Chapter 3 #2
Before I can swallow anything, she sucks my mouth clean and sits back, lips pressed tightly together.
There’s a gleam in her eyes that has me mildly fucking distraught.
I rasp out, “What are you…?” but I trail off when she turns, bends down, and slowly lets everything drip out of her mouth.
Right onto Rooke’s gear stick.
I stare, open-mouthed, as a string of milky saliva drips down onto the console. “Jesus,” I murmur.
“Now can we go?” she asks so sweetly that I make a mental note to never, ever piss her off.
“You’re fucking unhinged,” I mumble as she clambers back into the passenger seat.
“You love it.”
“Obviously.”
She’s smiling when she turns to look at me, wrestling her leggings back up her hips. I find some napkins in the glove box—trust Rooke—and we try to make ourselves presentable.
She pulls her sweater back on and checks her reflection in the visor mirror, fixing her hair.
Fuck, she’s beautiful.
Not like a cover model.
She is—and always was—car crash beautiful.
Haven is a wreck I can’t look away from, even when I know I should.
Swollen lips, flushed skin, her blue eyes still glassy from coming so hard she forgot his name and whimpered mine instead. The bite mark on her breast is already purpling.
Hair’s a disaster…just like her.
My car crash.
My beautiful disaster.
Mine.
“Leave it,” I say.
She scowls. “Looks like I just got railed in a parking lot, Kai.”
“Just the way I like it.” I reach over and adjust the butterfly between her collarbones. Don’t even realize I’m doing it until her eyes soften, and then it’s too late to play it off.
She touches it, then snatches at my fingers as I draw my hand away. “We’re really doing this?”
“We have to get out from under him. This is the best—”
“No, I mean—” She gestures between us. “This. Us.” A weak laugh slips out of her. “Whatever the fuck this is.”
I take her hand, threading our fingers together. “Yeah. We’re doing this.”
She stares at our joined hands with an unreadable expression. “Okay.”
Just that.
But it’s better than ‘no.’
Anything’s better than ‘no’.
I climb out of the Land Rover, pocketing the keys. Haven meets me beside the boulder, and I reach for her hand before I can chicken out.
She looks down at it, then up at me, eyebrows raised.
I wince. “Too cheesy?”
The corner of her mouth quirks. “I love cheese.”
Warmth floods my body. I squeeze her hand, and after a beat, she squeezes back.
We walk into the main campus building, and immediately people are staring. I catch a couple of girls from her old sorority doing a double-take. Some guy from the football team stares openly.
Let them fucking look.
But then I spot Nolan from my former frat staring at our joined hands like Haven’s something he scraped off his shoe.
I try to ignore the way my stomach clenches.
The Jordans started out poor, but we clawed our way up. Made a name for ourselves. Started mattering in a town like Agony Hollow. Now here I am, holding hands with a girl from the trailer park I pretend I never lived in. The girl whose dad was the town junkie.
Despite the sweat prickling at the nape of my neck, I tighten my grip on Haven’s hand, lacing our fingers together properly.
Fuck ‘em all.
If being with Haven risks my reputation, then so fucking be it.
I lock eyes with Nolan, bring Haven’s hand to my mouth, and kiss her knuckles. His incredulous flinch has me grinning all the way inside the building. I don’t even care that two sorority girls immediately duck their heads and start rage-posting about us on VibeFeed.
Haven’s fingers tighten around mine. She doesn’t say anything, but the way she presses closer to my side says plenty.
We stop in front of Nora’s empty reception desk.
“Should we wait?” Haven murmurs, fidgeting with the strap of her tote bag. That’s another thing I need to get her besides a phone—a real bag to keep her shit in.
“Fuck that.” I head for the stairs, tugging at Haven’s hand until she follows.
“Don’t we like need an appointment or—“
“Guess we’re about to find out.”
We climb the stairs, our heads swiveling toward the lecture hall where Rooke’s class will be starting. Weird that he hasn’t arrived yet, but maybe he’s running late.
Jesus, why the fuck do I care?
Because I wanted him to find us. Me with Haven. I wanted him to know she’s mine now. I wanted…
His respect?
His approval?
“—where we’re going?”
I turn to Haven, blinking hard when I realize I’ve come to a stop on the landing. “Offices are one floor up.”
As we emerge on the top floor, Haven’s steps slow. “I really don’t think this is a good idea. What if—“
“No what-ifs.” I tug her around to face me. “Look, I know you’re scared. I’m fucking terrified too. But we can’t keep letting him pull the strings.”
She nibbles at her bottom lip, and I can see her cycling through every worst-case scenario.
Classic Haven. Always assuming disaster.
