Hooped #5 (The Hooped Interracial Romance Series #5) (3 page)

“Unfortunately, after we finish your study session for
the night I have to do one of my own,” I told him, wriggling free of his arms.
“I’ve got a test tomorrow in
Chem
, and I am not as
naturally gifted at science as you are.” Devon frowned, looking at me in
concern.

“We can study together—I mean, I’ve got time before
they give me the ACT again. Let’s go over your stuff for a while, it’s bound to
help me, too.” I grinned.

“Well lay it on me, player!” We switched out his books
for
my
own
and started going over some of the things I was having trouble with in chemistry.
I was surprised—and shocked to be surprised—that Devon was actually really
interested, really helpful. As good as I was
in
math and English, he had a knack for science, showing me a shortcut to a couple
of the solutions in the chemical equations. “How is it that you can balance a
chemical equation but not work out a quadratic formula?” Devon chuckled.

“The chemical equations give you a
result;
that’s why. You know exactly what it
should be before you even start.” We switched back and forth between my studies
and his, trading different tips and tricks, and it felt so good and natural
that I was almost sorry when I started to feel sleepy.
 
As we began to wind down, our conversation
became more about flirting than it was about studying; we teased each other
about different things we’d noticed each other doing. “You know, whenever
you’re really focused, you get this little wrinkle, right here,” Devon told me,
lightly touching the space between my eyebrows.

“Yeah, well, I saw you sticking out your tongue while
you were writing out the equation for one of the questions in the book,” I
countered, sticking my tongue out and wiggling it in Devon’s direction.

“Hey! You were supposed to be reading up on Planck’s constant
while I was doing that. Some great student you are.” Devon pushed me down onto
the bed playfully, tickling me all over until I squealed and squirmed my way
free of his hands.

We talked about Devon’s friends and teammates, about
the rest of my friends except for Kelly, and it just felt so comfortable to be
with him that I couldn’t imagine ever breaking up with Devon.
I can’t even think of why I let Kelly
influence me in any way,
I thought, watching him read through a section of
the English portion of the test as the final drill of the night. Devon was just
exactly what I had always wanted in a boyfriend, and I couldn’t imagine any
person making me happier than he did. It was impossible.

“I’m so glad you decided to stalk me,” I told Devon as
I nestled into his arms at the end of the night. Devon chuckled.

“You make me sound like such a creep when you say
that.” I grinned.

“
Well,
kind of
it’s true. You did sort of stalk me, tracking me down to the movie theater the
way you did. You’re just lucky I already liked you and deep-down wanted things
to work out.”

“I am lucky,” Devon told me, nuzzling against my neck.
“Considering all the bad stuff you heard about me, you could have easily just
decided I wasn’t worth the trouble.”

“I am never going to listen to gossip again,” I told
him, turning around in his arms to face him. “All it gets anyone ever is
trouble.”

“At least check with the person the gossip is about.
Some gossip is true. After all, before you I was actually kind of a terrible
guy.” I rolled my eyes.

“If you wanted to change, you couldn’t have been that
terrible.” Devon kissed me passionately, letting his hands roam over my body
slowly.

“You are
a damn
good reason to want to be a better guy,” he told me, barely breaking away from
my lips. “I never want you to be disappointed in me. I want to always strive to
be good enough for you. You believe me, right Jenny?” I laughed.

“One of these days, I hope you’re going to stop
calling me that.” Devon grinned against my lips, shifting his hips
against
me.

“Nope,” he told me, nibbling on my bottom lip
playfully. “I’m going to keep calling you that nickname until you love it. No
more thoughts about stupid kids in school.” I sighed, grinning in spite of
myself.

“You have got an uphill battle then.” Devon smiled
again,
and I could feel him starting to get
hard, pressing against me. I was only too happy to let our study session turn
into something else, something even more gratifying than learning about square
roots or the quadratic formula.

“I’ve learned something,” Devon murmured, stripping
off the last of my clothes with deft hands. “I don’t just want easy things
anymore. I want stuff I have to work for. If I have to work to keep you loving
me, then that’s even better.” I melted against him, my hands wandering all over
his body, wondering how I had managed to possibly get so lucky.

Chapter
Four

The next morning, Devon made me another special
breakfast, insisting that since I had a test to take, it should be even better
than any of the others he had made me. “I want my girl to keep up her game,” he
said, grinning at me from the stove. He made eggs benedict, using a powdered
mix for the hollandaise—but it was so good I couldn’t even tease him about the
mix, digging into the food on my plate with a hunger I had never felt before.
We chatted over breakfast, taking our time, and Devon quizzed me on a couple of
the things we had talked about from my chemistry test the night before,
checking that I remembered what he had told me.

By the time I got into class, showered and my stomach
full, I was shocked at how confident I felt, how positive and at ease. I was
never really completely nervous about taking tests, but with science I always
had a little bit of doubt. Chemistry had been kicking my ass, at least a little
bit, from the beginning of the semester; my professor for the course was a
mousy looking
guy who had the thickest Russian
accent imaginable, and it seemed like he couldn’t even understand that there
were people in the class—namely me—who just couldn’t look at a chemical equation
and immediately know the answer.

But for the first time all semester, as the papers for
the test made their way through the room, I felt calm. I could hear Devon’s
voice in my head, giving me little hints and tricks for how I could go about
finding the answer faster. The same way that he had of almost overthinking
questions in Math or English was what I had been doing with science for years;
it occurred to me, looking
over
the
different problems before the test officially started, that I was comfortable
almost not because of anything specific that Devon had taught me about the
subject, but because going over the fundamentals with him was making it easier
to remember more complicated things. I smiled to myself as I went from one
question to the next, knowing that the answers were
in
me, knowing I could figure it out.

