“I was going to do the paper. I swear.”
“Almost is not going to cut it. You are on your way to failing this course, and frankly, Mr. Keyes, I’d prefer if you do both of us a favor and let us not have to do this another year.”
“I’ll try harder.”
“We’ll see whether or not you mean that.” Professor Warburton sighed, leaning back in his seat. “With that being said, you have forty-eight hours to submit your paper, or you have no hopes of passing this class.”
“Forty-eight hours?” I balked, sitting up straight in my chair. “I already have a paper due tomorrow for Negotiations & Conflict Management.”
“Then you have two papers due. I suggest you get started right away to meet the deadline.”
“You can’t be serious!”
I cringed as the words tumbled out of my mouth. I’d really meant to keep the thought to myself. How did he expect me to complete two such complicated assignments in one night? I wasn’t Einstein’s kid.
“I assure you that I could not be more serious, and before you argue, please bear in mind that you ought to receive an F for not handing in that paper, but here I am, extending an opportunity for you not to fail. Do the sensible thing and take it.”
I rose to my feet, considering myself dismissed, but a question burned inside me I couldn’t ignore.
“Why?” I hitched the strap of my bag over one shoulder and nailed the professor with a direct stare.
“Why what?” He didn’t even bother to look up from the folder he’d turned to, removing a sheaf of papers.
“Why are you giving me the chance to hand in the paper late?” I pulled on my backpack strap tighter. “You said it yourself that I deserve an automatic F. Why then are you going out of your way to help me? What do you want from me?”
“What I need from you is to pass this course so I don’t have to see you again next year.”
I blinked rapidly. Was that a hint of disgust in his voice? I stared at him, confused at the sudden change in him. Me just being there in his office was unusual, and for him to give me the chance to hand in a paper late was even weirder. The dislike I heard in his voice just now squashed whatever thought I might’ve harbored that he was just being kind.
At least he wasn’t asking me to perform sexual favors for me to work for a grade. I might’ve foolishly taken the easy way out last term, and it hadn’t even worked.
That part of my life was completely over, and I’d learned a lesson from it. Professors could not be trusted to keep their words, even after you gave them what was possibly the best orgasm of their life.
Now that Callum was in my life, I’d rather not test the theory again.
“That will be all, Mr. Keyes,” Professor Warburton said, making a shooing motion with his hand. “I’ll see you the day after tomorrow with your paper.”
Whether or not I could get the paper done was another question, but I had to try, since I’d promised Callum. I left his office, mumbling a thanks for being given the chance to complete the paper. Then I had to do something I’d never done before. I had to locate one of the campus directories to find out exactly where the library was located. The campus was huge, and I anticipated it was in a quiet area, but I had no desire to go trekking around in hopes of stumbling upon it.
After taking a note of the location where the foreign languages computer labs were situated, I set off and almost smacked into someone. When I recognized the familiar face of Louis, I tensed and stepped back in surprise.
“What do you want, Louis?”
“Just wanted to know if you’ve thought about it,” he whispered as he glanced about him nervously.
“Thought about what?” This guy was fucking unbelievable.
“Don’t act like you don’t know,” he snapped. “You crawled into my bed that night, climbed into my lap. You know what I want.”
“I was grieving.” I was torn between feeling bad that my actions that night might have misled him and anger that he thought he could make demands of me.
“Still, you know what you did,” he growled. “You made me interested, then gave me the cold shoulder. You’re a cocktease, and you need to put out, Keyes.”
“How the hell were we friends for this long?” I mumbled, devastated that I couldn’t recognize anything in him of the guy I knew before.
“I was curious. You made me curious.”
“Then be curious,” I snapped, hitching my backpack on my shoulder. “A lot of guys on campus would love to experiment with you, no strings attached. Leave me out of it.”
I turned, but he grabbed my bag and pulled me back toward him so hard I smacked into his chest. It gave him just the right amount of leverage to plant his hands on my hips as if he was steadying me.
“I can’t leave you out of it. I want you, Keyes.”
I struggled against him, fear blossoming inside me at the hard glint in his eyes. Other students passing us gave us curious stares, and some glared at us for blocking the way.
“Louis, people are staring.”
He leaned forward and whispered in a ferocious tone, “I know you’re enjoying this and the torment I’m in. I used to listen to you talk about all the guys you teased and fucked. This is just the sort of game you love to play.”
He thought this was a game? With all the strength I could muster, I shoved him off.
“This isn’t a game, Louis. I only liked you as a friend. A really close friend. I thought…it doesn’t matter what I thought now, but you should stay the hell away from me. I can make your life miserable if you continue to torment me like this.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“Yeah, I guess you can call it that.”
Louis lashed out at me with his fist, and it was so unexpected I couldn’t even dodge it. The blow connected right above my eye, pain exploding in my head from the force that reeled me back and pitched me to the ground.
“What the fuck!” someone cried from close by. Louis either hadn’t heard or didn’t care. He leaned forward and spat at me. “That will teach you to threaten me. Before you do something so stupid again, remember I know your secrets. All your dirty secrets.”
