Page 134 of His Reckless Freshman

I want to fucking kill that guy!

Don’t let it show. Check yourself, man.

She glances at me, then nods, her eyes filling with tears. “I’m sorry I fell into his trap.” Her expression crumples and I move toward her, capturing her against my chest when she turns to pace back toward my bed.

“You didn’t do anything wrong.” My voice is strained and gruff. It’s hard to speak when the mantra kill, kill, kill is ringing in my ears.

“I didn’t even know.” She sniffs against my chest. “He hasn’t threatened me yet. He might not have a recording of me, I’m not sure. I just…” She sucks in a quick breath, then wraps her arms around my waist and clings tight. “If he does, he… Maybe he’s just sitting on it, waiting for the right moment to use me.”

“I won’t let him,” I growl, a second away from demanding his address when she pulls out of my arms, that determined fire back in her gaze.

“Neither will I. And right now, I have a huge advantage, because he doesn’t know that I know about any of this.” Stepping out of reach, she starts to pace again, moving from the door to my desk this time. “I need to use that somehow. I need to find a way into his office so that I can get that evidence and then turn it against him before he hurts anyone else.”

“Sneak into his office?” I frown. “What? No, Jolie, that’s a terrible idea. You can’t do that.”

“Why not?” She whips around to face me. “I’m a journalist. It’s my responsibility to expose bad people like this.”

She’s so earnest in her argument, I have to look away from her. I don’t want to burst her bubble or anything but… “You’re not…” I shake my head. “I know you want to be one and you’re working toward that, but you’re not some hotshot investigator. You can’t just throw yourself into the line of fire.”

“But—”

“This guy needs to be taken down properly, through the right channels, so that he can actually be disciplined and charged. What he’s doing is illegal, and he needs to go down for that. If you sneak into his office and get that information by breaking and entering, then none of that will be admissible in court. You’ll be handing him an out. This isn’t a movie. You can’t just take things into your own hands like this.”

She doesn’t like my answer, and I can feel our first argument brewing as she crosses her arms and seethes, “I can’t just do nothing.”

43

JOLIE

Ben closes his eyes, dipping his chin like he’s disappointed in my answer. “We need to do this properly. Inform the police and⁠—”

“I can’t take this to the police! If he gets one whiff of what I’m up to, he could post all the videos online, and I won’t risk that.”

“All the videos?” His head pops up, his eyes bulging. “How many does he have?”

“I don’t know, but if two girls have left already because of him and I spent one wretched evening with him, then that’s at least three!” I squeeze my eyes shut, fisting my hair and whimpering, “Oh God, please let the cameras have been broken that night.”

Ben doesn’t say anything, and I open my eyes to check his expression.

It’s cold and blank, but I can sense the emotion raging around him.

So he’s one of those guys. Keeps his anger locked up tight.

My mom’s like that. It’s kind of scarier than my dad sometimes. When he’s mad, he yells and rants for a few minutes, and then it’s done. When mom’s mad, the entire house feels like an ice castle.

“Ben.” I reach for him, curling my fingers around his wrist. He gives me a tight smile, and I shake my head. “Don’t do that. You don’t have to smile right now. You don’t have to try and make me feel better. I’ve been crying since about ten o’clock this morning.”

His expression buckles. “You should have called me.”

“I know, but I needed to process everything. I needed to get to a place where I could actually think straight, be logical. And all I know for certain is that I can’t do nothing. He can’t get away with this anymore. We have to stop him.”

“We will.” He nods, slipping his hand into mine. “We’ll think of something legal. Like calling the police.”

I start shaking my head again, frustrated that he’s not listening to me. “Ben, no! I just told you why. We can’t let him know that we know!”

“We’ll tell the police to be subtle. We’ll warn them to investigate things quietly. They will have dealt with something like this before. Or if they haven’t, there’ll be another police department somewhere else that has.”

My face bunches, and I’m still shaking my head. “I just don’t know if I trust them to get it right. I really think it’ll be better if I go to them with proof. They don’t have to know how I got that proof, they just need to see it.”