Hooped #4 (The Hooped Interracial Romance Series, Book #4) by Claire Adams Page A

wasn’t the immature, impulsive guy he had been; the guy who did
whatever he had to in order to get what he wanted from a girl, and then dropped
her. He actually cared about me. But
maybe cheating, gaming the system, manipulating things is just his nature. I shivered. What did it say about my prospects of a real relationship with him
for Devon to be that way? If he was just flat-out a cheater, then could I trust
him about anything at all? A person couldn’t change their very nature, could
they?
    “Every time I think I’m settled and everything makes sense between me and Devon, something
else comes up,” I said out loud, kicking a stick out of my way on the sidewalk.   It wasn’t fair. Somehow it didn’t even
really seem to matter anymore that he’d been involved with a bunch of other
girls before me; he had come clean about that, and considering how hot he was
and what frat he belonged to, I would have had to have been the most naïve
person on the planet not to think that he’d sleep around with a bunch of
different women. I could forgive him that—after all, he didn’t have any STIs,
and he wasn’t about to cheat on me that I knew about. But something like what
he’d just told me; the fact that he had gambled with his future, that he
obviously didn’t even take the academic part of school that seriously—that
seemed so much more of a betrayal.
    What
do we even really have in common, then? We both liked
basketball, and we both liked some of the same music and food. But if Devon
didn’t take what he was learning in school seriously, that was a
major—huge—difference. I couldn’t imagine myself being with someone who didn’t
care about his actual education, who would cheat on something so important. He
could have gotten caught so much sooner. “What an idiot,” I grumbled to myself.
But then, who was the bigger idiot: the guy who gambled with his future? Or the girl who dated someone who would gamble on
his future in such a stupid way? I frowned as I realized I was getting closer
to the dorms; somehow I had meandered in that direction without even thinking
about it. I sighed and decided that it was as good a destination as any. After
all, I couldn’t just keep wandering around campus all night. I had to go
somewhere. I took the left fork on the walkway and started in the direction of
my building.
    I walked up the stairs to the suite that I shared with
Kelly, dreading the possibility that she’d be up still watching TV, and that I’d have to talk to her about
Devon; the last thing I wanted was for her to tell me how right she’d been and
how stupid I’d been. I lucked out; Kelly either wasn’t in or had already gone
to bed—the room was dark, and the door to
her side of it showed no light. I got into my own room as quietly as possible and turned the light on as I closed
the door behind me.
    For a moment, I wondered if I should text Devon; I
thought that he was probably worried about me. After all, I’d run out of his
room, and out of the frat house, probably about thirty to forty-five minutes
before, and wandered around ever since then. It was the middle of the night.
While there wasn’t a whole lot of crime in the area, nonetheless something
could have happened to me. But I was exhausted, too. I didn’t even want to
think about Devon, much less talk to him—and I was certain that if I even sent
him a message that indicated that I’d gotten back safely, he’d try and explain,
justify, get me to say that it was all right that he had cheated on his tests.
I decided that he’d just have to accept that no news was good news—if he
worried about my safety, then that was his issue, not mine. I was too tired.
    I climbed into bed, turning off the lights. I didn’t
even bother to take off my clothes before slipping underneath the covers. I
would take a shower in the morning; I would think about this incredible mess of
bullshit then. I closed my eyes in the darkness and hoped against hope