I thought about Devon as I worked my way through the
problems, wondering what he was up to. He was so sweet and kind, so generous,
so wonderful to me—how could I have ever doubted that he really did want
something serious? I felt a little weird that I had paid for a dorm that I
probably wouldn’t get very much use out of, but I thought about the fact that
when the semester was coming to a close in about another month or two, I could
request a transfer. I could get a room with someone else on campus; plenty of
other people had already put in their requests—but they wouldn’t be processed
until the term was done with.

And anyway, I thought, looking
over
the answer to a problem that two nights before would have made
my palms sweaty, plenty of other girls practically lived with their boyfriends
on campus. There were a few other girls besides myself who spent time in the
Phi Kappa house; Jeremy’s girlfriend was there almost all the time, and Jaxon
and his girlfriend were a staple, hanging out and just having fun. The guys in
the frat didn’t even seem to be quite as much the raucous, playboy
partiers
that I had first seen them as. They
had lives outside of drinking and watching sports, and they had goals for
themselves.

I would have to remember to thank my other friends for
making me go to the party a few weeks before; it had changed my life in so many
ways, and while I was sad to lose Kelly as my best friend, I thought that it
was for the best. She was nearing the end of her college years anyway—and even
if she wasn’t, the fact that she could have lied to me so steadily, and tried
to bring me grief, meant that she had never really been my friend at all, at
least not since I had come to college. I tried to imagine how it could even be
possible to have that much poison in your heart and brain and still be a
functioning person. It seemed like complete and total madness to me.

I wasn’t the first one to finish, but I was also not
the last one to turn my test
in to
the
professor, who looked up from whatever he was doing and gave me a meek little
smile. As I left the classroom—he had told us at the beginning that we were
free to go once we finished—I thought about the fact that I had always studied
by myself. Even when Kelly and I had studied together, we hadn’t really
combined our efforts; we’d just sat in the same room, with the TV on, looking
at our different subjects. It was a totally different experience with Devon,
and it surprised me to realize that I had retained the information even better
that way. I shook my head, smiling to myself. I could think of a half-dozen
ways that we could get even better at studying together, provided that we were
able to keep our relationship going.

I had to believe that Devon was capable of doing well
on the ACT. It made me sad to think that he had to have had such impatient
teachers, to grow up thinking that he wasn’t really good at school, only at
basketball. What kind of teacher would make a student feel that way? He wasn’t
stupid—he was incredibly bright, and even after only two sessions, he was
making major progress
in
filling the
gaps. It made me feel good to be helping him, coaching him along the way that
he should have been coached the entire time he’d been in school. It had given
me so much pride, the way that Devon had introduced me to the people in the
stands with us, telling them how smart I was, what a great tutor I had been
already.
He really cares about
me,
I thought, unable to help the big grin
that formed on my face at the idea. Devon Sealy, the bad boy, the legend who
slept around and drove girls crazy, cared about me.

For the rest of the week, I spent every night at the
frat house; in fact,
anytime
I wasn’t
spending with my friends or in classes, I tried to be by Devon’s side. I told
him the first time I saw him after my test that I had never felt more confident
or more comfortable in my chemistry class the entire semester, and Devon had
kissed me and told me that he would do anything he could to help me
succeed—just like I had helped him.

As word got around campus that Devon and I were seeing
each other seriously, my friends started to ask me about him; at first, they
were absolutely appalled that I could even think about dating a guy like Devon
with a reputation as horrible as he had. Giselle told me I was insane
outright,
while Alicia predicted by heartbreak
as soon as Devon found someone he wanted more. “Guys, if you can’t just be
happy for me, then I can find new friends.”

Kelly was spreading poison too; I knew it because I
heard whispers of the rumors she had spread, and continued to spread, about why
I was never in the dorms anymore. She told everyone that I was out of my mind
about
Devon, that
I was going to be just another
victim of his cheating, playing ways. She told people that I had said I would
choose Devon over her even if he broke my heart. I found more and more reasons
to never want to have anything to do with her for the rest of my life. I
couldn’t trust her—and slowly our group of friends came around to realize that
she
was being
spiteful, that she wasn’t
interested in anything but making Devon look bad and her own life. One by one,
my friends came to my side, eventually shunning Kelly altogether.

At nights, I was always at the Phi Kappa house; even
when Devon and I weren’t actively either studying or making love in his room,
it felt good to be there. None of the guys ever really gave me a hard time
about anything—they were glad, one of them told me, to see Devon finally
settling with a “bomb-ass, chill girl.” They wanted him back on the team,
bringing prestige to the fraternity with his skills on the court. They knew
that I was working with him, and more than a few of the guys told me that I was
clearly responsible for Devon taking
life, in
general,
more seriously.

My life had changed so drastically I almost didn’t
recognize it, and while I loved the fact that Devon and I were getting closer
and closer every day, I couldn’t help but hope that things would just stay the
same for a while, that I wouldn’t have to deal with another crisis. We studied
in his room together—taking turns on each other’s work. I brought him the
assignments from the class we shared; the professor had said that since I was
Devon’s girlfriend, I could make sure that he kept up, so that once he passed
the ACT on his re-take, he could jump right in once more.