Hooped #5 (The Hooped Interracial Romance Series #5)

HOOPED
#5

The
Hooped Series Book #5

BAD
BOY FRAT

By
Claire Adams

This
book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are
products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not
to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual
events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright
© 2015 Claire Adams

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Chapter
One

A few minutes after Kelly walked out of the bathroom,
my phone buzzed in my pocket.
Hey,
babe! Ready to head back?
I bit my
bottom lip; part of me didn’t want to go with Devon at all, not with the doubts
raging in my mind. What if he was just using
me
like Kelly said? It was a stupid thought, and I knew it was stupid, but I
couldn’t help thinking that in spite of the fact that she had lied to me, she
had been my friend for such a long time.

I worried at my bottom lip for a moment, looking at my
screen. Even if I wasn’t sure of whether Devon was really seeing me because he
wanted me, or because he was using me, I still wanted to be around him. I
needed to know the truth, and after all, the only way I’d get to the bottom of
it would be to talk to him about it. I took a deep breath.
Yeah, Dev. I’m in the girls’ room. Meet you
by
the locker rooms?
A moment later my phone buzzed again.

See
you in a minute.
I slipped my phone back into my pocket
and told myself that I would just play it cool. There was no need to cause a
scene with Devon; even if he was using me, I would just figure it out on my
own, and I would dump him before he got the chance to dump me. Now that he’d
told everyone in the stands around us that I was his tutor, and we’d been
together publicly, I wasn’t about to be yet another of the girls Devon ditched
once he got what they wanted from them.

I walked through the arena until I came to the locker
room entrance; Devon was waiting there, talking to some other girls—but even as
suspicious as my brain was, I couldn’t see anything that looked like interest
from him. He was talking to them because they were
there
and because they had chatted him up. I wasn’t about to start
jumping on every little thing.
Besides,
I thought.
What reason do I have to
believe Kelly? Everything she’s said about Devon so far has been a lie.
Except
it wasn’t all lies. She had told me that Devon was a player—and before he had
started to get serious with me,
he
had
admitted that he’d fooled around with girls, getting laid without caring about
them.

“
Hey,
babe! I
was just about to send someone to look for you,” Devon said, breaking away from
the groupies to close the distance between us. He wrapped his arms around me
and kissed me hungrily, his hands trailing
over
my sides. He deepened the
kiss,
and I
melted against him in spite of the thoughts swirling around in my head; I
wanted to believe so badly. I wanted it to be just fine, nothing different
between us at all.

After a few minutes, Devon pulled back, breaking away
from my lips. I realized that the girls who had been talking to him before were
gone, that they’d wandered off somewhere now that it was clear he wasn’t going
to be going anywhere with them. “You tired or something, Jenny?” I made myself
smile.

“Yeah, I guess. Can we go back to the frat now?” Devon
nodded and steered me away from the locker rooms, his arm draped around my back
as we both headed for the exit. I told myself that I should just act
normally—that it wasn’t the time for any kind of confrontation. I even told
myself that Kelly was wrong; she was a proven liar, and I shouldn’t trust
anything she had to say about Devon.

We walked in silence, and I didn’t even realize that
anything was different—I was so trapped in my own head—until Devon stopped
underneath a security lamp and turned me to face him. “If there was something
wrong you’d tell me, right?” he asked me, his eyes full of concern.

“Of course! Nothing is wrong, babe. I’m just tired.” I
smiled
again,
and Devon hesitated only a
moment before starting off again, my hand in his. I thought I should be
confronting him about what Kelly had told me—that I should be talking to him
about it. But I didn’t want to cause a scene. I didn’t know what to say, or
what to believe. Shouldn’t I be giving Devon the benefit of the doubt? Devon
started telling me about the other guys, about the members of the team, and I
tried to listen and pay
attention,
but I
was too consumed with all the thoughts in my head.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Devon asked, giving my
hand a quick squeeze.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I swear, just tired.”
You might as well just ask him about it.
It’s not like you could make anything worse. But Kelly
…
you can’t trust anything she says about him.
I went back and
forth in my mind, occasionally thinking that I should tell Devon to stop and
talk to him before we even got back to the frat house, and then another part of
my mind countering that it would just be stupid, and I wasn’t going to be the
kind of girl to make a huge scene in the middle of campus, even if there was no
one around.

As we neared the Phi Kappa house, I halfway hoped that
Devon would be interested in fooling around; maybe it would take my mind off of
what Kelly had told me. Instead, he gave me a kiss right before we went in and
said, “If you’re really tired, we should probably just call it a night, right?”
I kissed him lightly on the lips; how could I possibly doubt a guy who was
going to be so sweet to me?

We went in, and Devon answered the guys’ questions
about the game, telling them with a little pride that he’d taught Miles and Lee
all they needed to know to keep the team going without him. “You going to hang
out and watch the game?” one of the guys—I thought it might be Jaxon—asked
Devon.

