Page 49 of Faking the Play

Jason might not be as smart as he pretended to be, but he wasn’t a complete idiot.

“I’m guessing he paid in cash,” I said.

Carl grinned. “Wire transfer.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Seriously?”

“Yup.” His grin widened. “And I took screenshots of everything. As soon as I agreed to sell him the articles, he startedgoing on about how if I tried to blackmail him or get him in trouble, he’d deny everything and say I plagiarized from him.”

“That does seem to be his MO,” I muttered. When Carl gave me a questioning look, I shifted the subject. “You wouldn’t happen to know anyone else he did this to, would you?”

“Actually, I do.”

Damn. I’d really hit the jackpot with this guy.

“When he was threatening me if I didn’t keep quiet about ‘helping’ him, he mentioned that he got a girl he dated kicked out of school when she kicked up too much of a fuss. He said they were freshmen. What was her name?” Carl frowned, thinking. “Wen. Chyou Wen.”

I jotted down the name and had Carl send me everything he’d kept from his interaction with Jason. Once we went our separate ways, I started searching for Chyou Wen.

By late afternoon, I’d met with the former CSU student and heard her story. A story I repeated to Ethan and Ryan on our way home from the gym.

“When he showed her the videos of the two of them having sex, she said she’d agree to write a paper for him, but it wasn’t enough.” I pulled into our parking space. “He used those videos for the entire year even though he kept promising to delete them. She ended up dropping out of school and telling him that if he posted those videos, she’d report what he did to CSU. He must’ve figured it’d be better to just move on because he left her alone after that.”

Ethan let out a low whistle.

“I’m going to kill the little bastard.” Ryan sounded like he’d just made a decision to do his laundry.

“Pretty sure that’d ruin your football career,” Ethan said.

“And I’m not sure I’d care.” Ryan ran his hands through his hair. “Please tell me we’re going to tell Amelia tonight. I don’t wanna keep this from her.”

“I’m pretty sure there’s a lot more people out there who’ve helped Jason cheat,” I said. “Either for money or because he blackmailed them. I wouldn’t put it past him to use a relationship either.”

“We can keep looking for them, if that’s what Amelia wants,” Ethan said. “But this thing with Amelia is so new. I don’t just hate the idea of lying to her. I think she might be upset if she found out we’d hidden shit from her.”

“This is exactly why I wanted to talk to you guys about this. It has to be a decision we make together,” I said. “And it sounds like none of us want to wait to talk to her about it.”

“If we start digging into more of this, she should be able to do it too,” Ryan said.

“Then let’s get her over here for an early dinner and tell her what I found.”

Chapter twenty-seven

Amelia

The guys inviting me over for pizza hadn’t surprised me. I didn’t know if we were going to have sex again tonight, but if this thing between the four of us was a relationship, having a casual night in without sex was normal. And given how strange the idea of a foursome like us was, a little bit of normal would be nice.

And normal was exactly what waited for me when I entered the apartment. We ate pizza and wings from the best place in Fort Collins while we sat on the couch and chatted about our days and what our plans were for the next few days.

I’d worried that having sex would make things awkward between us, but the only difference I found between this evening and other times we’d eaten together like this was that I didn’t feel self-conscious about leaning against Ryan or letting my hand linger on Ethan’s shoulder.

“So, there’s something else I did today that we need to talk about.”

The serious tone to Logan’s words made my stomach sink. For a brief moment, I thought he was going to tell me they’d allchanged their minds. That this was their way of letting me down easy.

What he said, however, wasn’t anything I possibly could’ve imagined.

“I’ve been looking into Jason’s academic history,” Logan said. “Something he said the other day made me think about how he’d accused you of cheating, and I had a feeling that maybe he was the one taking credit for work that wasn’t his.”

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