"Getting my dick sucked," I reply sarcastically, trying my best to suppress the burning rage. I need to run, get it all out of my system. That’s the only way I’ll be able to function. "Dammit, man, what do you want?"
He's acting weird, and that's saying something. Besides baseball, girls, and weed, Emmerson doesn't really care about too many things. Truly.
Mom and Dad tried to get him to care about which college he wants to apply to next year, and the fucker sat there like they were both idiots. Emmerson just doesn't care unless it interests him. So, whatever has him in a fit must be some epic.
"In a half hour, go to Buck's Barbecue. Someone will be there who has to talk to you." Before I can reply, he hangs up, leaving me completely flabbergasted.
Glancing down at the screen of my phone, I nurse a coke while I wait for this elusive someone to show up. Emmerson said a half hour, and it's been close to nearly an hour. And to think, I left practice early for this bullshit. Coach is going to have my ass come Wednesday.
Swiping my finger across the screen, I tap out a quick text to Emmer.
Me: I'm going to kick your ass next time I see you. Fucker isn't here.
Within seconds, the three bubbles pop up next to his name, signaling he's about to reply.
Emmerson: Suck it. Trust me, bro. You'll want to hear what he has to say.
Me: Who is it? Plus, how do you know my business?
Emmerson: Walls are thin, bro.
Putting my hand over my mouth, I rub at the scruff of hair lining my jawline. His cryptic words stay with me, long after the light on my cell phone goes dark. It isn't until an imposing force comes to stand beside the table that I look up.
Confusion rocks me in my seat. "Duncan? Well, fuck, I haven't seen you in ages."
I make to stand up, but his stony expression has me pausing with my ass halfway off the seat. He looks pissed. And if you know Duncan Rose, anything that means angry is most definitely not in his vocabulary.
He's a laid back, carefree kind of guy. That's one of the reasons we were all friends in high school. Of course, Duncan was closer to Owen than he ever was with me, but that's beside the point. We all hung out.
When he makes no move to sit down or even say a word, just keeps staring at me like I'm an insect under his shoe he'd like nothing better than to squash, I can't hold my tongue anymore.
"What do you want?"
He cocks a brow as if I should already know. “You have the gall to ask me what I want?"
I get the feeling that's a redundant question, but can't help from replying. This whole situation just got really freaking weird. "That'd be nice, yeah."
He sits down in a huff, his hands clenching and unclenching on top of the table.
Now, there's something else I should say about Duncan. While the first is that anger isn’t a usual emotion for him, it doesn’t mean he doesn't know how to throw down. There's a difference between Duncan Rose and the rest of these idiots in town who like to get pissed and wreck shit.
Duncan can do all of that with a goddamn smile on his face.
Leaning forward, he barks under his breath, "I want your family to do the right thing. For once in your fucking lives, you all need to think of someone other than yourselves.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Dunc, but I’d suggest taking it down a notch. You know how Buck gets with little shits trying to start trouble.” When Duncan calms somewhat, I ask, “Now do the right thing for what?”
“For Harloe!” he explodes, not being able to help himself as he throws his arms out. “I know Emmer told you to forget her and move on because Owen heard your conversation, and he relayed it to me right after. But you don't fucking understand. She has been doing this alone all this time, and she can't do it anymore."
“Can't do what? Is she sick?” I cross my arms over my chest, staring him down. “What is it?”
Duncan is only blowing hot air. He’s not going to make anyone do anything.
He eyes me hard.
"Either spit it out already, or I'm fucking gone." I go to get up, but his hand shoots out, stopping me. I look down at the fingers wrapped tightly around my forearm, then back up at him. "You have not one lick of sense in you, do you?"
"What?" he asks in a sarcastic tone, his grip tightening just to piss me off even more. "You gonna bully me like you did my sister? Oh, yeah, she told me all about your little shit show at school, and how you think she slept with your brother. That is bullshit.” He points a menacing finger toward me. “She'd never do that. And I'm here to tell you right now, you won't allow anyone to touch a hair on her head after this. I don't give a shit if you do believe your brother, you will stick around and do your duty."
