Bet in the Dark(18)
Author: Rachel Higginson

He snorted a little at that, rebounding from his earlier insecurity. “Fin said you’d say that.” I opened my mouth to give him my side of the argument but he just talked over me. “You know usually girls don’t forget my name.”

Oh, no. Another one of these guys. I paused for a moment, letting his cocky words hang in the air to see if he would pick up on his out of place arrogance. He didn’t, so I had to stoop to a tactic I usually reserved for my brothers. “I don’t really know what you want me to say here? Uh, congratulations?”

His blush was back in full force and I had to mash my lips together to keep from grinning. He ran a hand through his naturally auburn-highlighted hair and cut a look to me out of the corner of his eyes.

On a frustrated whisper he said, “I’m on the track team, it’s not like I’m invisible.”

“I’m sure you’re not,” I agreed sympathetically.

He let out a nervous burst of laughter and shook his head. “Fin is in so much trouble with you.”

Gah! It was my turn to blush. “Don’t say things like that,” I snapped. “I’m just trying to get out of this situation that he put me in. Nothing more.”

“That’s what I’m saying; he’s not used to girls like you. He’s used to girls that get close to me and Charlie just to get close to him. Most girls remember my name because I’m named after whiskey or they think of me like a hurdle on the way to Fin the finish line.”

I snorted a laugh. “Fin the finish line.”

“Tara the Taker?” he grinned down at me.

“Well, trust me, I fully plan on leaving Fin’s finish line and your hurdles completely alone,” I assured him. Which earned me some muffled laughter. “And whiskey? Really?”

He winked at me so I didn’t know if he was serious or not, but I didn’t get a chance to find out. “So you know Ty?”

“He’s my boss,” I explained, although I felt like it should have been obvious since he was at Bailey’s last night with Fin.

“Ty likes you,” Jameson stated as if that were a really important fact.

“Of course he does!” I defended myself, but inside I kept hearing his weird comment about Fin being like his son, and me being like his daughter and how that would be oh, so wrong. I shuddered against the memory. There wasn’t anything between us, but if there was even the smallest chance of a relationship with Fin the last thing I wanted to associate him with was another brother.

“You’re not what I expected,” he said seriously and in my opinion, out of the freaking blue!

“What does that mean?” I demanded but our professor had just entered the room and was already opening his book to launch into his horribly monotone monologue.

“Hey are you still failing this class?” Jameson whispered. He pulled out a thick notebook filled with handwritten notes and for some reason that endeared him to me.

I grunted some kind of affirmative noise, not willing to actually put words to the fact that I was actually failing at something.

“Are you going to get a chance to make up any work you missed?”

The professor cut his eyes to us; clearly we were disrupting his speech. He gave Jameson an intense look that would have had me trembling with remorse, but Jameson just shrugged one shoulder. Eventually the prof got back to price theory.

As soon as his attention was diverted off us, I whispered, “as long as I get all the remaining attendance points, homework points and ace the midterm and final.”

Jameson snickered at that. “Sounds easy enough.”

I turned to face him and gave him a pointed eye roll.

“Well, do you want my notes for the weeks you missed, then?” he dropped his eyes to his notes and scribbled something down from the lecture.

I let that slide. Normally it annoyed me to no end when people could simultaneously talk in class and listen to a teacher at the same time. I could only do one or the other. So getting caught up in an in-class conversation meant I had no idea what the teacher was saying. I usually chose listening to the teacher.

“Really?” I hedged, feeling like this was too good to be true, like maybe there was another hidden fee attached to this.

“Sure,” Jameson grinned over at me. “As long as you can read my writing.”

“That would be fantastic, thank you!” Maybe imminent failure in this class wasn’t so imminent after all!

He leafed through his notebook and then gathered together some more loose papers tucked inside his text book. I would probably have to spend some time sorting through all this, and his handwriting would definitely be a problem, but these notes were invaluable to my grade.

“Do you want them back next class or sooner? I want to give you enough time to study for midterms.” We didn’t have class until Wednesday and our midterm was a week after that.

“Are you going to Fin’s this weekend?” Jameson asked casually, glossing over the entire reason Fin and I spent time together to begin with. Fin called me his “slave” in his text message.

“Not till Monday,” I admitted with a shrug.

“I’ll just pick them up then.” Jameson shot me another look out of the corner of his eye. “You’re not going to his Grandma’s Sunday dinner?”

“Uh, no.” Weird question, right? “Why would you think that?”

He shot me a slow grin and shook his head a little. “It’s a coveted invitation. But it’s probably too early for that. You seem like the kind of girl that scares easily.”