“Nah, the girl’s tired,” Devon replied. He gave my
waist a squeeze. “I think we’re going to call it a night.” A few of the guys
made some jokes about Devon being whipped, but he just rolled his eyes and led
me up the stairs.

I was still slightly hoping that Devon would want to
fool around, make love for a little
while
before we went to sleep; but he seemed genuinely concerned about me. “It’s good
to have a down night,” Devon said, giving me a quick kiss.

“You, the party animal, want to have a down night?”
Devon grinned at me, tugging his shirt over his head and tossing it towards the
hamper.

“I can’t party all the time. Especially since I need
to keep my brains working at peak, right?” He unbuttoned and unzipped his
fly,
and I began to strip down too, confused
and comforted at the same time. I could see my suitcase and decided that, since
I had told Devon I would stay with him for a few days, I might as well just
treat the situation as if Kelly had never said anything to me. Devon didn’t
even know that I knew Kelly; I felt a little bit of guilt at the fact that so
far he had been much more honest with me than I had with him.

We got into bed and for once—for the first time since
we’d hooked
up,
and I’d lost my virginity
to him—Devon and I just cuddled, talking about the game, about our day. It was
so
nice, but
I felt it every time I
didn’t mention running into Kelly after the game while I was waiting for Devon
to finish hanging out with the guys. I felt guilty, almost ashamed of myself.
Devon began to doze off and without being able to continue chatting with him,
my brain went back into overdrive. I argued mentally with myself about whether
or not to believe anything that Kelly had said.

On the one hand, nothing that Devon was doing or had
done were the actions of a guy who was just looking to get what he wanted from
some girl, to use her. In spite of how cavalier I’d been about just throwing
away my virginity, Devon had been sweet and gentle and good to me. But then,
Kelly and the other girls had all said that he was exactly the type to act that
way; right up until he decided he’d gotten what he wanted, or until there was
another girl to take his eye. But how could I doubt him so much? In spite of
what the other girls had said, Devon had been absolutely honest. If he were
really just looking to get what he wanted from me, then he would have lied to
me about everything else.

I couldn’t fall asleep. I turned my head to see Devon
in the bed next to me, fast asleep. He had no idea of what was going on in my
mind; as far as he was concerned, everything was great—or if not great, then at
least he was right where he needed to be. He would re-take the test that he had
cheated on, and then he’d be back on the team, back to class, living the life
he had marked out for himself, complete with a girlfriend who cared about him.
But what if Kelly was right? What if Devon was just using me to pass the test?
I thought about what she had said, about how she had known the person who’d
taken the test for Devon.
How likely is
it that she could really have known that specific person?
My mind was
swimming with questions about what she had told me. I had to know more. I had
to just get over it and talk to Devon. I had to come clean, and hear what he
had to say. I had to know the truth, and so far, Devon hadn’t let me down.

I shook him awake, my heart beating faster in my
chest. “Hey, babe? Babe. Wake up, Dev. I need to talk to you about something.”
Devon muttered and murmured as he came out of his sleep, shaking his head and
frowning. He looked up at me in
confusion,
and I turned on the light in the room, sitting up in his bed.

“What’s up, Jenn?” Devon grinned slightly. “You less
tired than you thought?” His hands trailed over my body, caressing and teasing
me. I shook my head, pulling free of his touch.

“I need to talk to you about something,” I said,
taking a deep breath. “It’s about the test you cheated on.” Devon’s eyes
widened.

“Is this why you’ve been so quiet all night?
Jenn—babe, I know I did wrong. I want to set things right.” I swallowed against
the tight, dry feeling in my throat.

“Do you know who it was who turned you in?” I asked.
“I mean, it could be a couple of people, right?” Devon sat up in bed next to
me.

“I know who it is,” he said. He looked at me with a
frown. “Do you know who it is?” I took another deep breath, hoping to steady my
nerves.

“I ran into your ex, Kelly,” I said, hedging on how I
knew it was her. “She told me that she’s the one who turned you in. She—I guess
she was jealous, or whatever. But shouldn’t you be warning the person who took
the test for you?” Devon’s eyes widened.

“She is the person who took the test for me,” he said.
“Kelly—she and I knew each other in high school. We met at a party after a game
once and started seeing each other some.” I blinked; Kelly’s words—that the
person who had taken the test for Devon would be fine, would not be
investigated at all—took on new meaning. Of course she could be sure that the
person Devon had used wouldn’t be caught; it was her.

“She took the test for you?” I asked him. Devon
nodded.

“It was her idea! I was telling her how nervous I was
about the ACT, with the scholarship riding on it and everything, and she said
that she had already taken hers, and got a high score. So she’d take it for me,
and everything would be great.” Devon shook his head, his face full of regret.