Page 21 of Gray Area

“Dad! Can you come and read with me?” Roman calls from upstairs, and the sound of his voice makes me freeze. The noise penetrates my father’s office door too, it seems , since he stops speaking as soon as he hears it.

“This isn’t fucking over!” he shouts and then I hear a slam against the wall, and something tells me he will need a new cordless phone.

The door opens and my father startles at the sight of me. “Declan,” he says, appearing red in the face and agitated. I have never seen my dad flustered, and my gut once again tells me something isn’t right.

“Who were you on the phone with, Dad?” I demand.

My father plasters a smile on his face. “That? Oh, that is some asshole who’s trying to screw us with some fucked equipment charge.”

I study my father. “You called him?” I quiz him. That is not my father’s MO. He doesn’t have business phone calls; he always says in person is way more efficient. That is the way he works, face-to-face.

“Yeah, I—”

“Dad!” Roman calls again.

My father looks relieved at the interruption. “Sorry, Dec, duty calls,” he says, clapping my arm and hustling upstairs to my brother.

This isn’t right.

I head into the kitchen and clean up Roman’s bowl and the other couple of dishes in the sink. Once I am done and my dad still hasn’t come back down, I go upstairs to find him. He may think our conversation is over, but I’m not done. He is acting completely unlike himself, and I need to know why.

I open Roman’s door soundlessly and find Dad fast asleep, his mouth hanging open, and Roman with his head on his chest. I’m not going to wake him up, but I’m not letting this go either. I shut the door just as soundlessly as I opened it, and go home.

Chapter 10

VIVIAN

Ihave been picking up a lot of overtime at work. The stomach bug is still rampaging through the housekeeping staff, so Bailey and I are cashing in big-time, and we both worked last night. I am excited about making the extra money, but it has left me zero time to do my part of the project with Declan.

And here I thought he would be the letdown.

Declan has turned out to be a pleasant surprise. I totally typecast him as some thug who I’d have to carry for our entire project in order to get a decent grade. But he has proven me so wrong. His ability to memorize the information he’d found and have an intelligent discussion with me the other night was shocking. And sexy. And it bothered me both that I had been so judgy and that I wasn’t thinking of him as a weirdo anymore.

I hate when Bailey is right.

Bailey is sleeping in the bedroom today, and I took the couch when we got home from work this morning. I reasoned that she needed the sleep more than I did since she has to go back tonight, and I had to get up early and work on my portion of the assignment anyway. Thankfully Bailey was too tired to argue with me when we got home.

In order to complete my research, I need to head to the library. I am really tight with my money, saving every penny I can for when I start at a real university, and therefore I refuse to buy a laptop of my own. Even if I did buy one, I’d have to pay for the Internet in order to do the research at home anyway, and that is too much of an added expense. I figure I will have to get one when I finally get into a four-year program, and I want it to be top-of-the-line, so I pinch my pennies and instead use the computers at the community college.

I wake up at three and get ready quickly and quietly so I don’t disturb Bailey, then head to the bus stop. I am wiped out and eager to get this class over with. It seems like the overtime is really dragging me down more than normal. The cold isn’t helping matters either. It is yet another day with wind chills in the single digits.

I get to school and am glad to find the computer area relatively deserted, as I figured it would be. Since most of the students have their own devices, it is rare that all the library stations are ever taken.

I settle myself in front of a computer and take out my notebook. I start by looking over my notes to get my essay due for tonight out of the way. It doesn’t take me long, and once that is done, I do more research on nepotism for our project. As I search and take notes, I find it increasingly hard to keep my eyes open and on the screen. I even stand and walk back and forth a couple of times to try and wake myself up. Then a headachestarts and I have to stop looking at the screen, the glare making the pain a million times worse.

I check the time and see there are about thirty minutes until I have to be at class. I decide to go over to the class building and wait outside the room, since I’m not making any headway here. I gather my belongings and notice that my arms feel like lead. But I push past the thought and make my way outside. The air is icy and it soothes my headache slightly. I take several deep breaths of the air to try and wake myself up.

The other class is thankfully letting out early when I arrive, and I am able to get in and grab a seat with twenty minutes to spare before my own class starts. I put my arm down and lay my head on it and feel the throbbing in my head slowly ebb away.

The next thing I know I am being shaken awake. “Vivian?” a deep voice barks at me and I sit up straight. The tone of the voice makes me feel like I’m in trouble, and I desperately reach in my brain for what I did wrong, but then the headache slams into me, and I squint against it.

I turn and find Declan beside me and the rest of the room empty.

“Did I sleep through class?” I ask him, horrified.

His eyes seem to soften and a ghost of a smirk covers his lips. “No, actually class is canceled,” he tells me, his voice sounding gentler than the one that woke me up.

“Canceled?”

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