Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 78760 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 394(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78760 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 394(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
The last two months had been hard.
Hell, the last two days had been the longest of my life. Fighting for my jobs and career had been enough to age me a hundred years.
I wanted to pull her into my arms, but technically, she was still my student—not to mention I was on the way to the proverbial principal’s office, aka the dean’s office.
She looked beautiful, though.
At first, I was determined to keep Tally close, but after everything I’d experienced over the last two days, I knew that I couldn’t add on to that worry by taking something that I wasn’t allowed to have yet.
Which inevitably caused both Tally and I to be miserable last night when the only thing either of us wanted was to spend time with each other after the shit night we’d had the previous twenty-four hours.
There, however, was an end in sight.
One that was only a week away.
Graduation day for Tally.
“Hadley,” she grumbled. “I don’t know what her problem is. One second she’s happy and smiling, and the next I’m sitting there watching her walk away from me with anger written all over her face.”
I gritted my teeth to bite back the retort that was on the tip of my tongue that came to mind when that lying little bitch was brought up.
“What happened this time?” I asked carefully, feeling like shit that I’d kept this hidden from Tally.
“This time?” she snorted. “This time I was two doors down, taking my exam in the library, and she tried to cheat off of me.”
I blinked, then blinked again.
“She what?” I barked.
She nodded in commiseration.
Then sighed.
“I think she’s been doing it for a long time,” she murmured. “I wouldn’t have noticed this time had she not leaned over in a weird way, causing me to look at her.”
“What was she doing?” I asked, imaging the scene in my head with very little effort on my part.
“She managed to convince the therapist that she needed to have an alternate testing location due to something traumatic…” she shook her head. “At first, I thought she was just getting more comfortable. But when I looked over, she was staring at my computer and didn’t even try to hide it.”
“What about the aide. What was she doing while Hadley was doing this?” I demanded.
“We’re in the corner. You can’t see Hadley at all, but you can see me.” She shook her head. “She’s always looked at my papers that we turn in, but I’ve never thought that she was copying them. I thought she was just checking her answers.”
I wanted to pull her into my arms.
“She must change them enough that they seem original, because I would’ve caught the cheating had she copied you word for word,” I informed her. “She’s obviously trying to be inconspicuous about it. If I didn’t spot it, then that means she’s a freakin’ master.”
She shrugged and bent forward.
“I mentioned it to my Med Surg teacher once I was done with my test, and she said she would look into it. I’m just scared that by her looking into it, she’ll be implicating me as well.”
“She won’t,” I promised.
And promise her I would. If anyone was going down for cheating, it wouldn’t be Tally.
Tally was well liked, and it was more than obvious that she tried and succeeded in everything because she worked hard for it.
Something I’d witnessed myself quite a few times over the last few months that she’d been in my life.
“I know,” she murmured. “But I’ve got this niggling feeling in the back of my head, something’s off with her. All these years I thought that she was my friend, but I’m kind of thinking that she’s only been using me now.”
People used other people all the time, and unfortunately Tally wasn’t any different. If it wasn’t her, it’d just be someone else.
“She probably attached herself to you because you study your ass off and get better grades than she does,” I added my two cents. “But now it’s all making a whole lot more sense.”
“Why?” she challenged.
I picked up a clipboard and gestured for her to follow me.
She did, falling in step beside me.
“How convenient that she started acting all bitchy right around the time you started taking your tests in an alternate testing location.”
Understanding dawned.
“I did start taking the tests in the library right around the time Hadley started acting catty,” she murmured. “She’s asked me multiple times why I don’t test with the rest of the class anymore, and I explained to her that you were able to get me into specialized testing…” her face dawned with horror and she gasped, “It was her.”
I smiled sadly at her as I made my way down the hallway to the meeting with the dean, Tally at my side.
“That’s my guess, yes.” I nodded. “I need to tell you something.”