Off Campus by Amy Jo Cousins Read Free Book Online Page B

you would’ve been a senior when all that went down, huh? If you’re a sophomore now.”
    â€œYeah.” Reese’s laugh was short and sharp. “There’s a lot of things that are hazy from senior year. And after.”
    â€œWell, if you didn’t have a 401k invested in a mutual fund anchored by my dad’s company, then you probably weren’t too worried about it.” He tried to joke, feeling grateful. Grateful that Reese wasn’t battering him with questions or looking at him as if he was a two-headed whoremonster who ate babies for breakfast.
    He heard another gasp, this one barely audible as the kid swallowed it before letting it halfway out of his mouth. No need to ask what sparked that sudden air suck.
    Everyone always gasped when they hit the suicide story.
    â€œI don’t want to talk about that part.”
    â€œDo you hear me asking?”
    No. He didn’t. He glanced up out of the corner of his eye, carefully keeping his head down while he snuck a peek. If anything, the kid looked even paler than he normally did and his hands were shaking as he carefully laid his phone down in the center of the desk and didn’t look at it again.
    â€œYou travel light for a rich guy.”
    Which was far enough for Tom right fucking there. There was no way around admitting he was the son of a convicted felon whose trial had kept courtroom reporters in shits and giggles for three months. But what had happened to him after that was his own fucking personal business and since he’d managed to drop off the paparazzi radar, there was nothing to read on the subject, even for the morbidly curious.
    â€œThat’s how I roll. Spent a lot of time ducking the press. Learned to travel light.”
    â€œWell, when you find a place to settle in, you oughta invest in some more stuff. Maybe an actual laundry basket.”
    He wasn’t sure, but he thought Reese was teasing him. Which was definitely a change from outright hostility.
    But he wasn’t about to get into a discussion of what he was or was not going to be buying. If the kid hadn’t noticed yet that Tom wore the hell out of an extremely limited wardrobe and had exactly one pair of running shoes, which were way past the five-hundred-mile marker that would normally mean it was time to replace them, then he wasn’t about to point it out.
    That was his own personal stuff. He’d planted a giant Keep Out sign in front of his life that even a kid could read.
    Stress at the idea that Reese might start trying to figure out where Tom went on the weekends, or why he had hardly any personal belongings, built suddenly. The gruff, angry words that burst out of his mouth were way over the top for the bantam-weight teasing the kid had been doing.
    â€œYeah, well, you want to tell me how you got in here?” He saw the kid flinch at the slap of his angry tone. “Or is this just a let’s rummage around in Tom’s bag o’ shame party trick?”
    Reese turned his back on him and sat at his desk, dragging a textbook to the center and flipping it open. He didn’t answer, didn’t even look at Tom again.
    Tom knew he was being an asshole but couldn’t stop. He’d had his dirty dark knot of shame dragged into the open after months of being anonymous and sharing nothing more than a word or two with strangers, and his skin crawled with the exposure. The words kept coming out of his mouth, though he knew that the kid didn’t deserve it. That he had something bad, something worse maybe even than Tom did, wrapped deep and tight inside, and Tom picking at his layers, digging his dirty fingers into old scabs was about the shittiest thing he could do to this kid who he actually liked.
    â€œWhat is it? Do I have to Google you too?”
    He saw Reese’s shoulders pull up and lock, high and protective, as if he were braced for a blow.
    Tom held his breath, waiting. He’d had to give it up at