Hooped #4 (The Hooped Interracial Romance Series, Book #4)

HOOPED
#4

The
Hooped Series Book #4

BAD
BOY FRAT

By
Claire Adams

This
book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are
products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not
to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual
events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright
© 2015 Claire Adams

Click
Here to Read Hooped #1

Click
Here to Read Hooped #2

Get
Each of My Newly Released Books for 99 Cents
By
Clicking Here

Like
me on Facebook
:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Claire-Adams/547513332025338

Newsletter
:
–
Click
here to get an email as soon as the next book in the series is available.

Get your
free copy of my never released book when you sign up for the authors VIP
mailing list.

Click
here to get your free book

Chapter
One

After about half a block, I wasn’t able to keep
running; I slowed down to a walk, meandering in and out of the light cast by
the safety lamps along the sidewalk, thinking
about
how incredibly stupid I was. “I mean, everyone warned you he was a liar and a
manipulator,” I muttered to myself, kicking at a rock that had somehow found
its way onto the path. I pretended it was Devon’s head, and watched it skitter
and skid against the concrete, disappearing over the edge into the darkness.
“You should have known better. It shouldn’t have even been a surprise that he
would do something like that.” I shook my head at my own stupidity.

At first I wasn’t even sure of where I was going; I knew
that I absolutely had to get away from the frat house, put as much distance as
possible between Devon and myself. I couldn’t stand even the thought of seeing
him right then—it made my stomach turn flip-flops inside of me. I took another
few steps and my toe collided with another rock. I stepped back slightly and
kicked at it, sending it sailing off into the grass.

“But at the same time…maybe
I’m being
too hard on him.” I knew I probably looked like I’d lost
my mind—walking in the dark, talking to myself the way I was. If there were
even a single person on the walkways leading through campus within a few yards
of me, they’d probably veer off to avoid me. But somehow it didn’t seem right
to just think the thoughts; I needed to say them out loud. The noise in my own
brain was just too loud. “Obviously, he’s really passionate about basketball. I
mean, I’ve never seen anyone having a better time than Devon does when he’s on
the court.” I smiled to myself sadly. The two times I had seen Devon happiest
were when he was playing, and when he was with me—but then, I thought,
contradicting myself, I hadn’t exactly seen him in any meaningful way with
other people, or doing very many other things.

But Devon obviously loved playing basketball. Of
course he was going to do whatever it took to make sure he’d continue to be
able to play; he had probably applied to a bunch of colleges, and he’d need
decent test scores for any of them—he had needed a decent test score for the
college we both went to.
But god, what a
stupid fucking risk to take!
How had he really thought that he’d be able to
get away with it? But he had—until now. Someone had obviously thrown him under
the bus. Years after the fact, it wasn’t like anyone would be investigating
test scores from previous years. It wouldn’t make any sense. The kids who had
taken the test in that year had already gotten into the schools of their
choice.

If it was so long ago that it didn’t even make sense
to investigate it—until or unless someone had thrown Devon under the bus—then
could I really hold it against him? He had come clean to me about being a
player, about the fact that he had slept around with plenty of women. He had
been honest about wanting to change his ways for me. And as far as I could see,
he had. He wasn’t the immature, impulsive guy he had been; the guy who did
whatever he had to in order to get what he wanted from a girl, and then dropped
her. He actually cared about me.
But
maybe cheating, gaming the system, manipulating things is just his nature.
I shivered. What did it say about my prospects of a real relationship with him
for Devon to be that way? If he was just flat-out a cheater, then could I trust
him about anything at all? A person couldn’t change their very nature, could
they?

“Every time I think I’m
settled
and everything makes sense between me and Devon, something
else comes up,” I said out loud, kicking a stick out of my way on the sidewalk.
 
It wasn’t fair. Somehow it didn’t even
really seem to matter anymore that he’d been involved with a bunch of other
girls before me; he had come clean about that, and considering how hot he was
and what frat he belonged to, I would have had to have been the most naïve
person on the planet not to think that he’d sleep around with a bunch of
different women. I could forgive him that—after all, he didn’t have any STIs,
and he wasn’t about to cheat on me that I knew about. But something like what
he’d just told me; the fact that he had gambled with his future, that he
obviously didn’t even take the academic part of school that seriously—that
seemed so much more of a betrayal.

What
do we even really have in common, then?
We both liked
basketball, and we both liked some of the same music and food. But if Devon
didn’t take what he was learning in school seriously, that was a
major—huge—difference. I couldn’t imagine myself being with someone who didn’t
care about his actual education, who would cheat on something so important. He
could have gotten caught so much sooner. “What an idiot,” I grumbled to myself.
But then, who was the bigger idiot: the guy who gambled
with
his future? Or the girl who dated someone who would gamble on
his future in such a stupid way? I frowned as I realized I was getting closer
to the dorms; somehow I had meandered in that direction without even thinking
about it. I sighed and decided that it was as good a destination as any. After
all, I couldn’t just keep wandering around campus all night. I had to go
somewhere. I took the left fork on the walkway and started in the direction of
my building.

