Billionaire in Rehab: The Complete Series

by Claire Adams

  “Okay. I'll see you there at three tomorrow,” he said with a smile, and with that he turned and walked off.

  “Yeah. See you then.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Emerson

  “Dude, that was such a bangin' party last night! Damn, bro, I'm surprised you managed to get up in time for class today! ‘Course, it would have been even better if little Miss Noise Patrol from next door hadn't come over and bitched about it.” Chris chuckled and shook his head. “Man, she's got a stick up her ass. I mean, don't get me wrong, she's smokin' hot and I'd bang her without a second thought, but, dude…such a whiner.”

  I shrugged. “It was kinda loud, dude.”

  “So? It was awesome music! I'm nailing my new sets, man! Those DJ classes are totally paying off. Hell, those bitches next door should’ve come over and paid me for the privilege of hearing the dope beats I was droppin’.”

  “Well, that's your opinion, but I overheard her talking to some guy in class about it today, and she wasn't happy. She might call the cops if you do it again.”

  “What?! Dude, what a bitch!”

  “She needs to study, man. That doesn’t make her a bitch. And as awesome as your beats are, they're not exactly conducive to studying, ya know.”

  “'Conducive to studying,’ huh Emerson? Bro, you sound like a nerd.”

  “Chris, college isn't a joke for me. I really want to get through this year with solid grades. I need to make up for last year's disappointments in that area.”

  “Well, it's not a damn joke for me, either, bro!”

  I raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You sure? Did you even go to a single class yesterday?”

  Chris folded his arms defensively across his chest. “I had a lot of important stuff to do!”

  “More important than actually passing your classes, huh?”

  “Whatever, man.” He turned to walk to his room. “I'll talk to you later, nerd,” he said and slammed the door shut behind him.

  I actually felt bad, even though I knew I was right. Chris needed to slow down with the constant partying and start taking his studies a little more seriously. He had come pretty close to flunking last semester and was pretty much guaranteed to flunk this one if he kept on like he was. Considering I hadn't done too well last semester, either, we both needed to buckle down. It didn’t help that I was a little concerned regarding what I'd overheard Brooke and the new guy — who I had to admit I felt an immediate dislike for — talking about. If she called the cops, we'd be in a world of trouble. Chris and I each had a couple of months to go before turning twenty-one and underage possession of alcohol wasn’t something I wanted to face the dean over, for more than one reason.

  My blood heated a little as I thought about that new guy and how quick he was to suggest Brooke call the cops. But what bothered me more was how open she was to his suggestion. She’d just met the guy and he seemed to be able to influence her. There was something in my gut that instinctively didn’t trust him. And, the way he’d eyed Brooke when she wasn’t looking only made me distrust him more. I’d seen guys like him before. He was hiding something.

  Also, I had to admit I was a little jealous about how easily he had gotten Brooke to open up in conversation. While it seemed that she was content to answer my questions with short, awkward, one-word sentences, she'd seemed pretty at ease when chatting with him.

  But what could I do about that? Not much. I could try to be a decent neighbor and a good lab partner. As much as I wanted to get to know Brooke better, it seemed that she wasn't interested in getting to know me and I guess I just had to accept that. Still, I was eager to see how our first lab session together would go. I decided I'd better brush up on my reading so I wouldn't look like a total fool when it came time to get down to business in the lab.

  With that thought in my mind, I went to my room, closed the door, and hit the books.

  ***

  “You're early,” Brooke said as I walked into the lab the next afternoon.

  “I am. So are you,” I replied with a smile.

  She responded with a strange half-smile. I couldn't tell if it was forced or if she was merely feeling a little shy. I went with the latter option. It was the option I was hoping for, at least.

  “You've done all the reading, right?” she asked leaning across the counter in a white lab coat. I tried not to think about it, but she looked pretty sexy in that thing, whereas I was fairly certain I looked like a complete dork in mine.

  “I have,” I assured her.

  “Brought all your notes? And, a pen and a notebook, of course? We've each got to record all of the details of the experiment.”

  “Yep! I was a boy scout once upon a time, and you know what they say about boy scouts!”

  “That you're all a bunch of nerds?” she replied with a wink and a grin.

  I laughed, feeling pleasantly surprised that the Ice Queen had something of a sense of humor, after all.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I replied. “The other thing they say.”

  “Always prepared,” she replied. “And you are?”

  “Totally prepared. I've got everything you need…I mean, I need,” I stammered, trying to recover from my Freudian slip. Brooke arched an eyebrow. I wanted to smack myself in the forehead.

  “Well, okay then. Let's get started, shall we?”

  She headed to the cabinet to get the beakers together and started setting everything up. Straight down to business. I felt a little disappointed, having hoped to have been able to at least get a little more conversation in. On the other hand, I did want to demonstrate that I was taking this class as seriously as she was.

  “Should I measure out the chemicals while you're doing that?” I asked.

  “Please do,” she replied, without looking up from what she was doing.

  I went about sorting the chemicals, carefully measuring the exact quantities we needed for our experiment.

  “Alright, I'm all set here,” she said. “How about you? Are you good?”