I lean toward the table, bracing my hands on the surface. He finally lets me go and doesn't so much as remove his eyes from mine. It's almost like he's challenging me to stay and listen to his line of bullshit.
Well, challenge accepted. Then afterward, I'm going to whip his ass all over the parking lot for wasting my time.
"Oh, really?" I quip, smiling wryly. "What duty is that, precisely?"
A smug smile breaks out across his face. Duncan and smugness are never two combinations you want to see together. That means he knows something, you know. Being on that side of the fence is no good.
"Well ..." He reaches into his pocket, then tosses a picture on the table, face up. "For starters, he’s about three foot tall and thinks he is bulletproof.”
Many things happen all at once. But mostly, it feels like my body went from weighing nearly two-hundred and fifty pounds of pure muscle to fifty and fluffy like I'm walking on air. I sway on my feet, and before I know what's happening, Duncan is pulling me back into the seat across from him.
“What?” I ask, blindsided.
“Look at the picture and see for yourself," Duncan states, shoving the picture in front of me. My eyes fall onto the small little boy, a cocky smile gracing his small, cherub face, as he holds a fish on the end of his fishing pole.
I suck in a sharp breath at the multi-color eyes blazing with such happiness, staring at the camera—one ice blue, like mine, and another bright, nearly iridescent emerald.
That child is a Prince, through and through. I don’t give a damn what anyone tries to say.
We’re identical, just like Owen and me.
My voice is rough and full of emotion. "What's his name?"
"Maverick," he answers, his harsh, gravelly timbre having gone soft, saying his nephew’s name. “Maverick Prince.”
Pressure sits heavily on my chest as I fight to keep my emotions at bay. Even with as much pain as I put her through, she still gave him the Prince last name.
But then what he’s referring to actually hits me full on like a car going sixty before it smacks into a brick wall.
My eyes flick up to meet his. "Are you trying to say this little boy is mine?"
“Yes, Hunter,” he grinds out impatiently.
I shake my head back and forth in complete shock. Harloe and I were always safe and never fucked without a condom. She was on birth control, and besides that one time when the condom broke two months—or was it one?—before she left, we had no problems whatsoever. So, fuck him if he thinks I won’t have my doubts. I may feel a connection, even just looking at his picture, but that doesn’t mean he belongs to me.
He could be Owen’s. He looks just like me, though, I think to myself.
My mind rebels at the thought of this tiny boy being Owen’s son. Something about that doesn’t exactly ring true, but I’ll be damned if the realistic part of my brain isn’t forcing me to think rationally and not jump headfirst into things.
I study the little boy’s picture in my hand. The onslaught of emotions that burn the back of my eyes tells me it’s time to wrap this shit up and get the hell out of here. Having Duncan Rose seeing me, a grown man, on the verge of tears is pathetic. But him knowing the reason behind my tears is even worse.
If the boy in this picture
isn’t mine, this proves, without a doubt, that Harloe was lying to me the whole time. That my brother, the snake slithering through the tall grass, really did sleep with her.
He smiles like the cat who caught the canary. “Tell Harloe hi for me when you go see her because we both know that’s your next stop.”
Everything inside of me wants to prove him wrong. Just him being able to say that proves how much of a hold she still has on me. But I can’t deny it, no matter how hard I want to.
The more I stare at his picture, the more time my mind runs away with me. And the longer my mind runs away with me, the more I finger fuck that emotion called fury.
The last three years starts blasting through my head, making no excuses, and taking no prisoners. I remember being happy with her. Then, getting the news of her infidelity from Owen and my entire world shattering into millions of pieces. I think about how that night put me on this path of destruction and chaos, and how empty and numb I’ve been.
I sit and stare and think. My mind runs a hundred miles an hour. What should I do? Where should I go? What should I believe? Who should I speak to first?