“Omg,” I whispered, feeling like there was no other word or phrase that could sum up all of this building frustration. “I’m going to stop talking to you now and start paying attention.”

Jameson laughed at me one more time, softly, casually, familiarly, like we were old friends. It kind of freaked me out. But he didn’t say anything more and let me tune back into Professor Boring so I could take my own notes instead of stealing all his.

Chapter Eight

The weekend flew by in a haze of work and sleep. Finally, with the apartment to myself I could relax completely. I didn’t have to worry about Tara’s extremely loud 90’s punk blaring late into the night and her weird early morning routines that left messy breakfasts, she never cleaned up or meeting up with her stoner friends so they could wake and bake in community. Not that I would judge them or condemn 90’s punk. Both had their place in this world probably, it just wasn’t supposed to be in my apartment, at inconvenient hours, while Tara stole money from me I didn’t even have and chipped away at my dignity.

Still, as nice as the solitude was, I knew I wouldn’t be able to maintain it. Even though she was months behind on her rent, she had been helping me with the utilities, which now fell solely to me. And I could barely cover her share of the rent. Pretty soon I would have to decide between keeping water or electricity. Which, let’s face it, was a terrible situation to be in.

Finding another roommate freaked me out though. I couldn’t handle another taker like Tara. Literally I couldn’t afford to lose any more possessions. And what if I got someone worse than her? I needed an online vetting site for roommates.

Too bad one of my brothers wasn’t a cop. I would have totally made them do background checks on all potential candidates.

Ugh. Plus, there was still the whole matter of Fin Hunter expecting me to fork over seven thousand dollars in four weeks and two days.

With the little free time I had over the weekend I tried really hard to hunt down Tara. I called her cell phone which was now disconnected. I Facebook stalked the begeezus out of her, but she hadn’t had any activity since before she abandoned me. Same with Twitter, Instagram and her blog. Really, Tara? A blog?

Next I tried to hack into her old voicemail and email account, but she surprisingly used complicated passwords, or just not obvious ones, like her birthdate and address, because I could not figure out anything. And since her cell phone was no longer in service, apparently her voicemail wasn’t either.

This girl was gone, and never coming back. Which sucked.

Plus, other than the missing furniture, and really, it’s not like she broke in, she had a key, she didn’t actually steal real money from me. She didn’t hack into my bank account, or use my debit card unauthorized. All she’d done was sign an illegal contract illegally.

Not really something I could prove.

I trudged up the stairs to Fin’s apartment, precisely on time for our scheduled workday. By my calculations, and if I worked some overtime, by the deadline I would only owe six thousand five hundred dollars.

And best case scenario right now, was if he let me work the entire debt off doing this whole free slavery thing. If I did that I only had to give up my life and free time, and live penniless and destitute for the next…. two years.

Totally feasible.

My family would eventually get involved in this. There would be no way I could hide this amount of time spent with Fin and glide under Grayson and Beckett’s radar. They would ultimately find out. And the only thing more embarrassing than them thinking I was dating Fin, would be them finding out I owed him an insane amount of money and was trying to work it off through free services. Although those did not include prostitution, so at least I had that.

I knocked on the door to Fin’s apartment and had the strongest urge to bang my head against the cold metal instead. I was in a bad place and Fin was trying to be my friend? His texting hadn’t stopped over the weekend, although I only replied when I absolutely had to. Jameson befriending me in one of my classes? Meeting Britte and introducing his friends to us? This…. whatever we had going on had an expiration date not five weeks from today, at which point he would be forced to break my kneecaps with a baseball bat. Or at least that’s what they did in movies when they couldn’t pay.

“It’s about time,” Fin grunted when he opened the door for me. His expression was drawn and his eyes glared into me, pinning me in place in the hallway.

“What?” I fumbled for my cell phone, rechecking the time. Holding it up for him, I said, “I’m right on time.”

He grunted at that and then stepped out of my way. He closed the door behind me and then while I spun around wondering why he wasn’t leading the way to our work station he leaned back against the door. His arms were crossed, his eyebrows still pulled together. I fidgeted with my backpack but he made no move from the door.

“You told me four, it’s four,” I held up my phone again.

“It is four,” he allowed quietly. It was a dangerous quiet, a soft but menacing quiet. Our gazes locked from the few feet apart we were standing and he held me there unmoving. His eyes were sparkling dark chocolate, alive with some intensity I didn’t understand. The muscles in his neck and shoulders were corded tight and his jaw was clenched together as if he were physically stopping himself from doing something. I swallowed against the lump in my throat, knowing he wanted something from me, but having no idea what it was. Eventually he released me from his hold. Rubbing to rough hands over his face, he sighed heavily. “You’re not like any girl I know.”