The QB's Nerdy Addiction novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Hearing

The hearing was in a conference room on the second floor of the Athletic Academic Center.

There were five chairs on one side of the table and one on the other.

I took the one.

Across from me sat the assistant dean, a gray-haired woman with a folder.

Beside her sat the academic director who had hired me.

Dale Sullivan sat at the end in his camel coat, as a concerned parent.

Gage came in last, in a clean shirt, and took the chair beside mine.

Nobody had told him to.

"We've received a report," the assistant dean said. "It includes a photograph."

She slid it across the table.

It was the picture from my doorstep, with Gage in the rain and my bare knee in the gap.

"The tutoring contract is clear on this point," said the director. "Any relationship ends the employment. It also ends the scholarship."

"Is the relationship real, Miss Vandiver?" the dean asked.

I could feel Gage turn toward me.

I could have said it was a misunderstanding.

I had a whole speech ready. I'd practiced it in the shower.

I looked at the photograph instead, at the man standing in the rain outside my door.

"Yes," I said.

The room went still.

"We are together. It started while I was tutoring him. That was a breach of the contract and I knew it."

Dale made a small, satisfied sound.

"I'm resigning from the tutoring job as of today. You'll have my badge by noon."

"That doesn't undo..." said the director.

"It's not meant to. It means you won't have to fire me."

Dale leaned forward.

"Let's talk about that eighty-eight on his midterm," he said.

"A tutor who is sleeping with the boy. A boy who couldn't read a paragraph last month."

He tapped the table.

"I think this committee should look at who wrote that exam."

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