“How did you take care of it?”
Fuck. How can I answer her? She doesn’t even know how loaded a question she’s asked. I can’t tell her. This is a bridge too far, one secret too many to share. I look away from her, over at the cufflinks on my bedside stool, and I hear Grandpa telling me to go for it, the way he always did when I was dropping back for a pass, unsure if I should air it out.
“Tell me, Jack.”
Holding my breath, I start slowly, keeping my eyes away from hers.
“I’ve been writing three term papers for every one I have assigned to me. I sell them for good money online—not at SPU. I make enough to pay the bills here and live like a pauper at school. I’ve been smart enough not to get personally involved in any transaction, using a cut-out. Poor enough so I’ve had to use the computer at the public library. Smart enough to create a different style for each paper and include a few small flaws to get the appropriate and believable grade for the client.”
She takes a shuddering breath, her eyes sad. She whispers, “How long have you …” She doesn’t have the stamina to finish her question.
“Since high school. Since my grandfather passed away and we lost his Social Security income. In the beginning my clients were from the local prep school. The kids there were smart enough, but lazy damn fucks with a ton of money they treated like confetti. Ironically, I got the idea from my social studies teacher. When he covered my lunch one day, he said too bad I couldn’t put my outstanding talent for writing term papers to good use making money.
“That’s how I financed life through the end of my senior year at Moreland except in the summer, when I worked as a mason. I didn’t mind the work because it kept me outside and kept me in shape and my boss let me take time off for football camp. A couple of the other guys on the team worked for him too, so it was cool. We made good money. The other guys saved up and bought cars with their money and me? I paid for plumbing repairs and the cable bill.”
“Shit, Jack.” She sits up and I immediately snake an arm around her and pull her back down.
“In for a penny,” I say, keeping a smile on my face to hide my terror that she’ll jump from bed and run out the door and never come back.
“You’re not still selling term papers, are you?” Her voice shakes, squeaks high, and her face pales.
I nod. “One last paper. I promise. I need to do it. I can pay off the loan for Mom’s last stint in rehab and then make do with a regular job next semester.”
“I can give you—”
Red flares through my brain like all my blood vessels have burst, flooding my eye sockets. Pride triggers rage before I can talk it down. Moving fast, I sit up and squeeze her thigh with desperate force.
“No fucking way am I taking a penny from you. Don’t even think it, let alone say it.”
“Why? Because it’s Dowd money?” She sits up. “And let’s face it—you hate my father as much as he hates you—especially now.”
“I don’t hate him. I despise him and I’d love to punch his fucking face all over again, but I don’t hate him. How could I, Joni? When I see you in him. You have his eyes.” She calms, but my heart speeds up because I hadn’t even realized what I’m saying is the truth until she shook me with her accusation. She collapses into my arms, her hug filled with desperate strength.
“Promise me it’ll be your last term paper for hire. Swear to me, Jack.”
“I swear it on Grandpa’s soul.” I stare at his cufflinks and curse my father as I remember my grandpa and the fact that he let my dad go.
Chapter 21
Joni
One week until the Heisman Award Ceremony in New York
We drive back to campus in Jack’s truck after I pick up the rest of my things at home. Dad’s not there and I’m mixed about not seeing him. Mostly because I want a chance to punch him in the nose myself. Mom is weepy, which for her is progress. She’s friendly to Jack and he’s his charming cool self. I don’t blame him for holding back. We don’t take off our coats.
The ride is quiet, but my tension is gone, my comfort level growing with every mile and minute we put between us and Moreland.
“I understand why you stayed away from home all this time,” I say.
He snorts and squeezes my thigh. Before long we pull into the driveway of BMOC House. It looks like most of the guys are back from Thanksgiving break.
Jack opens the door and says, “I’ll get your things.” He answers the question I don’t have a chance to ask.
My insides get squishy and my head spins. Am I ready to move into Jack’s room with him? But the real question is whether I’m going to say no to him. The answer is hell no. I want to stay with him, and not because I’m on some kind of amusement ride and I don’t want to get off.
Thought it feels like that some days, it’s more now. The teeth of commitment have sunk into me and there’s no sense kidding myself or pretending otherwise.
I want him and I mean to keep him, hold onto him. I want Jack to belong to me as much as we both know I belong to him. These are my thoughts as I follow him inside the front door, carrying one small bag as he carries the rest, making some sort of statement to forestall any commentary the guys might have.
“Jack. You get new luggage?” someone says, laughing. Then I walk in and stand next to him.
“Joni’s staying for the rest of the semester,” Jack says to the room where six guys are sitting, watching some sports show. No one makes a comment. A few guys nod and grunt their acceptance. But Tristan and George aren’t there and I’m anxious for their reactions.
Not to mention what Dooley and Izzy are going to think.
But then I know Dooley will be thrilled and see the benefits. Izzy? I’m a little sick reflecting on how this will affect her. I want to keep our friendship. And the last thing I want to do is cause her pain. I wonder if there’s a way to keep this from her. There’s only a few more weeks left in the semester.
