Consolation Prize (Forbidden Men #9)(68)

When he took a sip and arched his eyebrows warningly at Theo, Theo sniffed. “But everyone’s going to assume she thinks she’s too good for us now. You know they are.” Then he glanced at me with a look that told me that’s exactly what he thought of me.

“Then that’s their problem,” Chad answered, throwing a supportive arm around my shoulders and tugging me close. “Not ours.”

I lowered my face and hugged myself, feeling suddenly vulnerable. I hadn’t thought about how my decisions with Colton would impact my roommates or their boyfriends. Back at home, it’d been easy to stay within the limits of my own kind. There had been a lot more noticeable division in groups there. But when I’d come here to college, everyone seemed lumped together and a lot more diversely interspersed. Over the past couple years, it’d been easier to see exactly what Chad had just said; we were all basically the same, so much so I didn’t even see a white guy when I was with Colton. I just saw him.

“Just ignore him, Juli,” Chad told me, jostling my shoulder to get a response from me. Except Sasha chose that moment to enter the kitchen and discover her boyfriend cuddled up with me as I looked all morose and contemplative.

She slowed to a stop, glancing between us before slowly asking, “What’d I miss?”

“Asshole over there’s giving our girl shit because of her new man,” Chad explained.

“I wasn’t giving her shit,” Theo immediately defended himself. “I was just saying…people are going to talk.”

“Do you have a problem with it?” I asked Sasha, my gaze seeking and scared. “With me and Colton being together?”

Her mouth fell open, and for a moment she looked cornered, but then she glanced at her boyfriend before turning back to me and shaking her head. “No, of course not. I just want you to be happy.”

“And Tyla?” I pressed. I hadn’t talked to either roommate since Friday. They’d gone out with their men that night and stayed over at their places, then hadn’t come home before I’d left for work yesterday. My gaze veered meaningfully toward Theo before I returned to Sasha. “Does Tyla have a problem with it?”

She had to have been the one to tell Theo about Colton, and if he was making an issue out of it, then maybe it was because she’d made one to him.

“Do I have a problem with what?” Tyla asked as she walked in.

“Apparently you need to have some words with your man,” Sasha immediately charged. “He’s giving Juli shit because of her choice of flings.”

“I was not!” Theo cried, lifting his hands innocently. “I just said—”

He was going to lie again and try to play it off like he was simply concerned about me, while honestly, I just wanted to be over this conversation. So I cut him off, blurting, “He ate all my bread.”

Tyla blinked at me a moment before lifting her eyebrows his way. “Why would you do that? You know that’s JuJu’s special bread.”

“I was hungry,” he protested. “I wasn’t paying attention to whose bread it was, baby. I just…”

I didn’t listen to the rest of his excuse. I had already eased out from under Chad’s arm and was escaping the kitchen. I returned to my room without coffee or breakfast. When I slumped onto my bed, I grabbed my pillow and rested my cheek against it, closing my eyes.

Whenever I was around Colton, everything seemed to live in this amazing technicolor moment. It was all so vivacious and alive. But then it was like I returned to reality whenever he was gone and, bam, the black and white facts had a way of slapping me right across the face sometimes.

I’d talked to him in public before, but I suddenly wasn’t sure how I would handle it if we held hands or—holy shit—what if he came into philosophy Monday morning and kissed me in front of everyone? It would be so bold. Bolder than I was. People would stare, some of them would whisper, and not always nice things. I wasn’t the type of person who made those kinds of waves. I wore bland colors—blacks and whites and grays and tans—and I took care to make sure I was one hundred percent presentable with no reasons for other people to gossip about me whenever I left home. I didn’t like sticking out from the crowd.

Being in an interracial relationship would cause more notice than I wanted.

And what if Theo had been right, and people said I thought I was too good for the black guys now? I didn’t want anyone thinking I wasn’t proud of my heritage because I was, from my hoodoo grandma, to my strong equal-rights-advocate father, and all the way back to my enslaved ancestors. They had gone through hell and came out on the other side survivors. Of course I was honored to come from that kind of strength and endurance. I already had hours and hours of stories prepared to tell my children and grandchildren someday about our amazing roots.

It all made me experience a niggle of shame as if I’d betrayed my people or something.

But then…then Colton’s face flashed through my head. An image of his ornery grin and glittering brown eyes trickled in, followed by the look on his face the last time he’d come inside me, and the feel of his hands as he held me so tenderly afterward, his voice in my ear as he told me his secrets. And then I felt as if I’d betrayed him for even having one iota of doubt about us.

Chad had been right; when it came down to it, there was no difference between us. We were all human. And besides, I’d just proclaimed my proud, sturdy stock. I could weather a little nasty talk. I wasn’t going to let any barbed words or censorious glares buckle me under. Nothing was going to take away the joy I experienced whenever I was with Colton.