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Jaime

I was going to work on it this weekend. I had like three deadlines this week

Tony

I thought those weren’t a thing in private education.

Jaime

Very funny

They are if you’re on a scholarship

Tony

I’m about to start driving. Behave.

Jaime

I’ve literally done nothing

I didn’t answer. My willpower to not be roped into whatever it was Jaime was scheming was not at its best right this minute.

TWELVE

jaime

“You… You’re kidding, right?” Cece asked.

I wrapped my arms around my chest. They were acting weird.

“Why would I be kidding?”

They’d been weird all week. It was just now that I could catch them—and get them up to speed with everything that had transpired. I thought I’d been lucky I caught them coming back from the hair salon.

The bleached shag looked good on them.

“You’ve been cagey as fuck all week,” they accused. I blinked. Cece was the one who had been cagey as fuck, and not just this week. Something really must’ve happened, but they weren’t opening up about it yet. It was starting to border on pissing me off, if I was being frank. “And it’s because you’re fuckingTony? Abuse of power Tony?”

“No one calls him that.” I scowled. “And I thought we were in the business of giving people a chance? It happened, like, ten years ago, and he’s apologized.”

“Has he?” Cece pressed. They leaned forward from where they were perched on the ratty sofa we’d grabbed from the locallandfill years ago. “Or has he toldyouhe was sorry about it to get in your pants?”

I scoffed. “He’s not getting in my pants.”

If what he said the other day about my puppy cock held, it would be the other way around. I’d planned to tease him about it when we made it to his place that night.

However, after showering in the club, I might’ve gotten too drowsy and all but fell asleep in his car. I didn’t remember much of that night, other than I didn’t freak him out enough he left me to sleep alone.

Waking up with someone who was bigger and had more muscles than Cece had felt nicer than expected. Of course, Tony and I had classes to run off to, and I was not a morning person.

“For fuck’s sake.” Cece rolled their eyes. “You know what, fine. You do your thing. It’s what you’re good at.”

The fuck?

I leaned back as if I’d just been slapped, cold seeping into my body. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

The thing about how their whole cagey attitude was bordering on pissing me off? Yeah, it wasn’t bordering anything anymore. Now it was pissing me off. Whatever had happened, Iwantedto help, because Cece was so far from the person who just wanted to have fun and do their thing, I didn’t know how to even talk to them. But I shouldn’t have to be their punching bag while they figured out whatever it was they were struggling with.