Scot and Bothered

26. Then

26

THEN

Jack pressed a kiss against Brooke’s temple as she settled herself more snugly against his chest in his bed, her pen scratching against her notebook, her books spread out on the blankets. It’d been three weeks of sneaking into her room or sneaking her into his, kissing her in deserted stairwells on campus and springing apart when doors on other floors opened, sharing longing stares from across the coffee line or lecture hall. Reading on opposite sides of bookshops, running through the Meadows at night.

He’d wondered if the high of pretending they didn’t know each other when he knew what every inch of her skin tasted like would wear off, but if anything, it had only gotten stronger—more addicting. He was enthralled and obsessed and so fucking smitten—he’d shown up to her flat the night before with a bouquet of highlighters just to see her smile.

“I think, after Christmas,” she said, putting her notebook on the nightstand and snuggling against him, “we should make a coffee shop bucket list of all the best places in Edinburgh where you can read and I’ll write.”

“Will we use special pens to make this list?”

“I’m not sure your handwriting is going to be involved but if by we you mean me , then yes. And the pen will be purple.”

“Oh, well, if it’s purple, I’m in.”

She laughed. “Maybe we could sneak away to Inverness after finals.”

“If you’re looking for a checklist, I’ll take you on the Heilan Coo Trail. The city has hairy coo statues all about town painted by local artists.”

“No, they don’t.”

“It’s like a scavenger hunt. You’ll love it.”

It was only a few more weeks of classes but it felt like forever, the way the end of the semester always did. Like there was too much to do, but time still managed to crawl by. Especially waiting for this future Brooke dreamed up.

Jack loved everything about her big dreams and he was starting to understand it now, too. Since the night they went up the Scott Monument, he’d stopped connecting his lessons to The Heart and instead applied them to his future photography business. How to market a product, how to build a simple profit-and-loss statement, how to navigate business taxes. All the components he’d need to be successful if he ever struck out on his own.

Maybe he was still biding his time, in a way—delaying telling his family he was serious about photography because he didn’t want to suffer the consequences, to deal with the fallout that was sure to happen. The thought of telling his dad, telling Reid and Logan—especially Logan—sent a shock wave of fear through him. But Jack had finally found something that felt right.

For maybe the first time in his life, he really wanted something. Something that was his.

“Can I show you something?” he asked.

“Mmm-hmm.” Brooke twisted the strings of Jack’s hoodie around her fingers.

He grabbed his phone and navigated to BBC news. He felt like a kid showing Brooke treasures sometimes, wanting her to see all the pieces of him, feeling so assured that she would never diminish or dismiss the things he cared about.

He scrolled to a picture in Dunbar’s Close, the park bench under bronze-leafed trees, the golden lights of windows behind it. A small black banner in the corner of the picture framed the words “Photo Credit: Jack Sutherland.”

Brooke bolted up and grabbed his phone. “Jack! That’s your name! That’s your picture!”

He chuckled. “Aye. They didn’t pay me for it or anything. But it exists out in the world.”

She stared at the picture a bit longer, zooming in on the leaf with two fingers, before handing the phone back to him. “Mhairi always says that about a first draft. It just has to exist. The starting is the hardest part.”

“Wise woman.”

Brooke climbed into his lap, wrapped her arms around his shoulders and kissed him a hundred times, all over his face. He laughed at the onslaught until she tipped her forehead against his. “I’m proud of you,” she said, the words ringing in his ears as if he’d never heard them before, slotting into a space in his heart he hadn’t realized was empty. Surely his parents had told him those words, but maybe he’d never quite believed them.

But he believed Brooke.

Three sharp raps sounded on the wooden door. “Oh, Jackie,” Rohan called as he jiggled the doorknob. The door flew open before Jack or Brooke could even react.

Rohan froze, as still as Jack had ever seen him. Brooke scrambled off his lap and he thanked his lucky stars that they were still fully clothed. Although maybe that would’ve made Rohan immediately retreat instead of standing there staring at them.

“Are you two serious right now?” he asked.

Brooke looked at Jack, her eyes wide, her mouth open like she was going to say something.

“This isn’t what it looks like,” Jack said, guilt sitting heavy in his stomach at lying to his friend.

“Great, because what this looks like—besides you two in bed together —is you giving Brooke extra help…” He waved his hand at the books scattered all over.

“I’m not helping her,” Jack said.

Brooke stood up, zipping her hoodie. “This isn’t even for our class. I’m just studying here.”

Jack climbed out of bed as Rohan shook his head, his raised-eyebrow gaze on the ceiling, like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

There was no sense in trying to deny to Rohan what he could so blatantly see. “We were trying to wait for the end of term to get involved—”

Rohan held his hands up. “I do not want the details.”

