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“Come to think of it, just before the interview she was at practice, telling me that the plan had changed, and it was now going to be a ‘day in the life of,’ rather than just a Q&A. In other words she wants carte blanche to follow me around everywhere I go.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Xavier’s eyes just about bugged out of his head.
“Not even in the slightest. Worse still, she’s claiming that it was mandated by the Dean and Coach, so her hands are tied.”
“That just conjured up a really hot image. Her with her hands bound while I ride her. I’m totally going to jack off to that scene tonight.”
My own hands involuntarily balled into fists. Maybe I was going to be fighting today, after all.
“Fox!” We shut him down in unison.
“What? It’s the truth. Like you guys don’t jack off until your hands blister, you fucking bunch of hypocrites.”
I couldn’t trust myself to speak.
“Just keep your eyes on the goddamned prize. And to be clear, that prize is not screwing Lois Lane.”
Not unless you want to drink all your meals through a straw for the rest of your fucking life. I silently thanked Kane for clarifying our positions—if I’d have had to do the same, there was no way I’d be able to keep it civil, or refrain from tearing Fox’s tongue from his head.
Chapter 10
Honey
The end of the interview had left me shaken. Actually. the whole week had left me completely off-kilter, what with the Polaroid, and my interactions with Bear, plus his association with Xavier Cross, and the fact that he kept getting spooked during parts of our conversation, then scuttling away like the startled White Rabbit, late for the tea party. If I carried that analogy further, it wasn’t difficult to picture Xavier Cross as the Mad Hatter, and me as poor Alice.
It was an accurate parallel. Just like Alice when she fell down the rabbit hole, I felt totally out of whack. Luckily, I hadn’t grown or shrunk physically, but I had felt cut down to size by Bear’s mini interrogation. I was never more awkward than when forced to answer the same tough questions I happily threw at others.
The fact was, I’d felt like hightailing it out of there, but in the end Bear had been the one to cave. It had seemed odd for someone with so much drive and ambition, and so much ego. He was a closer by nature, driving forward to achieve the best result—no retreat, no surrender. So why had he run from me twice? I knew there was something I wasn’t seeing, but I just couldn’t put my finger on exactly what that was.
As much as I totally wanted to forget that it had ever even happened, I went over the last few minutes of the conversation in my head again, trying to recall any minute detail that could help solve the riddle that was Bear Hamilton.
He’d had my back against the ropes with his questioning of my leadership status, which had me blushing like a vestal virgin in a strip joint. He’d had the upper hand, but then the situation had seemed to flip momentarily. I couldn’t pin it to something I’d said. He’d definitely won the round verbally—he was nothing if not extremely articulate—so why had the blood seemed to drain from his face all of a sudden?
He hadn’t blanched exactly—I doubted that was possible with his skin tone—but he’d definitely looked like he’d seen a ghost, turning a not-very-attractive shade of gray, then once he’d recovered himself—or at least had blood flow to his entire body—he’d almost tripped over his own feet while hightailing it out of there. Fucking weird, and definitely out of character from what I already knew of the all-star jock.
He was so smooth and mind-blowingly arrogant the rest of the time, it was infuriating—mostly because I found it inexplicably, but irresistibly, hot. It was ridiculous. Since when had arrogance become a sexy quality in men? Actually, I knew that some woman were turned on by all that chest-beating nonsense, but I never had been and hadn’t anticipated that I ever would be.
I guessed a person was never too old to learn new shit about themselves. I wasn’t sure I liked this most recent development. In fact, I was pretty sure I hated it. It was so corny to be taken in by all the ultra-alpha “Me Tarzan. You Jane.” bullshit, even if the Neanderthal in question was actually deceptively intelligent.
My normal assumption with jocks was that they’d earned their place at college with their brawn, not their brains, and that they were an asset to the college for the leagues and nothing else. I didn’t know if the stereotype was wholly inaccurate, or if it just wasn’t true for Bear, but either way—trailer-load of arrogance and overinflated ego aside—he didn’t fit the mold.
Not only that, but he ticked some boxes for me that I hadn’t even known existed, let alone needed ticking. He couldn’t be more different from the guys I normally went for if he tried. Actually, even that was notable. Generally men were hardly even on my radar, period. The handful of relationships I’d had—if you could even call them that—had been with guys who were Bear’s polar opposite in every way.
Normally tall and willowy, or small and gamine, with long hair, they were sensitive poets and artists, pale tortured souls, all suffering for their art, eking out an existence in their dusty garrets. I was exaggerating, but not by much. Bear was the most athletic and rudely vital, not to mention wealthiest, guy of any who’d even come close to turning me on. Beau hadn’t even managed it, and he wasn’t as huge as Bear, nor half as much of an asshole. Yet, although I hated to admit it, I was attracted to him. A lot.
After sitting on the couch staring into space with thoughts churning around my mind in a dizzying jumble, I finally got my act together and kicked into gear, packing up my phone and notepad. Although I recorded my interviews, I still liked to keep a notebook nearby when I spoke to people, so that I could jot down random thoughts as they occurred to me while the interviewee was talking, rather than lose them.
I hurried back to my room, still desperately trying to piece together what the fuck was going on. What was Bear’s link to Xavier Cross, and therefore Cygnus Dei, and what had spooked him while we spoke? What had I witnessed at the Cygnus initiation, and who had witnessed it with me? What did they now want from me, having sent the Polaroid? What was the next step, and more importantly, what was their endgame?
So many questions, the answers to which hadn’t presented themselves in the weeks since the incident. I knew I was missing something big, but I couldn’t for the life of me work out what it was or shake the nagging feeling that it was somehow glaringly obvious, but, for that reason, flying totally under my radar.
As I hurried back to the dorms, I made the decision to write the day off. I had classes and a deadline, but I knew for sure that even if I tried, I wasn’t going to be able to concentrate or get anything productive done.
However, the great thing about being the editor of The Herald was that I could push back deadlines whenever I saw fit, and not worry about the consequences. Nobody gave a rat’s ass if the paper was a few days late, and, in many cases, didn’t care if it came out at all. The only person chasing deadlines was me. They were only really there to ensure that the other contributors turned in something, so that it wasn’t just a rag full of my own thoughts, musings and investigative endeavors.
Back at my room, I grabbed my laptop and decided to head to the library. It was one thing to skip classes and disregard deadlines, but I wasn’t going to waste the day entirely; I just wasn’t wired that way.
I rarely used the library for assignments, unless I had to consult a journal, which was unusual, but it was an absolute goldmine of off-internet information that was sometimes invaluable in the course of writing an article. Especially the microfiche area in the basement. I was like a kid in a candy store when let loose down there, and still had to pinch myself to remind me of my good fortune in attending an Ivy League college—the resources really were mind-boggling.