“Hey.” I tip her chin up. “We’re in this together. You and me against the world, remember?”
She takes a shaky breath, grip tightening on her tote bag’s strap. “Together.”
“Damn straight.”
I think about last week at the beach house. How excited she got when I surprised her with those marshmallows. Same thing happened when we were kids. I’d sneak out a packet from the gas station in my ratty hoodie, then she’d melt them over our little fire in the woods.
She always burned her mouth on the first one, too impatient to wait for it to cool.
But that’s Haven. Her bitter life gave her a sweet tooth.
The beach was good. Really good.
But I realized something while we were there. I’ve changed. I don’t like the quiet anymore. I’ve grown to like the insanity of campus life. The parties, the noise, the constant buzz of people.
I hated it at first. Felt like an imposter. A poor kid playing dress-up in my designer threads.
But now? I love it.
I hope Haven learns to love the chaos and the feeling of belonging somewhere too.
Even if that somewhere is pretentious as fuck.
The secretary’s desk outside Winslow’s office is empty, but there’s a cup of coffee still steaming near the keyboard. Through the frosted glass window in Winslow’s door, I can make out the tall, blurred shape of the dean moving around.
Haven hesitates again, but I knock once on Winslow’s door and push it open before we can change our minds.
The dean of AHC glances at us from beside the filing cabinet, annoyance flickering in her dark eyes before she schools her face into its usual stoic mask.
“Miss Lee. And Mr.—”
“Jordan,” I cut in.
“Yes, Mr. Jordan,” she repeats, like she was just about to remember. Her gaze drops to our joined hands, and her immaculately red lips tighten almost imperceptibly. “We don’t have a meeting.”
“No,” I admit, because Haven’s apparently lost her voice. “But we need to talk to you about Professor Rooke.”
The shift is immediate. Winslow closes the drawer, hips swaying in her tight burgundy pencil skirt as she goes back to her expansive desk. The red soles on her stilettos keep drawing my eye until Haven squeezes my hand hard enough to make me wince.
“I wasn’t—“ I cut off my muttered protest when Winslow gestures sharply behind us.
“Close it.”
Haven breaks off contact with me to go close the door. Winslow openly studies me, twisting the large diamond ring on her right hand.
She doesn’t invite us to sit, so we stand there like kids called to the principal’s office. That she has to look up at us doesn’t diminish her authority in the slightest.
“Speak,” she says.
“I’m resigning as Rooke’s T.A.” The words come out steadier than I feel staring down the dean of Agony Hollow College. “Effective immediately.”
Winslow leans back in her chair, fingers still worrying that ring. Her gaze shifts to Haven. “And you?”
Haven swallows. “I want to drop out of Professor Rooke’s class.”
Winslow is quiet for a long moment, her dark, sharply lined eyes moving between us as she puts the pieces together.
Two students holding hands, both trying to distance themselves from the same professor.
She smooths her already perfect, shimmering black hair.
Her voice is carefully neutral. “And the reason for these drastic changes?”
“Spread myself way too thin,” I say. “Rooke—” I clear my throat “—Professor Rooke demands too much of my time.”
“I’m not comfortable with the course material,” Haven bleats when Yolanda looks her way.
“Yeah, he’s got some fu—messed up stuff in his curriculum,” I throw in.
Winslow’s expression says she doesn’t believe a word of it, but she doesn’t push. Probably because she doesn’t want to know details she might have to repeat in court.
“Your resignation is straightforward, Mr. Jordan. Ask Nora for the paperwork.”
One down.
Relief floods me in a wave of hot and cold prickles.
“And me?” Haven asks.
Winslow sits forward, and I have to force myself not to look at her cleavage when the frilly edges of her cream blouse gape. “Dropping his class is not possible,” she says as she laces her fingers together on the dark red leather inset on her desk.
“But I never signed up to study psychology, or philosophy, or any of that stuff.” Haven clears her throat, her hand tightening in mine. “His course—”
“—is a prerequisite of your grant,” the dean says, her calm voice cutting effortlessly through Haven’s nervous babble. “I assume you’re not familiar with the funding structure of the grant you received?”
Haven drops her head, shifting her feet. “It’s…from the college?”
Winslow sighs as if we’re giving her a migraine and toys with her ring again. Her wedding finger is empty, and from the rumors I remember hearing, she’s recently divorced. Bet she bought the diamond ring from the settlement. She’s obsessed enough with it.
“The college provides thirty percent of funding. The remaining seventy percent comes from a private donor with very specific stipulations.”
I groan inwardly, because let me fucking guess…
“What stipulations?” Haven asks woodenly, like she’s also figured it out already.