Hooped #4 (The Hooped Interracial Romance Series, Book #4) (2 page)

As much as I had wanted quiet, as soon as the door was
shut behind me, and I had set my backpack down on the table, it suddenly seemed
almost too silent in the study room. I sat down heavily at the desk and looked
around at the walls; they were painted a pristine off-white that made me think
that they might have tried pure white before—and found that it drove people
nuts to be surrounded by plain white walls. A couple of posters with tips for
how to find things in the library were tacked up, along with the Wi-Fi
information. There was a small whiteboard along one wall, with a few dry-erase
markers in the tray below it. I got up and started pacing the small room,
feeling fidgety in the silence. I tried to pull up music on my phone, but the
tiny speakers didn’t do much to put a dent in the wall of quiet that threatened
to wrap itself around me like a scarf.

“So who do I believe, and what do I do?” I asked
myself. I thought I had settled the matter of whether I trusted Devon overall;
I had basically decided to give up on Kelly, because she had out-and-out lied
to me, where Devon had technically been honest to me the whole time I had known
him. Did the fact that he was honest with me about cheating on his test make it
any less horrible that he’d taken the risk? Or was it just another symptom of a
guy who didn’t take anything at all seriously except for basketball?

It rankled me to remember that of all the things Devon
had said the night before, the only thing he had really seemed upset about was
the fact that he was suspended from the team, pending the results of the
investigation against him. Since he had admitted to me that he’d actually
cheated on the test, it wasn’t difficult to imagine that they’d be able to find
proof of it somehow—though I couldn’t think of any specifics of what method
they could use. But he didn’t even seem to be all that upset at being kicked
out of the school, which could also happen. He wasn’t upset about the fact that
he had put his academic life on the line for a stupid test score. Devon wasn’t
even a stupid guy, he was actually intelligent; he could probably have just put
a little bit of effort into things and been just fine on the test, at least he
could have gotten a good enough score to get in.

But in spite of the fact that Devon had been honest
with me, how could I trust him anymore? He had lied to people who mattered a
whole lot more than me. Was Kelly right about him? Even if she had lied to me,
how much of it was because she knew what he was really like and wanted to spare
me the pain of what could have been a much greater heartache, and how much of
it was because she was hung up on him and saw me as a threat to her possibilities
of getting him back? Did she actually want him back—or did she just want
revenge? Something tickled in the back of my mind at that
question,
but try as I might, I couldn’t bring
it up to the front of my brain.

I spent most of the morning in the library,
occasionally pretending to use the study room for its actual purpose, but
mostly either pacing or sitting down and thinking about the whole huge mess
that my life had suddenly become. I had always been a fairly direct,
straightforward person. When it came to my studies, I was even more up-front.
Nothing was more important than doing my best and earning my grades; the
thought of cheating was something I had always viewed as the worst possible
thing you could do academically. I’d rather make an honest C than a lying A—and
while I knew that there were plenty of other people who felt
different
, especially about college, it was
hard for me to reconcile myself to the idea of actually dating someone who felt
that way. If Devon thought that there was no problem in cheating in order to
get what he wanted, then what would happen when he decided that what he wanted
was some other girl? Would he drop me completely—or would he cheat on me? Which
of those options would be worse?

Although I hammered my head against the metaphorical
wall a dozen times, trying to sort out who I believed and how I felt about the
situation, by the time they needed to take the room back to let someone else
use it, I was no closer to feeling certain about the situation than I had been
when I’d first stepped in. Even if they hadn’t kicked me out of the road,
trying to make up my mind about how I felt about everything in my life—from my
friendship with Kelly to my relationship with Devon and even who I was and what
I wanted—left me
with
such a sense of
panic that I would have probably left of my own accord. I needed to be out of
the stupid off-white room and back into the real air outside, I decided.

I hurried out of the library quickly; so close to
lunch, the campus was a lot busier—people going to and from class, heading to
the student union, the dining hall, and I passed a handful of people entering
the library as I was leaving it. I hoped against hope that I wouldn’t run into
someone while I figured out just where it was I would go next.
 
I went past the front desk, through the
doors, and was out into the sunshine and crisp autumn air in a matter of
moments. I paused for just a second, standing off to the side of the walkway,
trying to figure out where I could go and still have a
hope
of some privacy. I could try my dorm, but Kelly might be
there. Obviously there would be a ton of people in almost any other place on
campus. I could get in my car and just drive to another place… but then I did
have class eventually. I couldn’t avoid that.

As I was trying to decide where I could safely go, my
thoughts were interrupted by a familiar voice calling out my name. “Jenn!” I
looked up and spotted Devon coming towards me and felt a wave of anger,
irritation, and dread wash through my mind. Of all the people I could run into
at a time like this, he was in at least the top three I least wanted to see. I
crossed my arms over my chest as he cut across the walkway to intercept
me.
 
“I figured I’d find you here,” Devon
said, flashing that charming smile that I was sure he knew worked like
magic—and might have worked
on
anyone
else, even on me, if I wasn’t already so firmly decided against him.

“What do you want? I told you last night…” Devon
brought his hands up in a defensive posture.

“I just want to talk,” he said quietly. “Will you hear
me out? I’ve been thinking a lot about what happened last night, and I really
want to talk to you about it.” I bit my bottom lip. He seemed sincere; but
then, he had seemed sincere every single time I had ever been around him. A
little voice in the back of my mind said that Devon was just one of those guys
who could sweet-talk anyone, and that he’d say anything to get back into my
favor—although why he would want to, when half the girls on campus were falling
all over themselves to have a chance with him, was more difficult to explain.

