?”
“We need to talk about your college fund.”
The grin etched on my face since opening the letter faltered. My eyes locked on my Dad, who was standing with his arms crossed against the counter, and then on my mom, who was fidgeting with her hands.
“What about my college fund?” An inexplicable sense of foreboding dread unfurled deep inside me.
“We had to dip into it. For a business loan. And the roof. And—”
My heart dropped, and my voice sounded distant, as though I were engulfed by a thick fog. “What do you mean, dip into it?”
“We thought we’d be able to replace it.” My father said defensively, brows furrowed. “We didn’t think you’d…”
“You didn’t think I’d what, Dad?” I choked out.
He sighed, scrubbing a hand down his face. “We didn’t think you’d get in there, honestly.”
Everything went cold. My body frozen to the spot, a numbness settling in my ribcage, spreading like a dark, unstoppable force, claiming every cell in my body.
“We didn’t think you’d get in.”
They didn’t think I’d make it. Didn’t think I was good enough to get recruited. Didn’t believe in the years I spent bruising my knees on hardwood courts, running drills until my legs gave out, chasing that perfect jump serve.
They saw my dream school as a fantasy. They didn’t know it was my plan. My way out. My shot at going pro.
My pulse pounded in my ears. The world should have stopped turning as the gravity of that statement finally sank in. They followed up with a flood of assurances.
It’s not that bad. There are other options. Community college, maybe defer a year.
Meanwhile, I could barely fucking breathe, holding on to my cool by a thread. “You didn’t even tell me? You let me apply, get my hopes up — all while knowing there was no money?”
Mom’s face scrunched up, tears brimming in her eyes. “Stop it, Sierra. We already feel bad enough.”
“You feel bad? What about me? I don’t understand why you didn’t just fucking tell me!” I threw my arms up in exasperation, wanted to cry, to scream, to rage.
“Language!” Dad cut in, his voice stern and authoritative.
“No! I want to know. I deserve to know.” My hands were trembling, my eyes burning.
Dad sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be, Sierra.”
I felt hollow, like my very insides had been scraped out.
“It just added up somehow, honey. I don’t know how it happened. We truly thought we’d be able to replace it before you’d ever need it.” Mom said weakly. “Your father was working so hard and—”
“Don’t try to make me feel guilty for this.”
Fury ignited inside of me, flames stoked by indignation.
“You chose not to disclose any of this, and now I have to deal with the fallout. If I’d known, I could’ve adjusted my expectations. But this…” I shook my head. “This is unfair.”
My future had been thrown away before it even had a chance to start.
They’d spent everything. And they’d let me walk blind into heartbreak.
It wasn’t just about school. It was about playing. Competing. Winning. UCLA had one of the best volleyball programs in the country, and I’d been dreaming of wearing that jersey since I first touched a ball.
Volleyball wasn’t just a sport to me. It was my escape, my identity, my damn ticket out.
The following weeks had been a terrifying, maddening blur. A scramble to fix something I hadn’t broken. The game was ending too soon, and there wasn’t enough time left on the clock.
Pounding energy drinks, watching deadlines fly by, and staying up till 2 A.M. writing scholarship essays.
Begging my teachers and coaches for letters of recommendation at the last minute and having to endure their faces filled with pity when they realized what was going on.
I didn’t sleep for three weeks, just chased every maybe like it owed me something. And then … salvation. Beautiful, gratifying salvation.
brU gave me a shot — saw my stats, my tapes, and threw me a lifeline. An athletic scholarship. Not because of my GPA or some touching essay.
Because I could play. Because volleyball still believed in me, even when everything else didn’t.
Relief that felt more like collapse than victory. Relief that left a sour taste, as my parents told our family and friends I’d chosen brU. I wasn’t trying to be a bitch or ungrateful.
I got lucky. But I shouldn’t have had to.
Shaking my head, I tried to rid my mind of this memory. Compartmentalize. Everyone left eventually. Or lied. Or let you fall. That was the first time I stopped expecting anyone to catch me.
And yet, I had let someone get the better of me again. But this time I was going to do something about it.
My gaze flicked to my bed, under which I’d stashed the box containing the original acceptance letter from UCLA — a reminder that trust must be earned.
The files I was going through seemed promising. The folder had been buried so deep that I was sure it must contain something substantial.
Why else would it have been buried?
Clicking through financial documents, transaction logs, and a payment trail to shell accounts, one by one, I quickly became frustrated. Everything was convoluted and crisscrossed, leading me from one folder to the next and back again, like a fucking spiderweb.
I took a shaky breath and reached for my color-coded highlighters. Red meant confirmed shady. Orange was suspicious. Green was circumstantial.
If anyone walked in, they’d just see a girl being obsessive. They wouldn’t see the wreck I was trying to control underneath it all.
Either whoever set up these folders had absolutely no idea what they were doing — because this was pure chaos — or it was intentional. A means to waste someone’s time.
All those loops and redirects … could they really be a coincidence? I’d learned a long time ago that paranoia wasn’t just some personality quirk; it was a survival skill. If something felt off, it usually was.
You didn’t last long in the world of fake smiles by assuming the best in people. You lasted by questioning everything, especially the things that looked harmless.
What if they were designed to mislead someone?