25. Cameron

Cameron

" Y our dick better be in your pants," Bennet barks as he walks into the kitchen and finds Jagger glued to my back as I plate our eggs.

"I'm groping his pecks, not his junk." Jagger gives my chest a final squeeze and accepts the plate, licking his lips as he sniffs the savory seasonings I used. "Thank you, baby."

Cam gives me a quick kiss as Bennet snorts, which is drowned out slightly by the fridge clanking shut as he leaves the room.

"I thought we had a no sappy nickname rule." I try to sound annoyed when I'm really not. I have no problem being his baby.

" I have a no sappy nickname rule. You can implement one for yourself and I'll call you Camelot, or you can let me have my way." His green eyes are bright with mirth, and even though I know that's because he's feeling proud of himself for being so shifty, I'm proud to be the one to put him in this playful mood.

"Call me whatever you want, Kitcat." I nip his bottom lip and take my plate into the living room where the rest of our roommates, plus Aiden, are gathered .

There's only one open chair—Cruz bought another one but Aiden's in it—so I sit in the empty recliner and pull Jagger onto my lap.

"See?" Liam gives Cruz a pointed look before his gaze shifts forlornly to our plates. "They eat normal eggs. Why can't we?"

"You'll thank me when we're fifty and you've got low cholesterol because we've been eating egg whites instead of yolks." Cruz slings an arm over Liam's shoulder and pulls him in for a quick peck on the forehead.

"If bland food doesn't kill me before then," Liam mutters.

"So dramatic." Cruz rolls his eyes, but he somehow does it in an adoring way instead of an annoyed one.

"Good food is like an orgasm in your mouth." Jagger points his fork at Cruz. "Don't deny him that pleasure."

"Speaking of," Liam looks between the two of us. "Sounds like you two have been having some kinky fun. How come you don't have to follow a quiet sex rule?" He pins his gaze on Bennet.

"They get a grace period of a few weeks, same as you two did." Bennet doesn't miss a beat as he turns to Aiden. "Still think I have it better here than at the frat house?"

"At least their grace period has an end date. There will never be an end to the parties." Aiden blows out a frustrated breath.

"You're not enjoying the frat house?" I ask Aiden.

"Parties every single weekend are getting old." He shrugs halfheartedly. "But since the semester's already started there aren't many places available, so I'm stuck there."

"Move in here," Jagger suggests.

"And sleep where?" Bennet huffs as he looks at Aiden. "I love you, man, but I'm not sharing my room. "

"He can take Cam's room." Jagger sets our plates on the coffee table and wraps my arm around his waist as he leans into me.

"Are you asking me to move in with you?" I link my fingers with his and kiss the spot where his ear meets his neck.

"There's a grace period for PDA too. Just saying," Bennet warns.

Jagger ignores him, locking eyes with me. "I'm telling you I expect you in my bed every night, which means there's a free room for Aiden."

"At least they're taking the bed that doesn't squeak." I see Bennet shaking his head in my peripheral. "Still, I'd invest in some quality noise canceling headphones. Don't skimp on that shit, you'll thank me later," he tells Aiden.

"You guys are serious?" Aiden asks.

"Why not?" I finally pull my eyes from Jagger's to look at him. "It's not like we're gonna sleep separately, so you might as well take the empty room."

"Um, yeah. That'd be amazing actually, thank you." Aiden gives me a sincere smile, which takes a weight I didn't realize I'd been carrying off my chest.

I have no idea if he's aware Jagger suggested I hook up with him, and since we only ever hung out the one time at the robot lab, chances are he never saw us as more than friends. But just in case he saw that day as the start of something more, only to watch me end up with Jagger… At least I can help him with his housing situation.

"If we're finished playing musical rooms." Cruz turns his attention to me and Jagger. "Maybe you two can fill us in on why you weren't at practice yesterday."

I'm expecting Jagger to tense up on my lap—his dad has never been an easy topic for him, and that's before he went all psycho on us. But my boyfriend seems to find that inner strength I love without so much as a nudge from me. I give his hip a little squeeze, so he knows I'm proud of him.

"Long story short," Jagger says, "my dad graduated from abandonment to blackmail, and he's threatening to hurt Cam if I don't pay up. We spent yesterday giving his description to campus police so they can try to keep him off school grounds."

"That doesn't sound very promising." Liam chews on his lip, like he's afraid to say what I'm sure everyone's already thinking.

"Yeah," Cruz agrees. "I mean, it's not like campus police have the authority to arrest him or anything, do they?"

"They can, yeah," I say. "They probably won't unless he commits a crime, and threats don't count."

"It gets worse." Jaggers sighs as he looks around the room. "He knows where we live. That's how he made the threat. He mailed a picture of Cam in front of the house to Coach's office."