I walked up the stairs to the suite that I shared with
Kelly, dreading the possibility that she’d be up still watching
TV,
and that I’d have to talk to her about
Devon; the last thing I wanted was for her to tell me how right she’d been and
how stupid I’d been. I lucked out; Kelly either wasn’t in or had already gone
to bed—the room was
dark,
and the door to
her side of it showed no light. I got into my own room as quietly as
possible
and turned the light on as I closed
the door behind me.

For a moment, I wondered if I should text Devon; I
thought that he was probably worried about me. After all, I’d run out of his
room, and out of the frat house, probably about thirty to forty-five minutes
before, and wandered around ever since then. It was the middle of the night.
While there wasn’t a whole lot of crime in the area, nonetheless something
could have happened to me. But I was exhausted, too. I didn’t even want to
think about Devon, much less talk to him—and I was certain that if I even sent
him a message that indicated that I’d gotten back safely, he’d try and explain,
justify, get me to say that it was all right that he had cheated on his tests.
I decided that he’d just have to accept that no news was good news—if he
worried about my safety, then that was his issue, not mine. I was too tired.

I climbed into bed, turning off the lights. I didn’t
even bother to take off my clothes before slipping underneath the covers. I
would take a shower in the morning; I would think about this incredible mess of
bullshit then. I closed my eyes in the darkness and hoped against hope that
somehow I would wake up the next day and find out that it had all been a stupid
dream, and that Devon and I were in great shape, with nothing keeping us apart.

Chapter
Two

The next morning I woke up before my alarm even went
off, still feeling confused and troubled and irritable. My head throbbed, and
whenever I thought about
Devon,
I felt
worse and worse about the whole situation. I just wanted to have some peace and
quiet to think about things, but I knew that if any of my friends found out
about what was going on, they’d want to talk to me about it. I didn’t know how
many of my circle of friends knew about Devon—I hadn’t exactly told everyone
about it, even when we’d started dating—but Kelly knew about it, and I hadn’t
been keeping it entirely a secret that Devon and I were together, once he had
gotten me to come around. Even if they didn’t know the fact that I was with
Devon, they’d probably want to talk about the gossip just because it had to be
one of the hottest topics on campus.

So I got out of bed quickly, turning off my alarm, and
didn’t even bother with a shower; it might wake Kelly up, if she was still in
the suite, and I didn’t even want to talk to her about the situation. I changed
into clean clothes and tried to decide what to do with myself; I didn’t have a
class
for a good long while. I loaded the books
I would need for my classes later into my backpack and decided that the only
real option would be to go to the library. The dining hall I’d be sure to see
someone, even at the early hour, and the student union had the same issue. I
ducked out of my room as quietly as possible and hurried down the hallway to
the stairwell.

I emerged from the dorm building and started off
across campus to the Library. So early in the morning there weren’t very many
people around; I didn’t run much of a risk of running into anyone at all, but I
hurried nonetheless. I hadn’t slept very well, in spite of being utterly
exhausted when I climbed into my bed. I worried at my bottom lip as I made my
way along the walkway, glancing around to make sure no one was around. I felt
stupid being so
cautious, but
I didn’t
want to run into anyone. I had so many thoughts and feeling swirling around in
my head that all I wanted to do was have a quiet place away from everyone where
I could think things through. Everything was happening so fast; I had gone from
simply going out to a party with some friends to losing my virginity to having
and losing something like a boyfriend in a matter of a couple of weeks.

I made it into the library and showed them my ID card.
“Are there any private study rooms available?” I asked the bleary-eyed girl
behind the desk. She frowned, tapping a few keys on the keyboard as I glanced
around the main area of the Library; it was almost totally deserted, only a few
of the most studious kids at computers finishing up papers or looking up
references in the free databases.

“Yep, here you go; study room three, all yours. If
more people come in an hour from
now,
we’ll buzz you, but it’s so early practically no one is using any of the rooms
right now.” The girl behind the desk handed me the electronic key card to the
room and scanned my ID to reserve it for me. I wandered in the direction of the
private study rooms, trying to decide what to do with myself once I got there.
Well obviously you might as well study,
I thought wryly.

I scanned the card at the door to the tiny room and
closed the door behind me. I had used the study rooms before; the door locked
automatically, keeping everyone else out unless and until the room was needed
again. You could technically only reserve the room for an hour at a time, but
when the hour was up, the front desk would call on the linked phone inside the
room, and if there wasn’t anyone in line for a study room, you could stay there
another hour. And then another, with the right circumstances. In theory, I
could spend the entire morning until my first class of the day in the study
room. Almost no one used them in the mornings except for the most dedicated
students.