“Can you stay?” she asked in a small voice as she buried herself in the blankets, her hand reaching out to grab mine.
“Of course,” I agreed. “Let me take my shirt off first?”
Flora nodded, lying back and watching me strip down. The moment I crawled into the nest, she wrapped herself around me, burying her face in my chest and inhaling deeply.
Curled up with my omega in my arms, her sweet scent lulling me to sleep, everything was overwhelmingly right.
No matter what was thrown our way, we would deal with it.
Together.
Chapter 42
Flora
Stomach pain and the distinct feeling of being weighed down accompanied my every step. My meeting with Professor McCreevy had lasted all of two minutes. After the advanced statistics lecture had finished, he and I sat down and discussed my most recent grades.
“I’ll be honest, Miss Hewitt, I don’t recall you having any failing grades, but when I looked at your student portfolio in the system, it seems your last paper was marked as an F.”
My stomach dropped, and I shook my head, perched on the edge of my seat. “I don’t understand. I did well on that paper! I got a ninety-seven. I took a picture.”
He looked through his laptop for a moment, humming to himself. “I can always go back and manually check. Actually, I’ll have to, because once a student is put on academic probation, we have to triple-check their grades. I must say, I was shocked when I got the email about it.”
I forced myself to remain calm, sucking in a breath as my eyes burned. “As was I. I just want to figure out what’s going on. I feel like I would know if I was flunking all my classes.”
“Well, for now, I’ll give you a make-up assignment, if you’re okay with that?”
Sure, it was a lot more work, but if it would help claw me out of the hole I was apparently in, I would do it with a smile on my face. If this had happened when I was living in my old apartment, I would have probably had a complete meltdown. Looking after myself while getting a bunch of extra work done would have been nearly impossible. But I knew my guys would back me up and support me. So I nodded.
It was kind of nice, in a fucked-up way.
Ugh, I need a snack.
Peeling off to the right, I headed toward the vending machine. Sure enough, Spencer was on my tail, hurrying to catch up as I beelined for the beacon of carbonated wonder and salty goodness.
“How’d it go?” Spencer came up alongside me, leaning against the soda machine.
“About as well as expected. I just don’t understand what’s going on.” I looked from him to the bags of chips in the vending machine. “And I need a snack. Don’t judge me.”
Spencer chuckled, holding up his hands in surrender. After I inserted a dollar into the slot, I chose my junk food, noticing halfway through that Spencer was getting me my favorite soda from the other machine. My jaw dropped, and I nearly forgot all about my chips.
“You’re… buying me a soda?” My eyes were wide, my brows all the way up to my hairline. “Did I… did I miss something? Who are you? Do you need to see a doctor?”
Rolling his eyes at me, Spencer shook his head, a smirk creeping up the corner of his lips. He handed me the drink and crossed his arms over his chest, casual as ever.
“It’s been a rough day. Even I can understand the need for comfort food.”
“No way. Who are you, and what have you done with Spencer?” I couldn’t help but laugh, taking the soda and twisting open the cap so that I could take a long swig.
“Haha.” Spencer narrowed his eyes at me. “Enjoy your snack, princess.”
So I did—a lot, actually. But I wasn’t done trying to iron out all the wrinkles in my academic catastrophe. I still had a meeting with Lyle to discuss my international finance grade. A class that, up until now, I’d been pretty damn sure I was acing, or at least getting a B in. I munched on my snack, watching Spencer type a message to the guys.
“So?” I asked, looking over his shoulder at the phone as I sat on one of the windowsills in the finance building.
“Just letting them know how it went. You still have another meeting?”
I nodded. “Yeah. One I am not looking forward to. Not that any of them have been great, but this class matters a lot. I’ve been putting more work into it than the others, and I even took extra classes and study sessions to make sure I understood things correctly. The fact that I’m…”