Everyone starts talking at once, and Jagger tries to calm them by telling them how I think his dad is all talk. Meanwhile, I fish my vibrating phone out of my back pocket. I'm vaguely aware of Jagger telling them his dad is more of an opportunist than a planner, though I don't hear much of the conversation since what's on the screen is so damning.

"Kitcat," I interrupt Jagger and hold the phone up for his inspection. "Look."

The room goes silent as he reads the text, and when he looks up at me with wide green eyes, I can't hold back my grin.

Can this stop him? Jagger lifts his brows.

I think so . I bite my lip as I bob my head once.

How? He cocks his head to the side.

"Out loud please, before I ban y'all's twin telepathy in common spaces." Bennet demands .

I take my phone and hold it up to the room. "I just got a text from my dad saying Jagger's old man is on parole in New Mexico."

"New Mexico?" Liam asks. "How the hell did he find that out?"

I skim through the text again. "He's got some friends on the force that have been keeping tabs on Jagger's dad over the years. They unearthed a conviction and a stint in jail, but it looks like he didn't get out too long ago. This could be our leverage to get him to leave us alone," I tell Jagger.

"How?" Cruz asks.

"If he's on parole, he'd need permission to leave the state of New Mexico. You think he didn't get that permission?" Aiden asks us.

"It seems unlikely since he's only been out of jail for two months. I can't imagine anyone would grant him leave so soon without a compelling reason," I say.

"Visiting his family, work." Aiden ticks off a list. "Either of those could be considered compelling."

"My dad's been estranged from us for over a decade," Jagger says.

"Do the courts know that?" Liam asks.

"No idea." Jagger shrugs. "But I'm sure they know he's not qualified to do much of anything, so they'd question why he can't find something in New Mexico."

"Hold up." Cruz puts his hand up like a stop sign. "Say he left the state without permission. What does that even mean? They can arrest him here?"

"I think so," Jagger says.

"What do you mean?" Cruz asks.

"He hasn't committed a crime, so I'm not sure they'd arrest him." Jagger lifts his shoulder.

"Isn't leaving the state without permission a crime?" Cruz looks around the room for verification .

"Technically, yeah," Jagger says. "But only if he gets caught. And I'm not sure the police here want to chase down a guy who may or may not be violating his parole unless he's committed a crime. That's the way Coach made it sound, anyway."

"So, we just need to make sure they catch him," Bennet says what I've been thinking since I got that text.

"Oh, no." Jagger swings his head to glare at me. "You're not making yourself bait."

"Well, you're not paying him, or he'll never leave you alone," I counter. "Besides, I can't really bait him when I'm hardly his target mark."

"Target mark?" Liam asks. "What was he arrested for?"

"Some sort of fraud, I think," I tell him. "He was bilking old ladies out of their savings by catfishing them."

"Yeah, that'd make you shitty bait." Bennet collapses into a fit of laughter until Liam cuts him off.

"That's it. We catfish him right back." Liam reaches for his phone and starts typing. "Do you know what platform he used to find the women?"

"Probably all of them," I snort.

"Okay, well this one is for mature clients." Liam types away.

"Wait," Jagger says. "Are we doing something illegal to catch my dad doing something illegal? I don't want anyone to get themselves in trouble for that douche. Plus, if we bait him, does it even count against him if he takes it? And at what point does it become a crime for him? After we've given him money?"

"Those are good points," Aiden says. "Plus, catfishing him back could take weeks or months. We need to stop the threat against Cam now. "

As the rest of them bicker I pull Jagger to me and whisper in his ear. "You make a pretty good knight yourself, Kitcat."

He ducks his head to downplay it, but I see his proud smile.

"Guys!" I holler to get everyone's attention. "While catfishing him might be fun as hell, I was thinking of something a little more tabloid reporter and less secret agent. All we have to do is confront him with proof that he's in Colorado and tell him it'll be sent to his parole officer if he doesn't leave us alone."

"How do we do that?" Cruz asks.

"He thinks I'm the key to get Jagger to pay up, so my guess is he's going to keep tabs on me. He'll probably take some more pictures to make threats with, which he's going to be out and about around town. As long as one of you is always following me to take his picture, we should be able to prove he's not in New Mexico."

"Question," Bennet raises his hand. "Unless you get a street sign or an address in the picture, how can you prove where or even when it was taken?"

"Because every picture you take with your phone has a shitton of metadata associated with it including the date and location it was taken, the type of device used to take it, even who owns the device." Aiden tells him what I discovered while researching what I'd need to do when taking videos for Jagger. "Anyone can do a search on the image and get the exact geolocation of the photo, so it'll be pretty easy to prove Jagger's dad is here."

Bennet pulls his phone out of his pocket, looks at it in horror, and tosses it on the coffee table as we all crack up laughing.

"So." I look around the room. "Everyone good to channel their inner paparazzo?"