“We know the optics aren’t good…” Brooke fiddled with the zipper pull on her hoodie.

Rohan pinched the bridge of his nose in the exact way Jack’s mum did when she was beyond exasperated. “There is a clear policy and I don’t know if I’m implicated by this. There could be all sorts of questions raised about bribery and manufacturing grades. Brooke, you have the highest marks in my recitation. We’ve been friends for years. I live with you .” Rohan emphasized the word with a disparaging glance in Jack’s direction that made Jack’s stomach sink even lower than it already had. “This is well beyond bad optics. I have no idea what kind of consequences there could be if real accusations started flying around.”

Jack had avoiding articulating the risks quite so clearly to himself, knowing if he didn’t, he could tell himself that he and Brooke were outside the rules, that surely something that felt this good couldn’t be wrong, that no one would get hurt.

“You have to end this,” Rohan said and Jack could barely process the words over the relentless pounding of his heart.

“Until the term is over…or, so no one gets suspicious, maybe until the next term is over.”

Brooke’s head snapped up. “That’s so long from now…” She trailed off at Rohan’s dark look and chewed on the edge of her lip. She looked downright chastened and Jack wanted to comfort her, to pull her into his arms. He knew it would make everything worse, and maybe it was a small blessing that he felt so frozen in fear he couldn’t have moved to her if he’d tried. He couldn’t give Brooke up.

“I pray to god you’ve been careful enough that no one else knows about this.” Rohan opened his hands wide in a gesture of frustration before striding from the room. “Wankers!” he yelled from down the hall.

As oxygen seemed to reenter the room and Jack’s heartrate came down from its frenzy, he closed the door and reached for Brooke, massaging her upper arms, casting about for anything to say to make this better. She didn’t melt against him, her hand rubbing against her chest in small circles as she stared over Jack’s shoulder at the door. “How much do we trust him not to say anything?”

“Hey.” Jack pulled Brooke into a hug. “I trust him.”

“I do, too,” she said quickly. “Like…ninety-nine percent,” she said, her body still stiff against Jack’s. “Ninety-two. Eighty-four.”

Jack wasn’t one hundred percent certain, either—he knew how much grad school meant to Rohan. They’d put him in a terrible position questioning if even a small part of his future and aspirations hung in the balance.

Brooke pulled back, her eyes wide and guarded. “Is he right? Do we need to stop seeing each other?”

Jack’s stomach clenched hard. “That’s the last thing I want.” He cupped her cheek, ran his thumb over her bottom lip. “Is that what you want?” He held his breath.

She shook her head. “I don’t think I even could.”

Jack kissed her, a hard press of lips, and Brooke slid her hand to the back of his neck, holding him tightly against her. He gentled his touch, kissing along her bottom lip, her breath warm against him, her lips soft.

Brooke snuggled into his arms, wrapped hers tightly around his waist, and buried her face against Jack’s chest with a heavy sigh. Resting his head against the top of hers, Jack ran his hands up and down Brooke’s back. He breathed in her shampoo, let the orange notes soothe him like they always did.

They could be more careful, but his flat was no longer a safe place to be together and they’d always considered Kieran and Chels dramatically more perceptive than Rohan.

They could see each other less. But it was never enough as it was. Jack wanted to be with Brooke constantly, cherished the peace he felt whenever they were together, found himself texting her while he biked home from campus—desperate to know her favorite sandwich or what song she was listening to while she studied or what story she was dreaming up that day.

“We could disclose this to the administration. Get ahead of it,” he suggested.

Brooke pulled out of his arms. “Absolutely not.”

“I don’t want to stop seeing you. And I don’t want to implicate Rohan.”

“People will fist bump you for sleeping with your student, but they’ll accuse me of sleeping my way to the top. It’s not the same for you,” she said, tugging at the cuffs of her hoodie and tucking her hands inside.

Jack could see the truth in her words and the stubborn straightness of her spine. “I get that. I do. But there’s so much at stake here.” He pushed his glasses up and rubbed his eyes.

At the start of term, he would’ve walked away from this master’s over nearly any inconsequential obstacle. But now it felt like the key to his future. The way to prove to his family that he wasn’t chasing down another whim, that he was serious this time. He didn’t see any other way to keep this hope and to keep Brooke, too.

“You’re not even my TA. I know why the policy exists but I don’t think we’d really get punished. We’ll be more careful—and trust that Rohan is our friend and wouldn’t hurt us. Please keep this a secret.”

Jack blew out a long sigh. It was a terrible plan—a dangerous plan—but the alternatives were no better.