Hooped #5 (The Hooped Interracial Romance Series #5) (7 page)

“I didn’t even know when you’d be done with the test,
or I’d have come looking for you,” I told him. I squirmed free of his tight
embrace and looked up into his face. “How did the test go? You said they would
score it immediately, right? What did you get?” Devon laughed, and even though
I knew that he couldn’t possibly be so lighthearted and happy if he hadn’t
managed to pass highly enough to justify the scholarship he’d been given and
get himself out of trouble, I had to hear it from him.

“I got a 32!” He kissed me on the lips once more. I
clung to Devon, relief washing through me; he had done as well as I had—which
definitely showed that he was much smarter than he needed to be to get the
scholarship. And this time, there could be no question that it had been Devon
who took the test, and that he had earned the score. Devon broke away from my
lips, looking into my eyes with a loving, charming smile. “You’re the first
person I told,” he said, his arms tightening around me. “
Wanna
come with me back to the
frat
so I can
tell the rest of the guys finally?” I laughed.

“Seriously? You
told
me before you told the team, even?” Devon shrugged, letting me slip out of his
arms and taking my hand.

“The coach knows—but that’s because he was there. I
figured you deserved to know before anyone else did.” I laughed again,
delighted beyond anything I could imagine feeling that everything—so far—had
turned out so well.

We went back to the frat house, and Devon gathered
everyone who wasn’t in class in the living room. “Guys, I have an announcement
to make,” he said, standing before ninety percent of the Phi Kappa household. I
was seated off to the side, already beaming with my knowledge of the news he
had for his friends.

“Oh god, did you knock Jenn up?” One of the guys shouted
out; for an instant I was
appalled,
until
I realized that it was a joke—everyone laughed.

“Not yet,” Devon said, grinning archly. “Plenty of
time for that later.” There were more
chuckles,
and I forced myself to relax. “As most of you know, I had to re-take the ACT in
order to lift the suspension the school put me under. That’s because like an
idiot I cheated the first time around—so don’t ever let me hear about any of
you making a deal with some high school kid to take his tests for him.” He
looked out over the assembly of brothers sternly.

“This PSA brought to you by Devon Sealy,” one of the
other guys commented. “Come on, man! Tell us the news!” Devon grinned, rolling
his eyes at the impatience of his frat brothers.

“I got a 32! Way more than enough to pass it, and to
get re-enrolled. Coach says I can play
at
the championship!” The room erupted in a loud, raucous cheer, and I found
myself laughing, watching as the guys jumped around, pumping fists in the air
as if the victory wasn’t only Devon’s—as if it was a victory for the entire
frat. In a certain respect, I thought, it kind of was. Devon held up his hands
for
quiet,
and gradually the cheering
dissipated. “I just wanted to say that I couldn’t have done it without Jenn,
and you guys had better all be insanely jealous of me with a girlfriend who can
get me an almost-perfect score on a test along with being hot and a good cook.
That’s all.”

The guys in the frat went back to cheering and jumping
around, some of them taking a moment to send text messages to the brothers who
were in classes. Someone proposed throwing a little “mini-party” to celebrate
Devon’s return to the team and to the school, and everyone—Devon and me
included—was on board. A couple of the guys went on a beer run, and someone
ordered in about a dozen pizzas of different kinds, and as the frat house
filled up with the rest of the brothers—those who had been away—along with the
members of the team who weren’t in the
frat
,
the atmosphere was a lot like a regular Phi Kappa party.

Devon and I were both only too happy to indulge,
hanging out and eating pizza and drinking beer. Every time someone
congratulated Devon, he directed their praise at me, telling whoever would
listen that he
would never
have been able
to pull it off without me. I didn’t know if that was strictly true; he was an
incredibly smart guy. But I knew that we had both worked hard to get him ready
for the test, so I was pleased to take the small amount of credit I was
entitled to in helping him, and pleased beyond measure that the major source of
stress in my life was over and done with. Devon had proved himself; he would be
re-enrolled in his classes without losing any of his
standings
, and he could move on with his life.

We stayed up late, laughing and talking, and by the
time we went up to Devon’s room at the end of the night I felt uncomfortably
full from all the pizza and beer. My cheeks ached from smiling so much, and I
was completely and utterly exhausted. It had been such a good night that in
spite of how tired I was and in spite of how bloated I felt, I was more than
happy to extend it in Devon’s arms, fooling around and making love until
neither of us could possibly move
anymore
.
“You are so amazing, Jenny,” Devon murmured in my ear as we cuddled together,
too exhausted to get up and turn off the light but not yet able to fall asleep.

“You, too,” I told him, my cheek pressed
against
his chest, my arms and legs draped over
him. I was so comfortable in Devon’s bed and in his arms; it was strange to
think that I had ever doubted him, that I had ever even thought that he was
anything other than perfect for me. Devon was exactly what I wanted in a
boyfriend, and I was so glad that I had listened to my heart, that I had let
what Kelly had called my naivety guide me to give Devon a chance. I hadn’t
thought about Kelly in days; soon I would need to start working on moving out
of the dorm room we shared. That was an issue for another day, I decided
firmly, shifting closer to Devon
in
the
bed. As long as I had him in my life, anything seemed to be possible. I couldn’t
even imagine a life without him anymore, and we’d only been together a few
weeks. It was so perfect I almost didn’t want to breathe. As I fell asleep in
Devon’s arms, the only thing that I could hope for was for Devon to live up to
the hype and win the next game—the championship.

