Lover (Court University 4)

Even still, I refused to panic. She could just want to talk to me about something. I remained hopeful as I finished packing my bag but didn’t drop it off in my office before heading straight to hers. I tapped a knock, and when she told me to enter, I did.

She wasn’t alone.

Ramses sat in front of her desk, the back of his head angling back when I entered. Seeing me, his brow twitched up.

Evident surprise on his face, he either didn’t know what this was about or simply hadn’t anticipated seeing me.

Whatever the case, he sat while his mom stood off to the side. She waved me in. “Come. Sit.”

Ramses’s gaze followed me the whole way as I occupied the seat beside him. He started to say something until his mom took a seat behind her desk.

Completely unnerving.

Evelyn appeared nothing but the educator behind her desk, her features even schooled. I couldn’t read her—at all.

And that scared the hell out of me.

My entire heart in my throat, I watched her open her hands.

“I’m just going to get right to it,” she said, her first tell. An agitation in her throat, a wrinkle in her brow. Her lips pinched tight. “You two are together.”

Not a question.

Not even an inkling of one.

Evelyn’s hand touched her lips, and I didn’t move.

I didn’t dare.

Nor did I breathe. My friend swallowed before she wet her lips. “That’s what TMZ is saying. You two are together. You two are together.” She opened her hands. “As you both know there was a confrontation last night at the ballet. Considering your background with your celebrity husband Brielle, I’m not surprised about that. But what’s alarming is the article was a follow-up to photos that surfaced apparently last week of you two.”

I frowned.

Evelyn’s jaw moved. “They had photos of you both at the store that were submitted by a student here on campus. A whole write-up on how she ran into you a while back, Brielle.”

My mouth dried.

“She had a photo of you and her together,” she paused, then placed a hand in front of Ramses and me. “And the pair of you holding hands at that same store.”

I closed my eyes, not even able to get Ramses’s reaction to the girl I’d obviously seen in the liquor department that day.

I didn’t know she’d gotten pictures.

“Mom—”

“She submitted those photos to TMZ. And they must have come down here to follow up.” Opening the laptop on her desk, she swung it around. “Because they caught the two of you again,” she stated, her voice deadpan. “Kissing this time in the faculty parking lot.”

My hand covered my mouth, that stolen kiss right before me, before us both. They snapped us right in the middle of it, my arm hooking around Ramses, and his hands on my hips. The evidence was there completely.

We were together.

This evidence caused Ramses’s eyes to close, his hand folding over his face. “Mom.”

“But I think what’s worse,” she paused, ignoring him again, “isn’t that my son or even a colleague lied to me…”

Colleague.

I forced breath through my lungs. “Evie…”