I drew the chair close to me and patted it again. “Sit, mama.”
Her nose crinkled, but she skirted the end of the bed and gingerly lowered herself into the chair. “I’m not a dog,” she mumbled.
“I know you’re not.”
She turned her head, our eyes clashing. The apples of her cheeks were glowing pink. If I had my rights to her, I’d have reached out and rubbed my thumbs over the flames to see if I could stoke them higher.
Julien closed the iPad with a thump. “Zadie, tell Amir the Pi Sig story. He really wants to hear it.”
Her fingers were clasped so tight in her lap, they were turning white. “Oh, I don’t think he wants to hear that. I’m interrupting your movie.”
“Did you not hear the part about it being my tenth time watching it?” he asked.
I stared at her intently. “What Pi Sig story? Did they do something?”
Unclasping her fingers, she spread them on her thighs. “It’s long and—”
“Tell me. Julien and I have nowhere to be, and if he thinks I should hear it, I want to.”I want to hear every fucking thing you’ve been doing for the past three weeks, down to what you had for breakfast and what time you fell asleep every night. Fuck, I miss you, mama.
“Well, okay. Elena heard about this Dogfight party the Pi Sig boys were throwing. It was absolutely disgusting. The object was to invite the least desirable girl as a date, and the winner would receive the best room in the house next year. Which is definitely worth destroying an innocent girl, right?” She scoffed, and her cheeks became even more heated. “I found out this guy, Deacon, had thought of inviting me, but changed his mind because I was ‘too cute’ and—”
“What the fuck?” I was up, out of my seat, ready to destroy. “There is absolutely nothing undesirable about you. Why the fuck would anyone insinuate otherwise?”
She peered up at me, her lips twisting to the side. “Do you want me to continue?”
“Sit your ass down,” Julien barked. “Listen to the part where your girl was a badass.”
I sat, but I was plotting this Deacon asshole’s murder in my head.
Zadie sucked in a deep breath. “This isn’t really about the party, but I think you should know Deacon was the one who had been sending me notes all along. It was him at the library too. He had a thing for me, and I guess he thought the notes were the way to my heart. I don’t know. But once I found out the details of the party and Deacon’s involvement, I made a plan to stop him. I couldn’t let him or the other guys hurt the poor girls they’d invited as dates.”
A rope knotted around my heart. “What did you do?” I growled.
Julien giggled like a hyena. “This is the best part.”
Zadie bit back a grin. “Helen, Elena, and I went down to Pi Sig to visit Deacon.”
I hissed. “You went into the frat house? Three girls?”
She nodded. “We had bats.”
We had bats. We had bats. We had bats.
She’d said it so casually, like they’d gone for a Sunday stroll. With bats.
I blinked at her. “You had bats.”
“Mmhmm. So, we went to Deacon’s room, the girls scared him while I sweet-talked him into a confession. He named names, spilled the details, all of it, and I recorded it. I sent it all to President Whitlock and a few department heads. As of last week, Pi Sig lost its charter, Deacon and three other guys have been expelled, and all the campus frats have received an official warning that if they throw a similar party in the future, it will mean immediate expulsion for all attendees.”
She was smiling by the end, sitting up straight, head high, proud of herself. I was trying to get there, trying like hell, but I couldn’t get past her going to that frat house unprotected.
“Tell me the part about you having a bat.”
She blinked her big blue eyes at me, and some of the pride in her spine deflated. “We were being careful. I wasn’t scared. We had it handled. And by the time we got outside, Theo and Lock had shown up.”
“Theo and Lock showed up.”
“Yes,” she replied. “One of the frat guys texted Theo that his girlfriend was getting out of hand again. Those were his exact words too.”