The color drained from my face, and the dizziness that descended on me left me breathless. His words stunned me more than the blow to my head. Stupid. I should never have told him.
“Hey, man, get off him!” Running footsteps stopped beside us, and someone tried to pull Louis away, but he shoved the individual hard.
“Don’t fucking touch me.” With that, he strode away, leaving me to watch his confident swagger.
I touched my throbbing head and grimaced. Fuck Louis. Fuck all those stupid friends I tried to keep, although they were never loyal and thought the worse of me. It was time to avoid them and focus on the new path I was trying to forge.
Chapter Thirteen
Callum
“You fucker, you were supposed to get back forty-five minutes ago,” I growled at Phil when he ducked behind the cash register.
Today he’d taken his break before me. We each gave ourselves an hour to get away from the café, then return so the other could take over. Phil had never been late before, and when calling his phone had resulted in me reaching his voicemail, I’d been worried. That worry had converted into irritation at the shit-eating grin he wore.
“Sorry, man, something came up,” he replied without delving further, but I wouldn’t let him get away with it.
“Yeah? Like what? I couldn’t help noticing you turned off your phone.”
“I surprised Noelle and took her for lunch.”
“You lunched with your wife for an hour and forty-five minutes?” I asked in disbelief.
“My mother had the kids. The last thirty minutes or so we might’ve gone back home for—”
“I get it,” I cut him off before he went into detail. “Shit, we need another hand on deck, Phil. I don’t think we can handle the café on our own and have a personal life.”
He glanced up at
me, his teeth showing a little too much for my comfort. “Since when do you have a personal life?” His face lit up as if he’d just figured it out. “Ah, since that pretty boy and his driver stumbled into the café.”
I shoved his shoulder only half-playfully. “Shut up. I’m putting up a ‘help wanted’ sign in the window. The café closes at noon on Wednesday. I’ll do the interviews then. You can take this Wednesday off, and I’ll get the other one. How does that sound?”
“Sounds good. We can afford to hire someone, can’t we?”
“Maybe not full-time just yet.” I thought about balancing that month’s finances and how much progress we had made.
We were more than able to meet our obligations to the bank as far as the café was concerned. Both Phil and I could take a salary from the earnings too. There should be enough to hire someone inexperienced at least part-time. Just so Phil and I could get to do non-café-related stuff.
“All right, you’re the finance guru,” Phil replied, his face somber once more.
We’d both invested a lot in the business, and as much as he joked around, he knew the importance of being serious when it came to the café. Half of everything belonged to him, and he was counting on the success of the café to send his kids to college. The eldest of the three still had about ten years to go. I predicted we’d be able to live comfortably by that time.
I untied my apron and threw it at him. A couple of guys wearing football jerseys from the nearby college strolled in. Seeing them made me think of Ashton and what he was doing. I’d wanted to call him so many times during the day, but every time I searched for his number, I forced myself to put down the phone. He had classes and would come to me after he finished his schoolwork or none at all. I was adamant not to get in the way of his studies.
“Hey, you can’t leave me alone now,” Phil said in a panic, nodding to the door as more of the college kids poured into the café.
“Fine. Just until this wave is served.”
True to my word, when the line in front of the cash register dwindled to two customers, I removed my apron again and called my break. I ducked out of the café, using the back exit, carrying a large trash bag with me to the dumpster outside. When we’d just opened, I used to lunch at the café, but I’d quickly learned that doing so meant I found a million and one things to do when I should be relaxing, so now I took my lunch upstairs.
After dumping the garbage, I inhaled deeply, relaxed for the first time in a long while. I had a new job, friends around me, a new apartment, and someone special in my life. That was a lot more than I’d ever hoped for when I’d moved here to Battersea.
I headed for the stairs, plucking my phone from my pocket. Fuck it. I needed to know what he was up to or even if I’d see him after his classes. The café would still be open until 9:00 p.m., but I wouldn’t mind him sitting in the corner and doing his assignment or some shit while I finished up.
The ringing of a phone startled me as I mounted the stairs, taking them two at a time. The sound wasn’t coming from my phone, but one close by. I glanced up from my phone, which was dialing Ashton’s, and halted on the stairs.
Ashton was sitting at the top of the stairs, two open textbooks beside him and a light purple MacBook perched in his lap.
“You may want to end the call,” he said sheepishly.
The bud-dup of my heart beating heavily in my chest at the sight of him gave way to a lurch when I noticed the bruise above his right eye. The butterfly bandage did nothing to cover the nasty cut.
A wave of protection threatened to overwhelm me as I hurried up the steps and took his chin in my hand. “Ashton, what happened to you? Who the hell did this?”
He gave a nervous laugh and swatted at my hand, but I refused to let go until he answered me.
“It was an accident. I walked into a door.”
“You walked into a door,” I repeated, not sure if I believed him. He seemed agitated, and he couldn’t even meet my eyes.
“Yeah, I can be a klutz at times. No thanks to you, I guess, since I was thinking about yesterday so much I didn’t see the door until my face had already made acquaintance with it.”
