Free Fighting Heart: Fighting Heart Erotic Bad Boy Romance Series Book 1 by Nicole Hamilton

right where it got cashed the fastest. My college life was now hanging by a thread. And for all my gutsy commitment to the cause, I really didn’t have a clue what I was going to do about it.

Ten
     
    He had settled at a desk with a pile of books on William Blake that he planned to scan when Ashley walked into the college library just after nine am. Even before she arrived, he wasn’t going to actually read the Blake books.  Instead he was going give in to an urge to write a story about a supremely headstrong, but very mixed up girl who was going to change the world. This girl didn’t know the power she had. She didn’t understand her potential or her impact. She was seismic. He couldn’t wait to start the piece, and already the Blake books were looking like a totally boring distraction from his new story. But when Ashley turned up, he knew he had been kidding himself all along. The real reason he came here this morning was in the hope that he bumped into her, his seismic girl – and here she was. He stood and beckoned her over. She made an attempt at a smile and was too polite to refuse coming over to see him.
    “Look, I’m sorry about the other day, Cody. I’m just under a lot of pressure right now,” said Ashley.
    “Don’t worry. I totally understand,” he replied.
    He didn’t understand all of it, of course. Not right then, but he was soon going to. Cody looked at her beautiful soft face and soft pink lips but this morning her beauty was tarnished by stress and upset. She didn’t look herself and he winced to see her like this.
    “Hey. Let me buy you a coffee,” he said.
    Ashley hesitated. “I look tired, right?”
    “You want the truth?”
    She nodded slowly.
    “You look like you slept the night on the roof of an Indian locomotive,” he said, aiming for humour.
    Ashley smiled. “You have a way with words, Cody.”
    “So they say. Come on, Ashley, you’re working too hard.”
    “The trouble is Cody, I’ve got to work ten times as hard as everyone else just to stay afloat here.”
    “Coffee and talking time. I’ve got the ears. You’ve got the words. Deal?” He said.
    Ashley nodded. “Deal.”
     
    They arrived in the vegetarian coffee shop near the campus and Cody ordered. Ashley looked ready to fall over unless she sat down soon. She was really struggling. After they sat down he let her drink a third of the cup before he started with his questions. He wanted to ask so many they were burning holes in his brain. He wanted to help her, to protect her and to get to know her as well as he knew anybody in life.  But he had to go easy or he would freak her out.
    “Ashley, do you want to talk?”
    She looked at him and then her eyes moved around the room. It was an anxious gesture.
    “I don’t know if I can actually do that, Cody.”
    “What, have coffee with me on Saturday morning? I knew I was annoying but, surely I’m not that bad!”
    That brought a faint smile to Ashley’s face. “No, you’re not that bad, Cody. Did Penny tell you about my situation?”
    “That you can’t pay your tuition fees and you have to jeopardise your studies by working every hour of the working day just to clear the debt?” He said.
    “Ah-hah. That’s about the size of it. But I’ve always achieved what I set my heart on, Cody – but this – the more I think about the time I don’t have for study– the more I think about the situation with the fees, I just wonder if it’s even humanly possible,” said Ashley.
    “Hey, Ash. Listen. I don’t know you that well. Hell, I don’t even know you beyond the fact you are clever, sassy and determined. I don’t know you beyond the fact you have just taken on the biggest challenge of anyone I have ever known, and are not even cowed by it. I know you’re not giving up. And beyond that, if you don’t mind me saying, as study buddies go, you are very easy on the eye. You can’t give up. ” He had to add that, just to see the effect. She just let out a