Rushing ahead of him, I take the key and open the door to his room and he drops the bags.
“Welcome home, princess. How about if we christen the mattress?” He pulls me into him and kisses me soundly. The door is still open and George storms in.
“What the fuck do we have here?” he says. Jack raises his middle finger as he maintains a tight hold on me.
“I hope you don’t mind,” I say.
“It doesn’t matter if George minds,” Jack says. “You’re staying with me.”
George comes in and inspects my luggage. “Fine by me,” he says. “She’ll upgrade your room by staying here. It already smells better.”
“Someone said you were back,” Tristan says as he knocks on the open door. He nods at me with a smile. “Welcome to BMOC House, Joni. You’re an improvement—”
“What the fuck is it with you guys?” Jack says. “Since when did you get so sensitive about the condition of my room?”
George snorts. “We’ve been worried about how you live like a street hick from the beginning. All that’s missing is the barrel of trash lit with a fire under an overpass.” He sits on my Louis Vuitton Horizon 70 luggage, testing its sturdiness.
“I like the monk vibe of Jack’s room,” I say more in support of Jack than his style. Or maybe they’re one and the same.
“It’s clean,” he says as he dumps the contents of his backpack and duffel on his mattress. Tristan sits on the only other chair in the room and then bounces up.
“Did you want to sit?”
“No. Go ahead. I’m going to use the ladies’ room.” I take my bag and leave.
“You’re going to have to walk a long way to find one of those,” George shouts after me in a laughing voice. In truth, I want to give Jack a chance to chill out with his friends. They’re worried about him because they’re not stupid and I wonder exactly how much they know about him, how much he’s kept hidden.
After dinner the next day the guys have Monday night football pizza delivery and we leave the guys downstairs to swill pizza and
beer and watch football on the giant television.
Walking up the stairs, Jack follows me, watching my ass, so I sway and laugh when he groans.
“I heard one of the guys making a bet about how long I stay. I hope this … situation isn’t going to make you uncomfortable.” He laughs and opens the door for me, then shuts us in.
“You are the least uncomfortable thing in my life. Besides, do you really think I care what anyone else thinks? If they don’t like it they can move out. I don’t think they will though. We have a good thing here and you only make it better. You heard George and Tristan. The fuckers weren’t kidding. They think you’re good for me. Maybe they know something.” He waves at the new bedding on the mattress. I’ve added a mattress pad, giving it more height and cushion, two comforters, and new pillows. I brought some other things over to the room, including my rocking chair, candy dish full of chocolates and a plush area rug. Dooley helped me bring the things over and he agrees not to mention it to Izzy. We’ll wait until after Christmas break.
“Of course they do,” I say. “They’re right.”
“Fucking A.” He kisses me, nibbles on my ear, his signature move that I’ll never ever get tired of as I shiver. “If anything, they think you’re crazy for staying here. That’s what they’re betting on. Whether you’ll come to your senses. But most of them know better than to bet against me. I’m known for making women senseless.”
I laugh. “I have sense. I’m getting a B in calculus, aren’t I?”
He laughs. “That’s right. You’re with me in an elaborate scheme to get a calculus grade.”
Giddiness takes me as he pulls me onto the mattress in that drop move he’s developed to cushion my fall.
“I need to do some work, princess.” He grabs his computer and I settle along his side watching him tap away. It looks like he’s working on a term paper for hire, but I don’t ask. I slide my hand inside his pants because it’s always where it wants to go.
“Hey, I’m working here.” He has the computer balanced on his tight abs while he types. I’m reading along because the paper is fascinating and how he switches windows to research the facts as he goes is so quick and precise and efficient.
“That’s the problem,” I say. “Watching you work turns me on.”
He groans as I squeeze his cock, moving my hand further down into his sweats to cup his balls. He puts the laptop aside, finally, and pulls my head close until his lips crush mine.
Bang, bang. “Hey Jack,” George shouts through the door. “You got a visitor. I think you need to talk to him.”
“Fuck off.” Jack barely lifts his mouth from mine to shout back and I can’t help the giggle as his words hit my mouth, vibrating through me.
“No can do.” This time it’s Tristan’s voice. “You need to come out and talk. It’s Voland and it’s serious.” His voice is clipped and angry.
“Fuck—sorry,” he says. “It must have something to do with the Heisman voting.” He talks in a low voice as he separates us, rolling from the mattress. I straighten out. He goes to the door and opens it.
“Send him up,” he says to Tristan. George is there peering over Jack’s shoulder at me, no doubt trying to get a glimpse of something he shouldn’t, but I’m fully dressed. I raise my middle finger at him. A bad habit I’ve picked up in the short time I’ve been staying at BMOC House.
“You want to talk to him up here? In your room?” Tristan says, flashing his eyes in my direction.
Jack’s about to answer him when his phone buzzes. He slips it out and looks at it.
“It’s Voland,” he says. His face is stone, but I can see his stress, his clenched jaw. I can feel the tension wafting from him, infecting the room.
“Maybe you should talk to him alone,” I say. “See what he wants.”