It’s clear, as much as I hate to admit this, that I need to see my brother. Unfortunately, either he or I got her into this, and she’s been doing it alone the entire time. While a small part of me believes her when it comes to telling me she was never with Owen, another part inside thinks that Owen wouldn’t stir up trouble of this magnitude if she hadn’t been.
Duncan must see the change come over me like someone pouring ice water over a blazing fire because his tension wafts off him.
From his unruly hair to his smile, to his forehead, nose, lips, ears, arms, fingers, toes—he looks identical to me. The only difference is his emerald green eye, which is the color of Harloe's.
Or … it could be Owen shining through.
My eyes meet Duncan's. His flash with something akin to worry, and he should be. Their entire family should be worried about what my next move is. But most importantly, his sister.
Because I have a bone to pick with Harloe, and I dare—fucking dare—her to deny me anything I want.
“You sure he’s mine?” I murmur, conspiratorially.
He eyes me. “What are you thinking, Hunt?”
A cruel smile tugs at the corner of my lips, a plan forming in my mind. I know just the way to get her attention, and I won’t even have to lift a finger.
She will come to me.
CHAPTER 26
Plagiarism. Could be expelled out of GOU.
My blood boils as I listen to Mr. Erikson recite, verbatim, what Golden Oaks University could do to me because, apparently, I've plagiarized someone else's mid-term paper.
An essay I worked hella hard on before fall break, and that was just to get it turned in on time. I did all that with an energetic toddler running rampant under my feet. There's no way my paper is plagiarized. No way in hell.
"So, Mr. Erikson, you're saying the essay I did, with my own research, is an exact replica of someone else's? And just because they turned it in before me, they get the credit for it?" I ask, making sure I heard him correctly.
No two papers are exactly the same if they were written by the actual owner. They'd have to be telepathically connected or something. And since that doesn't exist, then someone is a bullshitter.
My life has gone to hell in a handbasket since a few days after I brought Maverick onto campus to live. Jenna’s awesome and picking up as many babysitting sessions as possible. In a way, we're kind of co-parenting, which I know is weird, but makes things extremely easier on me.
Any fear I had about Maverick and Jenna meeting turned out to be completely unnecessary. In all aspects. The moment his little eyes met hers, they were goners and fell into a weird, but simple, friendship—or as much of a friendship as a nineteen-year-old and two-year-old can have.
The only thing not going my way is anything to do with GOU. It's as if everything systematically turned on its head, leaving me scrambling around trying to stay afloat.
First, it was the housing office.
Second, it was my financial aid.
Now, it's a complaint about me plagiarizing someone's paper.
When is it going to end?
He nods, his features pinching tightly in disapproval. "Yes."
No explanation? He's not giving me anything, besides the fact that someone clearly ripped off my assignment. But who?
My thoughts immediately go to Cassandra, but she's not even in that class, so I have to dismiss it. Unfortunately. Then, they go to Hunter, but again, I don't think he'd do that. Over the past few weeks, since that day on the football field, he's been ... different. Not completely, but he has been easier to be around. So, that knocks him right out of the running, too.
"Care to give me a bit more than that?" My tone is sharp and cutting, but I can't help being at the end of my rope with this crap. I didn't cheat off anyone, and I sure as hell wouldn't copy someone's paper word for word if I were.
That's like ... Cheating101. I'd have to be ignorant. And I can tell you now, my dad didn't raise no fool.
"Unfortunately, I cannot, Ms. Rose," he states with a sigh. I don't know if it's a sigh of relief that I'm not choking him or a sigh that he made me buy his explanation. Either way, he's about to get a rude awakening. Because I'm pissed, hormonal because Aunt Flow's about to show her grimy face, and I'm through being pushed around.
My blood continues to simmer until it's boiled over. The entire time I've been in here, he hasn't so much as looked in my direction. Instead, his face has been stuck in a paper he's grading, but not really grading. I can tell when someone is paying attention by making it obvious they're paying attention. Hunter taught me all about that with his lingering stares while I'm not looking.
