Hooped #4 (The Hooped Interracial Romance Series, Book #4) (3 page)

But it wasn’t as if
me
helping or not helping Devon was going to do a thing about the system of
college sports. They would keep pulling things out for their beloved sports
stars to be able to keep playing no matter what I did. The real question was
whether or not I specifically should help Devon. Did I like him enough, did I
care about him enough, to help him get a passing grade on the test? Or was I so
resentful, so bitter about what he had done, and so distrustful towards his
motives and reasoning that I would let him hang in the wind?

If he didn’t get help from me, I had no doubts
whatsoever that he would get help from someone else. The thought occurred to me
as I was walking from one class to another that there were plenty of pretty
girls on campus who were just as smart as I was who could help him study. A
flicker of jealousy and rage washed through me at the thought—even if I was
still angry with him, the thought of him flirting with another girl made me
feel as if someone had just plunged a sharp knife between my ribs. But how
could I trust him? Even without taking into consideration what Kelly had said
to me, and the fact that she had tried to sabotage any chance that I might have
with Devon by making me think he had forgotten about me within a day of meeting
me, the other girls in our circle of friends had gone on and one about what a
player he was, how manipulative and how easily he got what he wanted whenever
he wanted it.

But Devon had said that he was trying to be
different
and that he wanted to be serious with
me. He had been honest about everything; he had been honest about the test,
even. He could have just told me that it was a lie, and gone into the
investigation meeting and told them. God knew that the academic integrity board
would have loved to just close the case right there and say “Nope, nothing to
see here, we have no reason to doubt his word.” They probably wouldn’t have
even had the investigation in the first place if they didn’t think they had to
answer the allegations. I wonder who had come forward, and how they had gone
about making their disclosure. If they had threatened to go to the press, that
would be enough heat to make the school want to actually investigate it. The
integrity board would investigate anything—but I had no doubt at all that if
the Dean had told them that they were supposed to find nothing at all to
substantiate it, and if Devon had gone in and sworn up and down that it was a
lie, they would have let it drop.

So Devon was trying, obviously, to clear his name, to
turn over a new leaf. If I cared about him, I should be encouraging him. If I
was in love with him—and even though we’d only been together a few times, even
though we’d barely been seeing each other for a couple of weeks, I thought that
it would be easy for me to let myself go and actually fall all the way in love
with him—I should help him. I should be right there by his side, taking him to
the local bookstore and helping him pick out prep materials. I should be
gearing up for him the way I’d geared up for myself, and making him take
practice tests until he knew the material so thoroughly that he couldn’t help
but get a high score, and vindicate himself.

But was that fair to me? Even if what I had said to
Devon before, when he had initially asked me for help, had been rude and cruel,
it wasn’t entirely false. I did have my own studies to worry about. I had as
heavy a class load as I could possibly manage, and I needed to stay on top of
it. If I devoted the kind of time that Devon might really and truly need to get
him ready to take the test, then I might fall behind. How could Devon ask me to
fall behind for his benefit?
He wouldn’t
ask you to fall behind, he just wouldn’t think about the fact that you could.

I somehow managed to eat lunch without having a clue
of what I was even putting in my mouth; I ate alone, taking a table in one of
the remote corners of the dining hall to avoid having to talk to anyone at all.
All throughout my afternoon classes, I went back and forth in my own mind,
unable to come to a conclusion about how to feel or what to do. I couldn’t
believe that my life had fallen into such a stupid dilemma within only a few
months of me becoming an adult and going to college. It wasn’t as though I was
making some life-changing decision like whether or not to donate a kidney. I
was just trying to decide whether or not I would continue to be with Devon. I
was trying to decide whether to help a guy that I had feelings for or stand on
principle. I shouldn’t be so uncertain and confused.

And yet the more I thought about it, the more
uncertain I became. I cared about Devon; there
were
no two ways about it. Even if he had been a total player in the past, even if
he had slept around and cheated and dropped girls the moment they were no
longer interesting to him, I cared about him. He might break my heart in a
month, in a year, or never at all. Hell—I might end up being the one to break
his
heart
if he was really serious about
a relationship with me, and I eventually got tired of him.

Could I live with myself if I decided not to help him,
and he wasn’t able to find someone who could really coach him through the test
and ended up failing it? If he did, they’d kick him out of college
completely—and without a good test score, combined with the stigma of having
cheated the first time around, he would never get into another college. He’d be
without a degree, with a ton of black marks against his name, and instead of
going on to some stable, solid career—or, possibly, going on to the NBA, if he
continued to play the way he had been playing all season—he would be stuck in
menial, dead-end jobs. All because I was unwilling to compromise.
Mighty
big opinion you have of yourself there, Jenn, if you think you’re the only
person who can help him pass.
But he had come to me—he could get help from
someone else, but he had come to me first. If he didn’t pass, because someone
else helped him instead of me, then I knew I would feel guilty.

The ultimate question, I decided while I as in my last
class of the day, was whether I wanted to keep having a relationship with Devon
or not. If I wanted to have a relationship with him, I needed to help him.
There were no two ways about it. If I didn’t want to have a relationship with
him, I had absolutely no obligation whatsoever to help him in any way. But that
was the question I couldn’t answer. As my last class of the day began to wind
down, I felt as lost as ever, and I wished that I had another two or three
classes that day if only so that I could have some relatively quiet time to
keep thinking about it, even if it was so far getting me nowhere. I wished that
I could just put my entire life on hold so that I could actually make a
decision, on the whole,
stupid mess.