“You were thinking about me, huh?”
He grabbed fistfuls of my shirt and pulled me closer to him. “Yes, all day. You made a lasting impression, Daddy Callum. So did that spatula.”
I chuckled, leaning forward but not to kiss his puckered lips. I touched mine to the cut above his eye, still feeling uneasy about him damaging himself like this.
“You need to take better care of Daddy’s property, boy,” I murmured next to his ear. “I can’t have you hurting yourself like this.”
“I will heal.” His hands tightened in my shirt. “But you know what won’t?”
His grin was mischievous when our eyes met. “Yeah? What?”
“My bruised ego if you don’t kiss me right now.”
“I’d better take care of that right away, then. We can’t have you harming yourself more than you’ve already done.”
“That’s exactly—”
I swooped down and claimed his lips with mine. He didn’t mind at all but let out a long groan into my mouth, the sound vibrating into my very soul. His lips were urgent and insistent, his tongue questing in my mouth. I slipped my hand to the back of his head, digging my fingers into his hair and moving forward, almost bearing him down onto the steps to get more of him than I could get in our current position.
His laptop pressed against my chest, reminding me what I’d interrupted. I deepened the kiss briefly, then reluctantly released his lips. He moaned a protest, but I eased back, prying his hands from my shirt.
“I take it your classes are finished?”
“Yes, sir.” He grinned. “And I’m almost done with my papers too.”
I nodded in approval. “Good, then let’s go inside. I have an hour to spare before I have to go back downstairs.”
His bag slung over my shoulder, I picked up his books, mindful not to lose his place, and helped him to his feet. I let us inside the apartment, hardly able to think when he slipped a hand beneath my shirt and brushed along my bare skin.
“Hey, none of that.” I moved away from his touch, bringing his books to the kitchen and placing them on the table. “You said you were almost done with your papers, but not quite, I take it, so you need to finish up.”
He groaned, settled the laptop on the table, and pulled out a chair. “I can take five.”
“I have a better idea.” I fished in the fridge for last night’s leftovers and glanced over my shoulder at him. “You hungry?”
“I could eat. I only had a banana for breakfast.”
“Why? What are you worried about? Your figure?”
Ashton laughed, filling my kitchen with more life than it had heard in all this time I’d lived here alone. I cocked my head to one side and absorbed the sound. His sweet scent even lingered in the air, changing everything about my living space.
“Would you believe me that I used to be chunky as a kid? I was the ugly duckling until final year of high school, and then I got hot.”
It was my turn to laugh at his lack of humility. I shouldn’t find his cockiness to be so endearing, but despite the intensity that seemed to be a part of him, he exuded a sweetness I couldn’t ignore. The latter had won me over when I contemplated whether I should act on my feelings toward him.
“I think you must’ve looked adorable.” I pretended I didn’t see him scrunch up his face in distaste.
“Honestly, I wasn’t. Didn’t lose my V-card until my last prom. Who waits that long these days?
“Hmm.” I gave a noncommittal response and placed the container of meatballs in the microwave. “How were your classes?”
“Good, actually. I should’ve written a paper two weeks ago, but I never handed it in. I was surprised when the professor told me I could submit it late, so I’m working on it now.”
“Is he giving all the other students who didn’t hand in the paper the same
opportunity?”
From my own experience in college, a professor was a stickler for submitting assignments on time. They didn’t usually accept late work without a solid excuse. Like being hospitalized or representing the college at some sort of function, and even then, they were more likely to insist that the work be brought in the day after.
“I’m not sure. Maybe I’m the only one who didn’t hand it in.”
“Hmm, well, what’s the assignment about?”
“Hold on. Let me read it.”
I leaned against the counter, waiting for the timer on the microwave while I listened to him. I was relieved I hadn’t been completely wrong about him. He had a lot more going for him than a frat boy who spent too much time in his cups and partied hard on weekends. I felt marginally better about my decision to give us a chance.
“All right,” I said when he finished reading the assignment. “Now hit me up with what you’ve already written.”
“You sure? It’s almost a thousand words. It needs to be at least twice that long, but I’m not sure what else to discuss.”
“Go ahead. I’m listening.”
He cleared his throat dramatically, then read from his computer. I listened without interrupting while I removed the dish from the microwave and made us two plates.
By the time I had our meal placed on the table along with two glasses of iced tea, I could tell what the major problem of his paper was. He wouldn’t like it, but he had to change it, or he’d fail the paper.
“And that’s all I have so far.” He glanced up, his eyes filled with so much hope. “What do you think?” His face fell, and he groaned. “I knew it. I suck at this. I told you I wasn’t good at this academic bullshit. I should’ve just accepted the F.”
“No, that’s not it at all.” I took up his books and placed them on the counter. “You have the raw information there. You can spin that into making an argument.”
“But that’s what I thought I did.”
I reached across the table and laid my hand over his and smiled. “You’ve put a lot into the research, and that in itself is a good job. There’s just a problem of plagiarism. You have to be able to paraphrase and cite correctly if you want your professor to accept this paper.”
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