  I measured out the last of the potassium. “Yep. We're good on this side.”

  “Great. Write that down, then we'll get it going.”

  We both scribbled down the details needed, and we then put everything together in the main beaker and turned on the Bunsen burner.

  “Are you writing the chemical equations under each step or have you created a separate table for them?” I asked.

  “Separate table. It looks neater that way, but I think the prof is fine with either.”

  We watched as the concoction started to bubble.

  “Looks like the elements are starting to separate,” I remarked.

  Her face remained cool and expressionless. Strictly business seemed to be her attitude about this whole thing.

  “Yeah. It should only take another two minutes before the process is complete,” she responded.

  “You sure?”

  “I know it will.”

  “You know nothing, Jon Snow,” I replied with a grin.

  For the first time since I'd entered the lab she looked up and locked her eyes with mine. “What did you say?”

  “Oh, nothing,” I replied, feeling deflated, assuming my joke passed right over her head. “It was just a Game of Thrones reference. Just, you know, trying to get a bit of humor in here.”

  She chuckled, and I could see from the way her eyes lit up that her laughter was genuine.

  “You know nothing, Jon Snow,” she said, repeating my words with a smile. “He's my favorite character, you know. Him and Arya.”

  I smiled, realizing I may have just struck gold.

  “My favorite was Eddard — that is, until he lost his head at the end of season one.”

  “Oh my God, spoiler alerts please!” she exclaimed with mock horror.

  “Come on,” I chuckled, “if you know the line, you've already seen way past season one!”

  “Alright, alright,” she said. “I'm just messing with you.”

  I tried to keep the conversation going.
It felt good to finally connect on something with this girl.

  “So, as I was saying before I so selfishly gave away that massive spoiler, Eddard Stark was my favorite character, but now I'd have to say it's Tyrion.”

  “A Lannister always pays his debts,” she commented. “I have to say I'm pretty fond of Daenerys, too. She's come a long way since being sold as a bride to a Dothraki warlord in season one. I feel like she's really gonna start causing some proper chaos with those dragons of hers in the new season.”

  “Oh man, I literally cannot wait! She's gonna set shit on fire!”

  We had gotten so into our conversation that we hadn't noticed the chemical reaction in the beaker had started to intensify and was bubbling over the edges.

  “Oh no!” exclaimed Brooke as she saw this. “Looks like we're gonna set something on fire!”

  I leaned across the lab table and turned off the Bunsen burner. Immediately, the mixture started to recede back into the beaker.

  “Whew,” I said. “That could've been bad.”

  The smile that on Brooke's face while we had been talking about Game of Thrones had vanished and been replaced by a look of icy somberness.

  “It is bad. We've overcooked this. We should have been paying attention.”

  “That's alright, just dump that out, I'll measure out the quantities again and we'll repeat the experiment.”

  She seemed rather upset, and I couldn't help but wonder whether the fact that we'd messed up the experiment was upsetting her or the fact that she'd let her guard down in front of me. Perhaps it was a bit of both.

  “Alright,” she conceded, “I'll get rid of this mess. Get those quantities measured out again and this time, no talking. We pay close attention and get things right. Got it?”

  Her tone was stiff and almost authoritarian — a total reversal of the easy, open, and chatty Brooke I'd witnessed just moments earlier, and all I could do was mumble a quiet agreement.

  We repeated the experiment in silence. When we had completed it successfully, she cleaned up the equipment without a word and packed it all away by herself.

  Things had gone from light-hearted to severe in the blink of an eye. And somehow, I felt as if she was blaming me for the chill in the air, even though I felt like it was coming from her and her alone. I had no idea why was I feeling this way, anyway. She really wasn't my type. Having feelings for her considering how she was treating me didn’t make sense. But for some reason, there was something there.

  “Got all your notes?” she asked.

  “Um, yeah. I've got everything.”

  “Alright, I guess that's that then. See you in class tomorrow.”

  Without another word, she turned and walked out, leaving me alone with my bruised ego…and my disappointment.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Brooke

  I walked out of the lab wondering what had just happened. Had I just bonded with Emerson? He caught me off guard when he threw that Game of Thrones line at me. He did not seem like the type who would be into my favorite show. Initially, I thought he may have started the conversation as a way to get to me, that maybe he'd heard the show playing from my apartment as he walked past and did a bit of Googling to learn about the show.

  But he knew a little too much about the characters and it didn't seem like the kind of thing Emerson would do. He may have come across as a lot of things, but he never came across as having a creepy stalker vibe. If I told Leslie about it, she’d insist it was yet another act of fate pushing us together.

  I'd never believed too much in the concept of fate or destiny, but things were getting more than a little uncanny here. I wondered what I'd find out next about him — that he, too, had a little obsession with balcony gardening or only drank milk if it had ice in it?

  I tried to force the thoughts out of my mind; this was exactly what I didn't need. This semester was all about focus — total concentration. I was going to nail it, get straight As, be top of the class. Throwing some fleeting attraction to a guy into the equation could wreck everything. Last time I fell hard for a guy, things came apart rather quickly and in an incredibly spectacular manner. There was no way I could open myself up again, not after having my heart ripped into a million shreds by Andrew. I'd been sewing those shreds back together with painstaking care for a long time, and I didn't want all that hard work to come unraveled.