Tristan nods. George says, “No fucking kidding.”
“Give me a minute,” he says to them and closes the door.
Turning back to me, he stares for a long minute, studying, weighing, and then he nods. He texts something and then he gets dressed. Throwing on his pea coat, his hair messy, his sea-blue eyes dark and ominous, his face heartbreakingly handsome and brave, he takes my chin in his hand and kisses me.
“Don’t wait for me.” Then he turns and leaves me in his formerly spartan room turned love shack. But it feels desolate now because he’s deserted me. And I have the irrational feeling that he’s in danger, going to his doom.
“No, don’t go, Jack.” I whisper the words to no one, sorry that I suggested he leave.
Chapter 22
Jack
“Let’s go for a walk, Jack,” Voland says. He’s standing in the kitchen near the back door. Majik has her eyes on him. She knows a threat when she sees one. I pat her shoulder as I walk by.
“It’s too fucking cold outside for a walk.”
“Okay. We’ll drive. We have a few things to talk about.” He keeps his eyes steady and confident on mine, but I don’t flinch. I nod. My nerves on edge, my danger sensors are high, but it’s not like the guy is going to jump me. He’s no physical threat, so I calm the adrenaline and follow him out the door.
I turn and wink at Majik. “I won’t be long.” She doesn’t look reassured. That annoys me, tickling the red flag sensor in the back of my mind, but I can’t work up the internal siren to respond. He hurries to an old gray Volvo parked out front and I get in the passenger side, immediately pushing the seat back as far as it can go. Once I pull the door closed, the stench of cigarette smoke and stale greasy food fills my nostrils.
“You spend a lot of time in your car?”
“How’d you guess? You might make a good investigative reporter,” he says. I shrug.
“I might be good at a lot of things. I’m a smart guy.”
“Then why are you throwing your life away to make a few bucks selling term papers?”
I stop breathing and let his words settle. He starts the car and it takes more self-control than standing in a collapsing pocket with the entire defensive line coming down on me to not jump out of the car right now.
He turns the key in the ignition and starts the car. “That’s what I figured.”
“What do you figure, Voland? Where did you come up with this idea?” Congratulating myself on speaking a complete sentence when I feel like puking, I shove my hands into my pockets to hide the shaking. He pulls away from the curb.
“I have a friend in the FBI.”
“Congratulations on having a friend,” I say, forcing myself to rise to the occasion as he drives to the stop sign and turns right.
“Yeah. A kid I knew in college—and don’t congratulate me for going to college.”
I snort. A mantle of unreality starts floating around me like I’m in the twilight zone, leading someone else’s life again. If I thought I’d outrun my past without getting scathed, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe last weekend’s exercise in rewriting my life, having my past turned upside down, was only a prelude and this week I’m doomed to have my future turn sideways.
“He’s working on a project in cybercrimes and I don’t know a lot about it because he can’t tell me, but he knows I write the college sports beat. He tells me it involves academic fraud. The sale of term papers to students is a big business online, a well-paying side hustle.”
“Don’t worry, I don’t need to buy term papers. I have it covered.”
“I know. You’re really good at term papers. You’re always in the library, right? Straight-A student. Told me yourself.”
“Not a crime. Big leap to accusing me of selling term papers.”
“It would be except for two facts.” He pulls into the parking lot of Wildbeasts Pizza, throws the car into park, and leaves it running with the heater cranked up. The quaking inside me doesn’t come from the cold and I tense my muscles to try and control it.
“Fact one: you’re poor. Dirt poor. Aside from your scholarship money, which pretty much only covers school and living expenses during the school year, all you have is
income from your minimum wage summer job and a few bucks a week your mother scrapes together, or so you say. As far as I can tell, her lights are still on and the bank hasn’t foreclosed on her house—which I grant you is very modest.” I snort a laugh. I’m looking out the windshield at the neon Wildbeasts sign, watching it flash, concentrating on not losing my shit, determined to hear him out and admit to nothing.
“The second fact is that St. Paul University is one of the schools that showed up in the feds’ web net of IP locations where papers were being sold out of.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah. They can get very specific on identifying computer locations and they narrowed it down to two. The library is one of them—made me think of you.” He pauses and waits a beat, so I turn and look at him, hearing the beats of my heart so loud in my ears I’m not sure I’ll hear him when he opens his mouth.
“You want to know what the other location is?”
I don’t say anything. I don’t even nod or blink.
He says, “BMOC House.”
My heart jackhammers and dizziness hits me. My chest gets so tight I can’t breathe. Blinking my eyes, the survival instincts that I forgot about, the ones that had me scrounging for food at the back doors of restaurants, kick in and I suck in air and clench my jaw. Breathe and listen. Don’t lose your shit now. The Heisman award ceremony is less than a week away.
“Nothing to say?” He pauses a beat. I remain silent while my head spins, wondering what he wants from me, why he’s telling me all this.
Big Man on Campus: an Enemies to Lovers College Romance (Big Men on Campus Book 1) Page 27
