AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Wouldn’t want the headmaster to know you had a girl in here . . . alone. And I gotta say, if he knew it wasthatgirl . . .oof!Let’s just say Morgan Bentley is not an easy case to prove your innocence.” He shrugs, then pushes his locker closed before slipping on his platinum watch that is definitely worth more than my pitiful college savings account.
I press my molars together and tighten my jaw, forcing my best version of a smile with what’s left. My hand flexes around the straps of my bag, gripping with the force of a life-or-death tug-of-war. I should leave without speaking. I should turn around and simply go; nothing good will come of me being in this space with him for any longer.
“I hear she’s a really good fuck, though, so . . . don’t blame you there.”
And that’s it—I break. In a blink, I throw my own rules out the window, forget my dad’s advice, and risk my entire future. I drop my bag to the ground and hurtle at Toby, flatting my palms to his chest until his back is pressed against the metal locker doors. I grip his shoulders hard and toy with the idea of wrapping one of my hands around his pencil-thin, pimple-scarred neck. I’m grounded enough to hold myself back from crossing that line, but I hurl back and throw a fist into the locker next to his head, denting it and busting my knuckles open. I leave it there, letting the blood pool on my fingers and stain the locker door.
Toby’s fear flashes across his eyes as they widen, and his jaw tightens with his held breath. But just when I think I’ve scared him enough to stop playing this dangerous game, his body rumbles under my hold with quiet but menacing laughter. I push into him again before backing off, and he coughs at the feel of losing air from his lungs. But that fucking laugh keeps going. I hold his stare as I walk backward and pick up my bag, turning around the second it’s in my grip and leaving before I make things worse.
Thankfully, Morgan isn’t waiting for me outside. I want to make sure she’s all right, and I’d love to take her to dinner for real—to laugh with her and kiss her again and touch her. But I have to go home and get my head right, then find a way to repair the damage I’ve done. My fantasy got soured in seconds, by a rich kid with zero talent but enough money to erase my hopes and dreams on a whim.
Chapter9
Morgan
For about an hour, I thought James would show up at our dorm room and make good on my fake bet scenario. The more time that passed, the less weight I gave to indulging the fairytale and the more I let practical possibilities take over.
He’ll check on me to make sure I’m okay and not in any trouble.
He’ll thank me for helping get us out of that situation.
He’ll text me and tell me it’s probably not a good idea to visit him in the locker room again.
Any text. A message. Some sort of sign that we both still exist on the same planet.
The hour turned into four, then it was nighttime and I was spending it in my room alone while both of my roommates were out.
All hopes of sleeping in—maybe sleeping away an entire Sunday—are dashed with the fifteenth phone call from my mom. My voicemail is full, so she’s taken to simply calling on repeat every ten minutes. I haven’t blocked one of my parents since I was sixteen. It seems childish, but so does calling your daughter on repeat to force-feed her your bullshit apology.
I avoided looking at the fallout all day yesterday, but I’d rather see it for myself before someone around here whispers about it behind my back. I open one of the gossip apps first, my mentions in the thousands. My stomach sinks.
The first image I open is clearly the money shot. Paul Flannery was leaning in, our drinks in clear view, and he was making that face—that sad puppy face that guys get when they’re around pretty girls. It’s not what the story truly was, but it’s the story I knew they would tell. And here it is, in viral digital view.
Is Molten Unlimited CEO’s son Paul Flannery stepping out with social media darling Morgan Bentley? Eight years younger and a newly minted 18-year-old, the famous Bentley has been quiet on social media since losing a friend in a tragic car crash last spring. Does this mean she’s resurfacing? Is this a budding romance? Or is this a power marriage brokered by her father—mega-mogul Christopher Bentley—and the beloved Boston Flannery family?
I flip through several posts to see more of the same. Some lean into the salacious, and the look is never good for Paul. He looks like a creeper who was waiting for me to come of age. I’m sure his PR people are already at work. That is, unless he struck that deal with my father, in which case my dad will have the stories and photos virtually zapped from extinction thanks to his sketch media connections. Every new story I click through makes my stomach get tighter until it’s basically one enormous knot.
A year ago, I wouldn’t be worried about the negative comments of being part of a paparazzi blast, but things are different this year. I haven’t posted for myself in months, and this is only going to drive people to my personal accounts where they’ll see people postulating about me.
Curiosity, and probably vanity, drive me right into my own accounts, but before I let myself fall too deep into the cesspool of new followers and trolls, I type in James Fuentes and instead lose myself in him. He posted before the game yesterday, and he has a dozen likes on the image of him flexing his right bicep in what looks like the locker room mirror. His expression is almost stoic, definitely serious. He takes his game seriously, which makes me wonder why he would waste his talent at a place like this. Welles isn’t known for star athletes, unless they count chess and debate as sports.
Rather than wallow in my own pity party, where I have to deal with my phone buzzing with my mom’s incessant co-dependency, I decide to take a rare and novel approach. I turn my phone off and toss it in my purse.
After a quick change into workout clothes, I grab my keys, ID card and nothing else and head to the field house gym. It’s eight in the morning, which means the rest of campus is likely enjoying dreamland.Lucky assholes.
I expect to find an empty gym, but the clank of weights being snapped in place stops me with one foot inside the weight room door. I step in completely to see James positioning himself under the squat rack bar. His wrists are taped, and I wonder if it’s so they don’t snap under the weight.
I ease the door shut behind me so I can watch without him knowing. There’s something beautiful about the way he’s here alone putting in the work. Andrealwork. Not easy weight amounts for the sake of bragging about reps. Nobody is here to document it, either. If my father weren’t such a massive narcissist, I would love to introduce him to James. He’d love his work ethic. My dad might be heartless, but the man is always working—always scrapping for the next dollar, the next company to own, the next dominion to conquer.
It's clear by his soaked gray T-shirt that James has been in here for a while. His shoulders and back muscles flex under the cotton fabric as he lifts the bar from the rack and situates it on his shoulders, then sinks into a squat with a heavy exhale. His thighs bulge and fill out his shorts as he pushes up, lifting the bar like some superhero.
As he works through his set, I tread into the room and take a seat on a bench across the room. I pull my leg up and hug my knee, resting my chin on top to steady my breath and remain silent. The last thing I want to do is startle him, but I can’t tear my eyes away. The thought that Toby is even in the same league as him is comical. If he wanted to, I think James could literally fold Toby in half.
After ten reps, James shuffles forward until the weight bar aligns with the pegs on the rack and he rests it there, ducking his head as he backs away, then spins around. I clap as he spots me and his head snaps up.
“Shit!” He jumps back and grabs the front of his soaked shirt, bunching the material over his heart. He laughs nervously as I get to my feet and move closer to him.
“I didn’t want to interrupt. Seemed like a super bad idea to say hi while you were mid . . .that.” I motion to the weight that I quickly add up to somewhere in the four-hundred-pound range. I can barely lift the bar.
