Page 39 of A University of Betrayal

“So that means she lives there alone, without her family?”

I didn’t like the idea of Mum sending me to the Blairs so that I could finally become the member they saw in me. And Mia was three years younger than me.

“Dad’s moving to our old house.”

“You lived there?” I asked. Something had been there, but I had forgotten it. I felt as if Julian didn’t want to talk about it either because he said, “Yes... but that was a while ago...” and ran his fingers through his tousled brown hair in embarrassment.

“Why did you move away in the first place?”

It was worth a try.

“You always ask so many questions,” he replied after a short pause in silence, as if I were an annoying little child.

“Because I’m interested in why things are the way they are.” Why didn’t anyone understand that? “Everyone wants me to be part of this... mess and at the same time, no one ever tells me anything.”

I vented my frustration at my mother without naming her. I didn’t want her to be awake and listening to us. It was already eleven pm.

“Maybe there’s a reason for that, nosy girl from California,” he joked, earning a deadly glare from me.

“What are you reading?” he asked, and I remembered the letter from my professor that was resting in my hands.

“Um... something I really shouldn’t have read.”

I folded up the paper and slipped it back into the envelope.

“Ouh, ouh,have you been snooping on your mother?” he teased, proud of himself for having caught me.

“I don’t do that.”

“You may be able to lie toher,but you can’t lie tome,young lady.”

“What did you just call me?”

I looked at him indignantly. He just laughed as if he had intended to, and at that moment, his shiny green eyes reminded me of those of a small, cheeky boy. As if we were just children meeting somewhere secretly in the night and getting up to mischief.

His dimples reminded me of those of the woman in Mum’s picture. Cheeky and cute.

“Come on.” He pointed to the object in my hand. “Now you’ve made me curious.”

He blinked mischievously at me.

I actually toyed with the idea of showing him the letter. On the one hand, I didn’t want to be alone with such a secret, but on the other hand, there was the professor. He probably wouldn’t even want me to get my hands on it. No one, apart from his mysterious lover, should know about his feelings.

In the end, an intuitive impulse made me decide to give the letter to Julian. Something about him made me trust him.A mistake?

“Can you catch?”

“The question is whether you can throw,” he said with a grin, and I gave him mychallenge-acceptedlook. I threw the envelope. Julian was about to lean forward to meet me, but my envelope flew at breakneck speed straight into the moving box behind him.

He looked at me for two seconds, then turned around and reached into the box. “Bayla, how...”

“Come on, don’t make a big deal out of a toss.”

He looked at me for a moment, as if he wanted to say something, but then turned his attention to the letter.

“Who’s Alice?” was his first question, which I could only answer with a shrug. I hadn’t thought about that name before, but now that he’d mentioned it...

Julian turned the envelope and his look became more serious.

---