Page 36 of One Bet

“Keats, you worry way too much, these chicks aren’t going to do anything. The school isn’t going to do anything.” He straightened his shirt. “We take down the videos and throw some money at them and it all goes away. Or the donations that come from Kennedy and Associates will all dry up and Dean Ferguson knows it. That’s the beauty of running a private university, right? A private university that’s dependent on our ridiculous tuition and donations from people like our fathers.” I couldn’t process everything. Couldn’t wrap my brain around what he was saying...but he kept saying it.

Dean Ferguson stood, braced her hands on her desk. “It’s out of my hands, Mr. Kennedy.” She cocked an eyebrow. “The complaint didn’t come to the university from the young ladies. It came from the police department.” Fuck. “And they have witnesses.”

She sat down. “Pending our own investigation that is going to run alongside that of the Maine State Police and the FBI, you’re all suspended.”

My stomach dropped. Suspended, for having sex. They were suspended for taping me having sex. All of my career plans, playing pro ball, becoming something more than the great Julian’s little brother shriveled and died.

“You guys taped me?”

Ryder rolled his eyes and I wanted to kill him, rage shot through me in bursts. Jameson moved forward. “Keaton didn’t know. Ryder set up the cameras, Finn operated the recorder, and Ryder and I made the deals.”

Ryder lunged and Jameson fought him off with a fist that caught Ryder in the jaw and knocked him backward. “Keaton didn’t know anything.”

The dean looked at Finn. “Is that true?”

Finn smiled. “I want a lawyer.”

Jameson ran his hands through his hair. “Ask your witnesses, they won’t have anything on Keaton.”

I appreciated his honesty, but I still wanted to kill him. To kill the three of them and anyone else who might’ve been involved. Holy fuck.

“Why me?” I looked at each of them. “You guys get laid as much as I do.”

Not like they could answer in front of the dean without incriminating themselves. Well, not Ryder or Finn anyway. But Jameson had already admitted his part in this shit. He nodded. “True, but your videos were better and longer.” He shrugged. “And with girls that everybody wanted to see.”

“Deals with who?” Ferguson kept her voice calm, quiet, but the threat was real. Our futures were at stake and she knew it.

Jameson looked down.

“We made deals with the girls who wanted to keep making money.” They were pimping out these girls? “And the guy who buys the videos.”

“You fucking sold the videos?” Oh, fuck me sideways. The damage they’d done, not just to me, but to the girls I’d been with, couldn’t even be measured. My hands were shaking, and I couldn’t stand any longer. I sank to my chair and buried my head in my hands.

“The police are waiting to speak with all of you.” Dean Ferguson hit a button on her desk phone, and the door swung open beside Ryder, who now lounged against the wall as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

I expected uniforms and guns drawn, but these guys wore suits and flashed FBI badges. The gravity of the situation weighed on me, this wasn’t something anyone was going to be able to buy their way out of. Even if our money could speak for us, no way my dad would buy me out of anything anyway. I had to hope Jameson continued telling the truth and didn’t try to save his own ass at my expense.

Three hours later, I was free. I had no information about the money or the videos, and I’d given them permission to search my room at the Alpha house, to download all the data from my phone. I’d also handed over my laptop and every other piece of electronic equipment I owned, from video games to a tablet to my iPod and the GPS in my car.

The guys lawyered up, except Jameson who made a deal to avoid prosecution and stay at Glouster. It took me another hour after my release to thank God that I’d never taken Avery back to my room. We were on shaky enough ground that I didn’t think we would survive a scandal. It was at that moment I realized losing her would break me in ways I would never recover from. I also realized I loved Avery Stroh and now it was time to tell her everything.

21

Avery

Déjà vu….the sensation of having already experienced the present situation. I’d spent an entire day trying to outthink it, outrun it, forget the reason why this felt so familiar.

And it was my own fault, I’d driven to the Alpha house, parked out front, watched as a fistfight spilled out into the front yard, Ryder and Keaton pounding each other, fist for fist, grunt for grunt. I’d seen this happen before, I’d been a little drunker, a little angrier, and a little sicker to my stomach, but it was the same scene ten years later.

As a member of the faculty, I should’ve stepped from the car, called campus police, and done whatever I needed to for student safety. Instead, I closed my eyes and heard Ryder’s voice in my head.

“A bet’s a bet, so here’s your money. You earned it. If you ask me, you deserve a lot more for fucking that one.”

I’d lived that moment, watched everyone at that party watch me and Keaton together. Listened as people commented about my lack of tits and laughed at my inexperience, howled at me.

I stopped remembering and lifted my head to watch Keaton and Ryder roll around on the grass while a couple of younger guys tried to pull them apart and because of the déjà vu, or maybe because I couldn’t separate the man he’d become from the boy who’d broken my heart, I drove away.

I didn’t want to go home. My house was still too full of his presence. I wasn’t even there, and I could picture him standing against the kitchen counter with his cup of coffee and his bare chest. All I had to do was close my eyes to see him in the bathroom, brushing his teeth with a towel wrapped around his waist, or smiling down just before he kissed me.