Page 22

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

HECTOR

“What do I smell?” Heather asked, padding out into my living room.

After Radiant last night, I had brought her back to my place to calm down. She had started crying, and while I attributed it to the intensity of the scene, I didn t want her to go home like that. I d wanted to ensure she was okay and safe.

“Breakfast,” I hummed over the hot pans of eggs and home fries.

She walked over to me and tucked her head underneath my arm so she could see. “You made this?”

My lips curled into a small smile. “Yes.”

“I’m surprised,” she said. “Usually, guys as rich as you hire a full-time cook.”

A laugh bubbled up my chest. You think I m lying to you?

Her cheeks rounded, and she stared up at me with those playful eyes. “No.”

After she sat at the table, I set a plate in front of her.

“Where did you learn to cook?” she asked.

“My mom.”

I rarely ever cooked for anyone anymore. But when Mom had still been alive, I d make us dinner every Monday and Friday and all the holidays too. But I hadn t done that in over a year now since she d passed.

Halfway through breakfast, I opened the laptop that sat in the center of the dining room table and pushed it toward her. “I have something else for you to do this morning while you eat, before class.”

Heather arched a brow at it and finished chewing. So, you made me breakfast to soften the blow of forcing me to code.

While I shook my head, a low chuckle drifted from my mouth because only Heather would think something as crazy as that. Since I had woken up this morning, I had been brushing up on my coding skills. Steven knew way more about coding than I ever did, but I knew the basics. And from what I could gather, Heather had been taking a basic coding course.

I made you breakfast because I enjoy cooking, I said. But I m going to force you to practice because you asked me to help you.

“I do want you to help, but …” She trailed off, staring at the code on the computer.

I gritted my teeth because I knew Heather well enough now to know that whenever she trailed off like that, she was about to say something self-deprecating, like her infamous, I m stupid, line. And if I heard that come out of her mouth one more time, I d be the one to throw a fit.

“But what?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “It hurts my head, looking at it.”

“Well, you have to pass, don’t you?”

After grumbling to herself because she d probably thought I would let her get out of this one, she pulled the laptop closer to her plate and ate while she attempted to fix the code I had purposefully ruined for her and asked her to find a way to download files from the laptop.

* * *

Forty minutes later, Heather slid the computer across the table and jumped up. I tried. And if I don t leave now, then I m going to be late for his stupid class. After she tugged on her coat, she paused in front of me, her gaze drifting down to my lips. I will, uh, see you tonight at Radiant.

She twirled around to head back toward the door, but before she could leave, I snaked my hand behind her neck and pulled her into a kiss.

She sucked in a sharp breath and placed her hands on my abdomen, relaxing underneath my touch. After gently kissing me back, she pulled away and wiped her lips, a giggle escaping her mouth.

“I’ll see you later,” she said, tucking some hair behind her ear.

“See you tonight.”

Bouncing on her toes, she headed for the door and pulled it open. “Oh.”

I glanced up to see Steven standing at my door with a huge box and about to knock.

After Heather slipped past him, Steven leaned against the doorway and nodded his head toward her retreating figure. “Uh, I was not expecting to see someone at your house so early in the morning.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Michelle sent me to deliver some … goods to your home.”

Eyes rolling, I grabbed the box from his hands and glanced inside to see about a hundred floppy dildos just sitting casually inside it. I ran a hand over my face and set the box on my dining room table.

“Curse that woman,” I mumbled underneath my breath.

I tell her not to give me any more toys, and she sends a box of them.

Anyway, perfect timing, I hummed, walking over to the computer. Can you look something over for me?

“What is this?”

“Code.”

Steven arched a brow. “You sound like Michelle with that sarcastic answer.”

“Heather failed her last exam in one of her classes and wanted me to help her study. I gave her some instructions this morning to fix some code. And”—I looked down at it and ran it to see if the code succeeded—“it works.”

Steven chuckled. Is that a bad thing?

“No, but she said she failed her most recent exam on this stuff. I’m just confused.”

After setting his coat on the back of the chair, Steven sat down and pulled the laptop toward him, scrolling down the page and scanning the code. “Hector, this is Java, one of the harder languages to understand for students new to software engineering.”

“And?”

And it looks like code written by someone with ten years of experience.

My eyes widened. “Really?”

“It’s modular.” He looked up at me. “Did she search up the answer?”

“Not for this,” I said. “For her exam, she said that she had access to the internet.”

Steven pushed the laptop to the center of the table. I don t know what happened with her exam, but this code is better than the code that some software engineers that I ve hired produced.

“Interesting,” I hummed, drawing my tongue across my teeth.

Either Heather wasn’t great at taking exams or her professor had failed her on purpose.

While I had seen Heather under pressure before-and albeit she didn t do well while stressed-I doubted that it was just a coincidence that she had flunked last year and was failing this year with the same professor.

And I was going to get to the bottom of it.