  So many thoughts swirled around my head as I walked home. I was fried, in part because of the incident at the lab that had ended my hectic day, so it was only by the time that I reached my apartment building that it suddenly hit me — I had left my phone in the lab.

  “Shit!” I swore. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit! Ughhhh. How could I be so stupid!?”

  Panic hit with alternating flashes of clarity. I needed my phone, but would it even still be there? The lab wasn't locked until six o'clock in the evening and, as far as I had seen, there weren't any security cameras, which meant anyone could just walk in, pick up my new iPhone and pocket it without there being any evidence of their crime. Of course, what had me so upset wasn't that the phone itself would be stolen. It was expensive, yes, but it was an item that could be replaced. What had me upset was the idea of what was on it that was irreplaceable — especially, photos and videos of my grandfather who had passed away only a year before.

  I sat down on the steps of my apartment building and put my head in my hands. It was one of those moments you can’t explain when it feels like everything that’s gone wrong in your life floods back in at once and you just want to break down. I felt defeated. It took all I had to keep myself from bursting into tears right there. Of course, I could turn around and run back to campus to see if the phone was still there or check to see if some good Samaritan had picked it up and turned it in to campus security. But in that moment, there was no way I could handle a jog back to campus.

  I was moments away from a breakdown when a familiar sound stopped me — a motorcycle roaring down the street.

  Emerson.

  He pulled in to his usual parking spot and dismounted, running a hand through his hair after he removed his helmet. To make matters worse, he saw me and made a beeline straight for me.

  Great.

  He was the last person I wanted to see, but I was going to have to deal with him because I didn't have the energy to get up and make an excuse to leave.

  My heart started beating faster, way faster, when I saw that he was pulling something from his pocket as he approached. My phone!

  “Hey, Brooke, you left this in the lab! I saw it lying on the floor near the stool you'd been sitting on as I was leaving. Must've fallen out of your bag or something.”

  Relief hit me with tsunami force. Before I could stop myself, I sprang to my feet, ran up to Emerson, and threw my arms around him. I probably held on a couple of moments longer than I should have. The warmth of his arms tightening around me, after a moment of shock on his part, made me realize what I’d done. I quickly disengaged. His gaze locked on me as I slid my arms back to my sides. There was a look of total surprise on his face. He hadn't expected that any more than I had.

  We stood with gazes locked for a few tense moments. I broke the trance by reaching for my phone, but that only intensified the awkwardness when our hands touched. I swallowed hard to compose myself.

  “I, umm, thank you so much, Emerson,” I finally said, calming myself. “I was so worried. I thought it was gone for sure.”

  He lightened up, becoming his usual chipper self after our moment of whatever it was.

  “No worries. Just looking out for a friend. Just be a bit more careful next time, huh?”

  “Thank you, thank you.”

  “And maybe don't rush to get out of the lab? Look, I know you're busy and focused and everything, but you need to breathe a little,” he offered with a sympathetic smile.

  “I know, I know. Sometimes I feel like I'm way too stressed about school and so focused on classes and studying that I forget about everything else. And then I do
stupid things…like leaving my phone in a lab.”

  His laugh was warm and endearing. “Don't worry about that,” he said with a wink. “You've got me there to cover you!”

  I couldn't hold back the smile that took over my cheeks. “Thanks again, Emerson.”

  “Not a problem. Hey, um, I was wondering…there are a few things I'm really not too clear about in some of the reading for chemistry class tomorrow. It always helps me to talk about it with someone, kind of hash it out. Gets the neurons firing. Would you, um, would you be able to help me with some of it later?”

  “Emerson, you just rescued my phone. Of course I'll help you.”

  He grinned. “Awesome. I'll come over at eight then, if that's okay?”

  “That's fine. See ya then.”

  “See ya!” he reaffirmed, and then jogged toward his apartment as I wondered what I'd just gotten myself into.

  ***

  “So you and Emerson are gonna be study buddies as well as lab partners, huh?” Leslie intoned, flashing me a cheeky grin. “I wonder what the next step is?”

  “Come on, Les, you know there won't be a next step. And, we're not study buddies, alright? I'm just helping him out this one time. That's it. It's a once off thing. I mean, he rescued my phone. One student returning a favor to another.”

  “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

  I crumpled a ball of paper from my notebook and tossed it across the room at her. She barely managed to duck and avoid it.

  “That's enough from you, smartass!” I said in a tone of mock authority just as there was a knock on the door. Les checked her watch and shot me a knowing glance.

  “Well, he’s either punctual or eager. I’m going to go with both! Should I let Prince Charming in with your glass slipper?”

  “You will do nothing of the sort. You are banned from the kingdom for the evening.”

  She giggled. “Fine. I'll go sit in my room. I gotta memorize a whole bunch of lines for tomorrow's audition, anyway. You two can have the living room to yourselves. Don't get too rowdy in here, though,” she said with a wink as she got up and went to her room.