“People have to do what they need to in order to survive, Drew. Not everyone has a full-ride scholarship or comes equipped with rich parents able to fund a college education.”
He reared back and narrowed his eyes at me.
“Well, since you’re so tight with him, then you know that’s not the case with Race. His parents have more money than God, and he had a trust fund that could buy and sell this university a hundred times over. He picked that life. He chose to be a criminal. He had all the same opportunities as the rest of us, he just squandered them and sank into the black hole of the Point.”
I doubted it was as easy as that, but this wasn’t a conversation I felt like I needed to be having anymore. I spent too much time having to force Race out of my mind as it was; I didn’t need to be arguing about him with anyone else in my life.
“I think the way things look on the surface is always misleading. Passing judgment based on rumor and speculation isn’t a smart thing to do, and like I said, none of it matters, Race and I are just acquaintances.” I shifted my bag on my shoulder and took a step back. “I have to go to my next class.”
He gave me a concerned look that I turned my back on and walked away from. I knew all about things on the outside hiding the real, ugly truth of the way things were once you got past the front door. I didn’t know Race well enough to try and judge the choices he made or the life he was living, but I was smart enough and intuitive enough to know that there was more to the story, deeper circumstances at work, than what people gossiped and speculated about.
My next two classes, both of which I had high A’s in, flew by and I was rushing across the sprawling campus to meet Dovie for a quick cup of coffee. Now that she no longer worked at the restaurant where we had met waitressing, it was hard to sneak in time to hang out. I spotted her bright, orange-ish-red hair with no problem and threw myself into the chair across from her. She already had a drink waiting for me because it was just in her nature to be that generous and sweet.
She smiled at me, the freckles on her nose wrinkling up, and her eyes, the exact same forest green as Race’s, twinkling at me. Being in love with an unholy terror looked good on her, there was no denying it.
“Hey.”
I had to grin back. “Hey. You look happy.”
She blushed a little; there was no hiding it with that fair redhead complexion.
“I am. What about you? How are things going?”
Ugh. Like they had been for the last year. I shrugged a shoulder and let it fall. “Okay, I guess. I have an evil teacher’s assistant out to ruin my GPA, I almost got shot this weekend, and I got a weird text message on Saturday night after that party. Things at the restaurant are about the same . . . and things at home . . .” All I could do was shake my head. “I just have to wait until Karsen is out of the house.”
She cocked her head and concern colored her mossy-toned gaze. “Jeez, Brysen, that’s a load of stuff.”
I laughed drily and fished out my laptop so I could take a look at what I had due tomorrow and what I needed to work on after my shift tonight. “Yeah.”
“What kind of weird text did you get?”
That was the part she was going to pick out of the shit storm that was my current circumstances?
“Just some creeper telling me I looked pretty and that they were sorry they missed me.”
She frowned, her coppery eyebrows dipping low over her eyes. “That’s freaky. You didn’t recognize the number?”
“Nope, and I have turned down plenty of weirdos that ask me out either here on campus or at the restaurant that would love nothing more than to mess with me. It’s pretty easy nowadays to find someone’s number on the Internet if you’re determined enough.”
“I don’t like that at all, Bry.”
Considering she had been kidnapped, cut up, and used as a pawn by Novak to get Bax to behave, I bet she didn’t, but those kinds of things didn’t happen in my world.
“It was probably just a prank, or meant for someone else. It just annoyed me because of the way the party ended. Gunshots are terrifying when you experience them in person.”
She bit her lip and didn’t agree or disagree with me. I entered my password and then froze. The screen was blue . . . not good. I looked up at Dovie over the monitor and tried to keep from screaming.
“My laptop has a blue screen.”
She blinked and got up to walk around the side of the table so she could look at it.
“Uh-oh.”
I gulped and turned it off and started it back up. Still ugly, glaring blue.
“Shit.”
She squeezed my shoulder. “That’s bad.”
“You have no idea. My entire college life is in there. My paper due tomorrow, all my notes, and if I want any kind of shot at passing Math Theory, I need everything that the blue screen just swallowed. This can’t be happening.”
I barely resisted throwing the entire thing on the floor and tap-dancing all over the pieces.
“You can probably recover the stuff on the hard drive.” She was trying to sound optimistic, but it wasn’t helping.
“Well, that’s one problem that might be solved, but I can’t afford a new computer.” I didn’t mean to say it, it just slipped out.
Dovie had been to the house; she knew that at one point in time my parents had been pretty well off. It sounded dumb, not having money for a new computer when I lived in a nice suburb and drove a BMW, but the truth was I HAD to keep my job at the restaurant if I wanted to keep my car, if I wanted to finish my degree. There was no more money. Between Mom’s medical bills and whatever Dad was doing in the stock market, we were lucky to still have lights on in the house.