Though as terrible as it was of me to think, part of me wondered if it was true. If this intel came from Jill, it likely couldn’t be trusted. She was playing puppeteer with my brother like a pro.
“If that’s true, he needs help.” I wiped at the countertop in front of me. “Her staying with him is only fueling the problem.”
“I know,” he said again, defeated.
I studied his face in the shadowy light. Our mother’s eyes, our father’s nose, hair the same color as mine. Never once did I think he would be capable of this.
“I don’t even know what to say to you right now,” I told him. “I’m beyond disappointed. This is wrong and you know it.”
“You aren’t going to tell anyone, are you?”
“No.” I shook my head. “But I hope you wise up and do the right thing. I’m going to bed. Lock the door behind you, please.”
After we texted Monday evening, Chase sent me a copy of his essay and scammed me into coming over to help him with it the following day. And by scammed, I mean he was both incredibly charming and insufferably persistent until I relented. In other words, impeccably on-brand for him.
That’s not to say I minded. But that was a whole other ball of hockey stick wax.
Plus, it was a nice distraction from my rapidly disintegrating social life and the new Derek-Jill revelation.
That’s how I found myself in Chase’s bedroom for the second time, albeit under dramatically different circumstances. A bedroom that smelled of the delicious lingering leather-vanilla scent of his cologne. Had he applied said cologne before leaving to pick me up?
Combined with my three outfit changes while waiting for him and the sparkly pink lip gloss I swiped over my lips on my way out the door, there were some major questions as to what, exactly, we were doing.
But I wasn’t ready to unpack that yet.
I perched on the end of the bed across from the computer desk, rifling through my backpack for the printout I’d marked up with my suggestions. Chase faced me, straddling the computer chair, and turned his red Falcons baseball cap backward, then rested his arms on the seatback.
“I made a few edits.” I handed him a copy of his paper with my corrections and suggestions marked in red ink. Using track changes within Word would have been less work for both of us, but this way he had to do more heavy lifting by inputting the changes manually, rather than accepting them all with one click of a mouse button. While I didn’t mind helping him, I wouldn’t enable him, either.
Chase scanned the front page, then glanced back up at me with his dark eyes wide, like a deer in headlights. “Holy shit. I didn’t think it was that bad.”
“It’s not. You’ve got some good insights, and the conclusions are well-supported. It’s just a little…jumbled.”
“That sounds like a candy-coated way of saying it sucks.”
I shrugged. “My rough drafts are messy too. You have to revise and rewrite to polish a piece.”
“Ugh.” He folded his arms over the back of his chair again and hung his head, sighing dramatically. His forearms flexed, veins tracing their length. I watched, mesmerized, for a split second. Since when had I developed a thing for forearms? And had his hands always been that big?
“That sounds like so much work.”
“That’s sort of the point of schoolwork, Carter.”
Chase was a top-notch grinder—one of the grittiest players on the Falcons, known for his physical gameplay. He made life hell for our defense, cleared bodies out of the way for snipers to score, and won puck battles more often than not. For someone who was a powerhouse on the ice, he was awfully lazy when it came to school. He was intelligent, that was obvious; he just needed to apply himself.
“Not gonna lie; it’s incredibly hard to give a fuck about any of this knowing it won’t matter down the road.”
“It matters now,” I said. “I thought you were on probation.”
“I am. Dicks.” Chase rolled his eyes.
“What if you need to finish your degree later? You never know. You could get injured or something.”
“If that happens, I’ll have bigger problems than the lack of a degree. I’m basically unemployable in any other capacity.” Chase raised his dark eyebrows. “Can you picture me wearing khakis and working in a cubicle, James?”
“No,” I admitted. It was so ill-suited to him that it was almost comical.
“And let’s face it,” he said. “I’m way too corruptible to be a cop. So, for the greater good of society, help me polish this turd of a paper and keep my grades up enough to stay on the team. I have to get signed. It’s that or homelessness for me. There is no in-between.”
I shifted, criss-crossing my legs. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re a tad dramatic?”
“I prefer to think of it as having a zest for life.” His mouth tugged at the corners.
“You have something, that’s for sure.”
Chase got a gleam in his eyes that said he was definitely up to no good.
“You’re going to stay while I work on this, right?” He lowered his voice, a tactic he used, I realized, to get into my head…or maybe my pants. Yet, even knowing that, the voice totally worked. At least on the first part. Possibly a little of the second.
Maybe being in his bedroom wasn’t a good idea after all.
I raised an eyebrow, hiding all my inappropriate thoughts behind sarcasm. “You picked me up, so I’m not sure I have a choice.”
“That’s true.” He nodded. “Do any of us really have a choice? Or is free will merely an illusion?”
“I actually do have an exam to study for, so if you want company, there’s no need to get all philosophical on me. All you have to do is ask.”
I grabbed my textbook and binder and scooted back on the bed until I was sitting against the headboard. I wasn’t all that eager to spend time at my place, anyway. Lately, I felt like a stranger in my own home. Things were tense with Amelia and Jillian, and they were downright hostile when Paul was there, which was more often than not.
“You’re the best.” He spun around to face the computer, cracking his knuckles and stretching his neck. “I’m going to bang this out in no time.”
I suppressed a laugh as I bit back a dirty joke. Maybe I’d been spending too much time with Chase after all.
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 17
OceanofPDF.com
NEAR MISS
Bailey
“Time for a break,” Chase announced, shoving the keyboard tray back into place. He arched back in his chair, stretching out his long legs.
I glanced up from the bed, where I was sprawled out on my stomach reading my Data Journalism and Methods textbook. “But it’s only been an hour.”
“It’s five o’clock, which means it’s time to eat. We need brain food, James. It’s science.”
I groaned. “Let me guess, and then we’re going to need second dinner. And a snack. And a pencil sharpening break. Better yet, maybe we can go chop down a tree and handcraft some pencils so you don’t have to finish your essay.”
He grinned. “Probably, but let’s start with pizza.”
We abandoned our study materials and relocated downstairs. Chase hopped over the back of the couch, parkour-style, and plopped down beside me. It was a surprisingly nimble move for such a large human, even an athlete.
“Pizza will be here in twenty-five. Time for…video games?” He turned to me, head cocked.
“Sure.” I couldn’t focus on my dry as dirt textbook knowing food was on the way.
“Really?” His eyes lit up. “I was shit testing you. I didn’t think you’d say yes.”
“I know,” I said. “But I have three brothers. Didn’t exactly have anyone to play tea party with growing up. We played NHL ’07 all the time.”