Chapter
Four

By the time my classes for the day were over, and it
was getting to be evening, I had no idea of what to do with myself. I could eat
dinner alone in the dining hall, and I could kill a little bit of time in the
student union or possibly the library, but eventually I would need to spend the
rest of the night somewhere. If I waited long enough, Kelly would have to go to
sleep eventually, at which point I could be in my dorm room without having to
make nice with her and figure that situation out.

I had been avoiding Devon all day; since he was
suspended, it wasn’t exactly difficult. When I wasn’t going from class to
class, I managed to think of where Devon would most likely not be—even if he were
on campus, which seemed unlikely. In spite of being able to avoid him, and in
spite of the fact that I was spending all this time thinking about how I felt,
and whether I had been in the right to turn down his request for help so
brutally as I had, I still had no idea of whether I should be begging for his
forgiveness or just writing him off entirely.

The worst part of the situation was that I really
didn’t have anywhere realistic to go. I didn’t want to run into Kelly, who
would either be as unpleasant as she had been before, or would be trying to
convince me that she was right and that I should take her side on the whole
mess.

Even if I had been able to get back to my dorm and
just hang out there, without risking running into Kelly again, I had to admit
to myself that I missed Devon. As I wandered around the less-busy areas of
campus, trying to decide what to do with myself, I couldn’t help but remember
how it had felt to fall asleep in his arms, how he smiled and the charm in his
eyes. I couldn’t help but remember how good he felt inside of me, and how much
I liked spending time with him. I rolled my eyes at myself, feeling like an
idiot. Just because I liked Devon and thought he was hot and charming, didn’t
mean that I should be with him.
If he
isn’t serious about his education, you have one very big obstacle between you.
But did I know for sure that he wasn’t serious about his education? Not really.
He hadn’t been serious about it in the past—but that didn’t mean he wasn’t
serious about it now.

But I still wavered. I didn’t know how to feel, or
what to do about the situation. I wandered around, not yet ready to give in and
go back to my dorm but without any particular other destination in mind. Just
when I would have retreated back into the Library, my phone buzzed in my
pocket. I thought for a moment that it was one of my friends; I didn’t really want
to talk to anyone, but it would be a good idea to at least check my phone.
Jenn, I know you don’t want to hear from me,
but will you at least give me a chance? Let me talk to you?
It was Devon. I
hesitated for a moment. He was right; I didn’t want to hear from him. But I
needed to know what was going on. I needed answers. Logically, the only thing
that would get me the answers I needed was to talk to Devon. I took a deep
breath.

Okay,
I wrote back.
Let’s meet up. I’ll hear
you out.
I thought to myself that I was probably the world’s most naïve
idiot for going along with it, but I was tired of wandering around aimlessly,
my mind a spinning confusion. I needed to know if Devon really meant to be a
better person, and if I should invest anything of myself into him. I needed to
know if I should cut my losses.

Can
you come to Greenway Park? I’ll meet you there.
The park was within walking distance from campus; it was dark out, but it
wasn’t so far that I’d need to take my car to feel comfortable. I sighed and
messaged
Devon back that I would meet him there
in fifteen minutes. I tried not to feel like a fool, preparing myself to be
fooled not a first or second time, but a third. If Kelly had been there, if she
had known what I was about to do, then she would give up on me completely. I’d
be practically dead to her. But she didn’t know, and I had no one else to ask.
I owed it to Devon to give him at least a little bit of a chance, didn’t I?

I made my way off-campus, walking quickly in spite of
the fatigue that had already set into my legs. “He’s just going to tell you
whatever he thinks you want to hear,” I told myself as I walked. “Don’t give
him the benefit of the doubt. Listen to what he has to say, and figure it out
for yourself.” I knew I looked like a crazy person yet again—talking to myself
as I walked, muttering under my breath. I felt badly about how I had spoken to
Devon earlier in the day, but I still couldn’t quite shake the rumors I had
heard about him, even though he had been honest and candid with me. I couldn’t
quite bring myself to believe that a guy who could take such a huge gamble on
his future could even be remotely worth my time…and yet, until that had come
out into the open, I’d thought things with Devon
were
great.

I found my way to the park, which was
thankfully
well-lit in the darkness; even with
the yellow and blue-white security lights shining down on everything, it still
felt a little creepy, deserted as it was, and I looked around for any sign of
Devon.
If he tries to pull something to
scare me, that’s it,
I thought firmly. I was not going to play games; if
this was some kind of petty prank, then I would not only not help him, I’d go
out of my way to get friendly with Kelly once more and watch his whole academic
career go up in flames.

Just as I was beginning to fidget, Devon appeared, his
keys clinking in his hand. He closed the distance from the parking lot to where
I stood
in
a few fast steps, wrapping his
arms around me tightly before I could even say anything. “Thank you so much for
meeting with me,” he murmured, brushing his lips against my temple. I squirmed
free of his embrace, perversely angry with him in spite of how relieved I felt.

“I agreed to hear you out—that doesn’t mean I’m going
to just believe you, you know,” I said firmly, looking up into his charming
face. Devon put his hands up, holding my gaze with a slight smile twitching at
his lips.

“All I want is for you to be fair and hear me out. But
I’m relieved that you’re willing to listen to me, Jenny.” I scowled.

“You need to stop calling me that when I’m mad at you.
It’s not helping your cause at all.” Devon hesitated a
moment,
and I saw something flicker
in
his eyes before they cleared. He nodded.

“I’m sorry. I won’t call you that until we get on good
terms
again,
if that ever happens.” I
crossed my arms over my chest, satisfied but still irritated.