Page 15 of Wicked Surrender

Oh, fuck no.

I froze, trying to let this sink in.

Did he just sayJason Reeves?

I blinked, willing my mouth to move so I could ask him to clarify.

This had to be a joke.

He wantedmeto tutor the campus bad boy who was trying to hit a record for virgin conquests, as his frat brothers called it?

The asshole who hosted infamous parties and didn’t care about studying at all but loved being mean and bullying those he thought were weaker?

“Did you say…” I cleared my throat as dread pooled in my stomach.

Please no. Nothim.

“I said tonight, Laura.” He raised his pen to indicate the door. “You’re dismissed.”

Fuck.

I turned to leave, my stomach tense and my heart racing in trepidation of having to spend a single second with Jason Reeves.

6

JASON

Facing a renewed and present threat of being kicked out of college, I made a serious effort for the rest of the day. I would keep calling and texting my parents for the expected bail-out. I had yet to reach them, but I had to. And they had to come through. I refused to believe they’d cut me off now after not wanting to deal with me my whole life.

I attended all of my classes, but that was it. The key word wasattended. I didn’t pay much attention to any of them, too stuck in a spiral of anger.

All I could think about was how unfair this was. How Dean Chen didn’t realize he was only poking the bear by forcing me through some bullshit recovery program.

Tutoring?

I scoffed again, zoning out at another lecture in the afternoon.

The last time that I let myself be “tutored”, it was when Dennis and Rory hired a Scandinavian hooker for me as a birthday present on my twenty-first birthday. She’d “taught” me how to master the art of using toys that the young, naïve college girls never learned about or wanted to mess with. It seemed that anal was something of an acquired taste, and a taboo one at that.

Thatkind of education was fine.

But a tutor for all these classes I was behind in?

Fuck this.

I wasn’t stupid. I used to have good grades. Even though I was in my fifth year as a pre-med, I wasn’t a moron after the classes I had taken.

All that was lacking was my desire to give a shit anymore. After William left college, I let this bitter anger take over. It marked the shift from wanting to study or learn to wanting to make Dean Chen regret ruining my brother’s life.

Drinking and partying soothed my frayed nerves that my anger battered over and over again.

Fucking tutored.

I left at the class’s dismissal to meet up with my friends for a late lunch, insulted by the idea that I had to get special treatment and be tutored like I was a fucking idiot or something.

And worst of all, who would be the one to tutor me?

I ate with Kevin and Rory, who wanted an account of what happened at the dean’s meeting. Once I filled them in, they were relieved that it wasn’t as bad as they feared. We weren’t kicked out of the frat house. We could still have parties.

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