Chapter
Nine

With the test behind him, Devon’s focus turned once
more to basketball. While he didn’t neglect his classes altogether—which made
me glad—he definitely needed to work hard in order to be ready for the
championship game. In spite of the fact that Devon was the best player on the
team, and he had been doing what he could to keep himself in peak physical
shape—apart from the binge on pizza to celebrate passing the ACT—he hadn’t been
able to practice with the team, and the team’s play had shifted in his absence.

So whenever I wasn’t in class, it seemed, I was going
to one of Devon’s practices, watching him get back into the rhythm and flow of
playing with the other members of his team. Everyone was excited that Devon
would be back on the team in time for the ultimate game of the season; the team
was more than happy to have him back, and everyone who followed the school’s
basketball program was relieved. Even if we had won the game that he’d had to
sit out, it had been a close thing—and the championship would be an even bigger
challenge than the previous game had been.

Devon and I still studied together every night in his
bedroom, because he told me that he wasn’t about to throw away the good habits
he had already acquired from me; but we weren’t grinding down to get him to
pass one single test—we were busy catching him up on what he had missed. The
class that we were in together was the easiest; I had been giving him the
assignments the whole time that he was away. But the other classes he had to
hurry to catch up, in order to be ready for the finals in a few weeks.

In addition to his practices with the team, and his
study sessions to catch up with his classes, Devon and I spent hours—almost any
time we were between classes—on the basketball court together. Devon ran
drills
and taught me everything he knew about
playing. Even though I was a very big basketball fan, I had never tried to play
the game myself. Devon used the excuse of teaching me how to throw a foolproof
three-point shot to improve his own techniques, and we chased each other back
and forth across the court, keeping the basketball away from each other. Devon
was just as good as he had ever been, and I was so happy that he was teaching
me; I couldn’t imagine learning how to play
from
anyone else.

The team joked that the next year, I’d be on the
girl’s team,
Devon
was doing such a good job teaching
me. “I’ll leave the sports stuff to him,” I told them, grinning at Devon. “I
mean, if I’m not careful he’ll steal my superiority in academics; we should
probably just stick
with
what we’re
already good at.”

“You are in no danger of ever not being smarter than
me,” Devon told me in front of his friends, kissing me quickly on the lips.
“But if you do get into sports, I’m doomed.”

I was surprised and not surprised to realize that even
though we spent most of our time together, Devon and I became closer and closer
every day. I had been afraid—in spite of the fact that we’d done so well while
we were cramming for Devon’s ACT retake—that once the drama was out of our
lives, there would be very little keeping us together. There was still the
drama of Devon needing to get ready for the game, of course, but other than
that everything had relaxed so much I almost couldn’t believe it. There was
nothing hanging over Devon’s head that he’d never dealt with before, and
although my friends occasionally whined and bitched about how little time I
spent with them, I had separated from Kelly for good—and I didn’t even miss
her.

I started to make deeper friendships with Devon’s frat
brothers, learning their stories, getting to know their girlfriends—at least
the girlfriends of those brothers that had them. I had become completely and
totally one of the accepted additions to the household at the Phi Kappa frat;
and while I was not someone who liked to party all the time, the day-to-day
life was not as wild as I would have thought weeks before. I even managed to
make friends with some of the girlfriends of Devon’s teammates—something I
would have given long odds against if I had thought about it.

Envy raged as it became more and more obvious that Devon
and I was a settled, serious couple. I heard that Kelly was enraged at the fact
that Devon hadn’t just dropped me after he’d passed the ACT; I hadn’t been
there to see her meltdown, but it was apparently epic even by campus standards.
It seemed like people’s opinion of Devon was slowly shifting. Girls who had
considered him absolutely the scum of the Earth had now started to say that if
only he wasn’t in a relationship already, he’d be a great catch. And of course
with that, I had to deal with basketball bunnies throwing themselves at Devon
more than ever. But I didn’t care; I knew that no matter what a girl did to try
and draw his eye, Devon was interested in
me
and serious about his feelings for me. He wasn’t going to wander off and
abandon me just because some cute girl flirted with him.

I put in my paperwork to change roommates, explaining
to the Resident Advisor that things just weren’t working out between Kelly and
me. I didn’t want to get into specifics, but she told me she had heard
everything about what was going on between us; it was an open secret on campus
that Devon had been the cause of my falling out with Kelly. When the semester
ended,
I would be able to move my things into a
new dorm, with someone I barely knew. I didn’t mind it too much; I knew that I
would barely ever be in my dorm anyway.

The more Devon and I spent time together, the closer I
felt to him, and the more secure I became in our relationship. “You are the
best thing that ever happened to me,” Devon told me one night as we laid around
in bed together,
binge-watching
the
series
Breaking Bad
on his computer.

“I’m not a thing,” I countered playfully. Devon
laughed, rolling his eyes.

“You know what I mean,” Devon said, pulling me close.
“Meeting you—and convincing you to hook up with me—was the best thing that ever
could have happened to me.”

“I’m pretty pleased with the results, myself.” I
kissed him lightly, for the moment not even remotely interested in the drama of
Walter White’s life. “Though I’m human enough to wish that Kelly hadn’t turned
out to be so crazy about things.”

“She was crazy long before you came on the scene,”
Devon told me soothingly. “She had already been trying to manipulate me and
control my life from afar when we met.”

“Yeah,” I had to admit that everything pointed to
that; it amazed me still that somehow, Kelly had been able to hide her
craziness from me for so long. Until I had hooked up with Devon, she had never
even really mentioned him to me. I hadn’t even been aware of the fact that she
knew him, much less that they had been involved. “I don’t miss her, exactly…but
I guess I miss having someone I’m that close to, you know?”

“If you ever feel like I’m taking you away from your
friends, you’re allowed to tell me to back off, you know,” Devon said, looking
at me with concern.