Page 12 of Heartbreak Kings
“Okay. I understand. I get it.” Maybe it was boring of me to spend my Friday night catching up on things like food and sleep instead of attacking my homework or planning my next blog post. But she was right. I needed both. “It’s a little hard to balance everything,” I admitted finally.
“Balancing things is a lifelong fight. But if you do not take care of yourself, you will get sick again. I have seen it happen since you were a child, always driving yourself. Take it a little easier. I don’t want to have to pull you out for the semester because of pneumonia.” I heard her putter around as she slowly calmed down.
“I remember.” Through much of high school, in my quest for scholarships, I had driven myself to hospitalization twice. Once from pneumonia, once from exhaustion. I didn’t want to go that way again, and I didn’t want her to have to worry that I would. “I’ll work on doing better, Mama. I promise.”
Once I had her off the phone, though, my gaze turned back toward Blake’s image, which smiled enigmatically back at me from my computer screen.What do you want?I wondered, before texting Billy to see if he had gone down for supper yet.
He hadn’t and met me down in the darkening quad, where a thin stream of tired students was still winding toward the dining hall at almost seven at night. “How are you doing?” he asked me at once as I walked up, and we joined the makeshift line. “I heard another guy tried to humiliate you in class.”
I scoffed. “Sweetie, he only ended up humiliating himself. If he wants to sound smarter than me, he has to do the work to know the material better. And guys like that never bother.”
He cracked a grin. “Took him to school, huh?”
“I only had to read a paragraph of the text back to him, then the teacher took over and did the rest. The guy was a dumbass.”
“Well, you know, the dumber the ass, the bigger the ego.” He sounded cheerful, but he was also walking more slowly than I was used to, his hands shoved in his pockets.
“What is it?” I laid a hand on his shoulder and felt him tense under it.
“Alpha Omega isn’t accepting any more pledges this year. All the slots went to the guys with connections.” He glowered, a mixture of shame and frustration on his face, and I felt my body tense.
“You applied? I didn’t know.” I didn’t know what would make him want to either. I watched him worriedly as he grimaced.
“Yeah, I thought you could use an inside man, after we found out all these guys in Alpha Omega are the ones coming for you so often.” He gave me a frustrated smile. “Sounded like a good idea.”
“Well, it’s the best fraternity on campus, and the one with the most power. But I’m not sure about the company. How much do you know about the guys who run it?” We followed the line inside the bright dining hall, which was as tacky and impersonal as a hospital cafeteria in looks but served excellent food.
“The Gentlemen’s Club? Thought we went over them a little. Do you think they’re involved with all this? It seems a little low-rent for them.” He peered at me as we grabbed our trays.
“I don’t know. Guys like that don’t keep their positions through petty squabbles over campus policy changes. But a lot of their pledges, who somehow got in ahead of you” —which pissed me off— “were at that protest. Including that one creep.” I hesitated, wondering how much to tell him about Blake. “Also, one of those Gentlemen’s Club guys was there watching.”
“Okay, that’s a little weird. Did he show that he had a problem with you?” Billy’s brown eyes turned to me, filled with worry.
“No. Actually, he tried to chat with me during my ethics seminar.” And ever since then, I hadn’t been able to get him out of my head. I wasn’t used to a successful, confident man turning on the charm with me. “He did the same when we had English together. He gave me a card with his phone number.” And I had nearly called it about eight times in the last day. But Billy didn’t need to know about my ridiculous, impractical, risky crush.
“Let me tell you what I know about the Gentlemen’s Club, okay?” He started piling samples of nearly everything he walked past on his tray: roast beef, fried chicken, potatoes, salad, fruit salad, egg salad, cheese, two rolls, far more than it looked like he could eat. I went for about half as much, and it was still a hearty meal. As we worked on filling up our trays, he talked. “Those five guys have more money and success than men twice their age. They’re not quite billionaires yet, but all their fathers are as far as I know, and every one of those guys is well on his way.They’ve got campus politics on lock. One reason they may have gotten involved in this mess with you is because they didn’t see it coming. They’re control freaks, Sabine.” He hesitated, then added a third slice of pie to his tray. When I blinked slowly at him, he glanced my way. “What?”
“Are you smuggling food to several starving children you’ve got stashed in your dorm room?” I asked him solemnly.
He snickered and shook his head. “No, I’m just hungry.”
“Where do you fit it all?” We found a small table on the periphery and sat down at it. I scanned my immediate surroundings, wary of the wrong familiar faces. Fortunately, it looked like we had avoided anyone troublesome by coming in late.
“I have a second stomach just for sweets,” he declared with a simple grin as he started buttering his first roll.
We tucked in, and I found myself hungry. I gave it a few minutes, downing my sandwich bite by big bite, and then circled our conversation back around to Blake and his crew. “So, what about the Gentlemen’s Club?”
He finished cleaning off one of the chicken legs on his plate, chewed, and swallowed. “Besides the money and influence? They’re also the guys to beat on the academic honor rolls. The five of them alone have been fighting for the top spots for the last three years.”
“So, they’re used to running things.” And they were brilliant, rich, in control—everything their worst followers weren’t.
“Basically. I doubt they see you as a threat, and I don’t know why Blake is sniffing around you. I don’t trust the guy.” He took another bite of his gigantic meal and chewed slowly, staring at me thoughtfully. “I don’t think you should either.”
I knew he was right. I knew there couldn’t be anything innocent about Blake’s interest in me.
But once I got back to my dorm room, went through my nightly routine, and crawled into my bed, I started thinking about the hot, tasty, and probably terrible-for-me Blake again.
Chapter 6