Mr. Erikson knows I didn't do this. He knows that whoever turned that paper in before me is the person who copied. And he's going to sit there and allow it to happen? Not on my watch. I am on precarious grounds, attending due to financial aid. Most students are here because of their family’s money or a scholarship.
He will give me what I want, or so help me God, I'll jerk the truth out of him with my fists.
You don't mess with my baby's future, which is exactly what everyone, besides Jenna, at this blasted school is doing.
I steeple my hands in front of my mouth, my two pointer fingers barely grazing my lips, and I try to push down the violence thrashing through my limbs. A little voice in my head is telling me to smack the shit out of him, but then again, it's like the angel on my other shoulder is telling me to calm down and think rationally.
It's hard to think when you're in Mama Bear mode.
Finally, I say, "I'll give you two options, Mr. Erikson. Just two."
A soft, sardonic chuckle escapes him as he removes his bottle-cap glasses and tosses them onto the top of his desk. Everyone around this school is terrified of Professor Erikson. I'm not. Maybe at the beginning of the school year, I had an aversion to pissing him off, but now, I really don't give a damn.
"Oh, really?"
I chortle. "Really."
"What might the two elusive options be, then?" He sits back in his chair, the soft leather creaking under his weight.
Neither of us says a word, allowing the ominous silence to wreak havoc on our sanity. I can feel the buildup, the tension, as it gains density and shrouds us in a thick cloud.
It's clear he's not moving on his standpoint, and it's clear that I'm too headstrong and determined to get to the bottom of it. Someone lined his pocket with money, and that someone is going to pay.
"One," I grit out, trying to reign in my temper. "If you don't tell me who turned that paper in, I will go to Landon Prince and have him investigate."
If I hadn't been looking at him, I wouldn't have noticed his flinch at the mention of Hunter's dad's name. Interesting. So, it seems he has a problem with them.
Of course, that's a lie, because I can't go to someone who won't even see me, nor would I e
ven want to, considering how they allowed Hunter to act back in high school. But I can toss that threat out. There are some people still in Golden Oaks who have no idea I had a fallout with the youngest heir.
I'm hoping for Professor Erikson's ignorance right now.
Covering up his nerves, he shoots a smug grin my way. "What's option two?"
Placing my hands flat on top of his faux wooden desk, I put as much menace into my glare as possible. People really shouldn't piss off the quiet people. Does them no good, because the quiet ones are the people you need to look out for. They don't fight with physical blows. They use their knowledge.
"Two?" I watch his Adam's apple rise and fall as he swallows hard. "If you don't tell me whose paper that is, I will go to the Dean about your extra-curricular activities that involve a certain track runner." His eyes round marginally. "Oh, yeah, you didn't think anyone knew about that, did you? It's not hard to put two-and-two together when she posts about it all over social media."
"It was H-Hunter," he scrambles to say, stammering on Hunter's name.
My features pinch together. "Hunter? He has nothing to gain from doing this."
Besides, he's been nice to me. Actually, he's been acting as if the last three years never happened, and everything is almost semi-normal. Of course, it can't be back to normal, because normal would mean that he and I are together. But it's as close as it has ever been since that night.
Professor Erikson shrugs. I can see the nervous perspiration beginning to gather at his temple and around the base of his neck. He's practically shitting himself.
"I don't know why, but it was Hunter," he rapidly rambles out. "Are you going to say anything about Kira's and my relationship?"
His eyes are wide and fearful, and right then, I know. I'd never say anything about them to anyone. It's not my place. But I needed to use that as an example to get him to fess up. Now that he has, I have no more use to hold that information hostage.
"No, I'm not going to say anything." I exhale. "Your secret is safe with me. But I do need to know where Hunter is, and where he's living, so I can pay him a little visit.”
Our Secret: A College Bully Romance (Golden Crew Book 1) Page 24