“Okay,” I said finally, knowing instinctively that
Devon wouldn’t let go of the idea until I had given him the chance to say his
piece. After all, hadn’t he tracked me down to a movie theater off-campus to
get me to go on a date with him? “I will hear you out.” Devon smiled and
steered me towards one of the tables just outside of the Library; in spite of
the fact that it was getting busier, no one was sitting outside just yet.

“I wanted to tell you that you’re absolutely right,”
Devon said, sitting down across from me. “You’re totally right in everything
you said. It was incredibly stupid of me to risk my future the way I did, and
the fact that the only thing that was on my mind was losing basketball was even
more stupid
.” I looked into Devon’s eyes
for a long moment in silence, trying to decide—trying to determine—whether he
was really being honest, whether he really had come to the conclusion that I
was right, or if he was just, as Kelly and the other girls had accused him of,
saying what it took to get to me.

“How long did it take you to come to that conclusion?”
I asked, a little more harshly than I intended. Devon didn’t seem to mind; he
smiled slightly, reaching out to try and take my hand. I pulled back a little
bit, not ready to let him touch me, not ready to let myself melt into him and
believe him.

“I had started to come to it before you ran out last
night,” Devon said, the ghost of a smile curving his lips again. “I’ve actually
always felt a little bit bad about the whole thing. Guilty, you know?” I raised
an eyebrow as I nodded; I knew that if it had been me in his place—though that
wouldn’t really be possible because I couldn’t imagine making the choice he
had—I probably would have been so wracked with guilt over it that I would have
turned myself in before I’d even gotten to orientation. The fact that he could
go three years without caring enough about it to come clean didn’t make the
fact that he was coming clean now that much better.

“So what happened at the meeting today?” I remembered
that Devon was supposed to meet with the investigatory board; if he was going
to be expelled because of it, I doubted that he’d take the trouble to find me.
Of course, they wouldn’t expel one of the
star players on one of the teams,
I thought bitterly. If it had been me who
had paid someone to take the test for me, I’d be out on my ass before the day
was over. And that was how it really should be—there should be no place for
cheating in college.

“I’m on suspension; I can’t play. But they’re going to
give me a chance to re-take the
test,
and
take it honestly. And they’ll evaluate from there, they said.” Devon gave me a
hopeful little smile, reaching out for my hands again. “I couldn’t think of
anyone who would be better at helping me study for it than you, Jenny. Would
you help me out?” I stood quickly. The fact that he
was
audacious enough to use the nickname he knew I hated at a time
like this, when I was already mad at him, and the fact that I was still so
worked up, confused and uncertain, made it impossible for me to think of
anything I wanted to do less than help him out.

“I have my own studies to look after. And I told you I
hate that name.” I turned on my heel and walked away as quickly as I possibly
could
before he could say anything to stop me.

Chapter
Three

Before I was more than a dozen steps away from the library,
I began to feel guilty about what I had said and even guiltier about the way
I’d said it. Devon was being honest with me—at least I had to give him the
benefit of the doubt that he was. And making an honest effort at taking the
test again was surely something that I should be supporting, wasn’t it? If I
cared about Devon—and I knew that in spite of my anger towards him, I did care
about him—I should be happy that he was getting another chance, and I should be
helping him to make the most of it. If he really wanted to turn over a new leaf
and put his best foot forward academically, then who else would he turn to
other than his girlfriend?

I ducked into the dining hall to grab something to
eat, thinking to myself wryly that part of my bad temper was almost certainly
due to the fact that I had gone past my usual breakfast time. I grabbed a few
handy items and booked it to class, my mind still full of the whole stupid
mess, and whether I had said something I could justify or not.

I might as well have not been in my classes at all; in
spite of the fact that I went to each one, and had all of my materials ready
and took notes, not a word of any of the lectures actually filtered through my
brain, and I knew that I’d have to borrow a lecture recording from one of the
other kids in class with me to make any sense of what I had written down. I was
completely consumed with what I had said to Devon, and what he had said to me,
and the unfairness of the whole situation. He had cheated on the test—by all
rights, he should have been thrown out as soon as they could prove it, and that
should have been the end of it.

On the one hand, I had to admit that I was at least a
little bit glad for Devon that he had managed to
kind of
get away with what he’d done. It was so long ago at this
point that it wasn’t as though his test scores actually even mattered anymore;
he had already proven that he was capable of doing decently in school, which
was all the tests were supposed to predict. It was actually a little bit stupid
that they were making him re-take the test, because he must have had at least a
2.0 average in order to play during the season, and if he was making a passing
grade, he was doing what the test had proven he could do.

But on the other hand, it was just like college sports
everywhere. Of course Devon was re-taking the test. Anyone else who had been
found out would have been kicked out over cheating, but because the school
wanted to keep people coming to games and save face over having admitted
someone they wanted for the team with fake test scores, they were going to bend
over backwards and nearly break the rules of academic integrity completely to
justify it. Then they could point at his new test scores and say “See, if he
had taken the test in the first place, he probably would have done just as
well, so we didn’t really make a mistake in recruiting him.” Anything that any
of the sports guys ever did wrong, they somehow found a way around. The only
thing I could think of in the school’s history where that wasn’t the case was
when they had nearly thrown out one of Devon’s fellow frat brothers—a member of
the hockey team—over allegations that he’d been involved in some kind of
gang-rape of a girl back in high school. Even then, I thought I remembered that
the guy had left of his own will to clear his name.