Stay (Dunham series #2) Read Online Free

leaving
his office. Was it possible Nocek himself was afraid of
Hilliard?
    His mother, tears in her eyes. Eric hadn’t seen her
since before he was arrested four months ago.
    Jenkins, his boss, the owner of Chouteau County Feed
and Tack. He hadn’t bothered to show up at the courthouse, even to
tell Eric he was fired.
    Rayburn, the principal of Chouteau County High
School.
    Two of his advanced placement teachers, science and
English.
    Hilliard, leaning back against Nocek’s desk relaxed,
as relaxed and at ease in his boss’s office as if it were his, his
ankles crossed, his hands in his pockets. He had that same strange
expression on his face that Eric didn’t trust for a minute.
    “I thought you said I was free to go,” Eric finally
muttered when no one seemed inclined to stop staring at him or to
speak.
    Hilliard inclined his head. “You are. But. I have a
proposition for you.”
    Eric cast a wary glance at his attorney whose mouth
crooked in a relieved smile, then back at Hilliard. “I’m not
fucking you.”
    Hilliard laughed then—roared—his laugh no less
deafening than his most enraged bellow. He finally wound down to a
chuckle and wiped his mouth. “Ah, no. That’s not what I had in
mind. I want to send you to college.”
    Eric’s mouth dropped open. College!
    A vague hope before his arrest, one he had worked
toward in spite of his unwillingness to let the hope gel into a
dream or, even worse, a goal—the one he hadn’t dared think about
while he was in jail, on trial.
    But Hilliard kept talking. “I’ve been watching you,
looking through your record, wondering how a smart kid like you
managed to fuck up so badly when what you want is crystal
clear.”
    “Why am I here?” Eric demanded. “What happened?
Something happened and I want to know what it was.”
    Hilliard’s mouth pressed a bit, but not, apparently,
in anger. In thought. As if he didn’t know whether to say or
not.
    “We found proof of your innocence,” he finally said.
“Someone who knew something came forward.”
    Thank one brave little girl.
    For the life of him, Eric couldn’t figure out who
could do that other than Simone, and his attorney had already said
she hadn’t done so.
    “College,” Hilliard said, jerking Eric’s attention
back. “Mr. Rayburn and your teachers have vouched for your
willingness to work, to improve your station in life. Mr. Jenkins
has told me how you’ve managed his store for the last year,
part-time, taking a heavy course load and getting straight A’s. So.
I’m willing to pay for your education provided you work as hard
during your senior year as you have in the past and provided you go
where I send you and obey their rules.”
    “Anything,” Eric breathed, willing to go to all the
way across the other side of the northland to William Jewell in
Liberty, at least twenty-five miles.
    “Don’t you want to know what the rules are?”
    “I don’t care.”
    “Mmmm, you might. No drinking, no smoking, no drugs.
No fucking around. At all. You’ll have to get rid of the earrings,
cut your hair. Short. Your course load will include religion
classes.” Eric blinked. “Those are their rules. You need an
attitude adjustment and you need to learn some propriety. I don’t
have time to kick your ass constantly, so the deal is, you spend
this year working on getting into Brigham Young University.”
    Eric had no idea what or where that was, and
apparently his face showed it.
    “Mormons. Utah. You go there, you do a good job, you
follow their rules. You stay there until you graduate—and I don’t
give a shit what you study—then you stay another three years for
grad school, because I think you can do it. That’s the deal and
I’ll give you a free ride all the way through. Any scholarship
money you come up with is fine, but your job is school and don’t
even think about working during the school year. I’ll give you what
you need.”
    Eric knew nothing about Mormons, though he knew
where Utah