Chapter Ten
Alexander Luthor came from a long and proud line of liars and cheats. He had been trained from birth to manipulate those around him into bending to his will, to know every move that this opponent was going to make before he did but to never show his own hand, or any emotion. That was the way to get ahead and that was all that mattered.
He had been named after one of – if not the - greatest military leader in history and he had to live up to it. To that end, he had taken down a hundred companies, deceived thousands of people and even taken on – and beaten – his own father. And he had managed it all with a practiced air of nonchalance. Nothing ruffled a hair on Lex's head, quite literally.
Lex tried to remember all of this as he sat there with his jaw hanging open in a most undignified manner. He was trying desperately to process what was going on around him but without much success.
Chloe's words, "I never stopped being in love with Clark and that now I am back I want to give it another go", reverberated in his mind making thought impossible. Every time he tried to drown them out they just screamed back at him louder than before. They would not be ignored.
She loved Clark. She had never stopped loving him.
Lex's fists clenched and it took what was left of his self-restraint not to get up and start throwing the furniture around. He couldn't do that; he couldn't lose what semblance of control he had left. He had to get to the bottom of this.
She couldn't love Clark. She simply couldn't.
He grabbed his drink and downed it one gulp hoping that the alcohol would help even though it was terrible. He had to think. There was no way that she could love Clark. Chloe had got over Clark years ago, he just knew that she had. He had seen the proof with his own eyes.
It was a beautiful early summer's afternoon and the dazzling sunlight shone down on the red brick courtyard giving everything a rosy romantic glow. Although classes and exams were now officially over there were still quite a few students milling around the place, all laughing and joking now that the stress was over for that year and they were free to enjoy their summer. There was quite a queue in front of the coffee cart but no one seemed to mind, not even a certain bald billionaire.
Lex took the chance to really have a look around the place. It was very nice, homely and warm but still thriving and academic. He had never had a chance to do anything other than study when he had been in University – unless one counted partying and fucking – but he liked the idea of a wholesome afternoon on the lawn of the University. That was an important part of the experience, at least to his mind.
There were plenty of students doing exactly that but however hard he tried to survey the entire campus from his vantage point, his gaze kept wandering back to the blonde beauty lying stretched out on a picnic blanket waiting for him to bring her some coffee from the cart he was queuing up in front of.
Chloe looked radiant. She had been beaming all day long, enjoying visiting each new university more than the last but this one was clearly her favourite. He wasn't surprised, as he looked around he realised that this was where she belonged. It seemed like a safe and friendly place to be, but with a strong academic reputation. He would be very happy if she were to stay here.
He was so much enjoying the sight of her looking completely unconcerned for once, that he did not realise that it was his turn to order. Man that girl was getting to him; he was never normally the one to lose his bearings. Finally he was forced to turn his back on her for a minute to complete the transaction – he wasn't sure that Chloe would find her beauty to be a suitable excuse for why he had not brought her coffee.
Coffee purchased, he turned back and saw a young man sitting on his blanket in his space, flirting with Chloe. His jaw clenched as he made his way back over there, trying to remind himself that it was good for her to have the chance to interact normally with her peers and that drop kicking the boy really wasn't an option … unfortunately.
"Chloe", he greeted her a little stiffly as he handed her her coffee.
If she noticed his manner, she didn't comment on it. She beamed up at him accepting her beverage, "My knight in shining armour", she teased. It had been a running joke with them that day that there was an evil monster known as the Snark and that the brave knight Sir Alexander had to save the beautiful but possessed princess from it by finding the magic potion. To this end they had ordered coffee at each University in turn and Chloe was keeping score – although Lex had assured her that whichever one had the best coffee he would move to wherever she chose to go.
"Oh", Chloe groaned in a way that reminded Lex forcibly of their activities last night, "This is the best so far", she announced, apparently unaware of the effect her voice was having on the men in her vicinity.
Hearing a slight cough from her new friend Chloe shook her head and gave an amused little half smile, "Oh sorry, where are my manners. Lex Kip, Kip Lex", she introduced them.
Lex had to fight back the urge to remind Chloe that to others he was Mr Luthor, a fight that he was in danger of losing until she took another sip and he temporarily lost the ability to speak. He noticed that Kip appeared to be likewise afflicted and reached out and shook the man's hand with enough force to make him decide that it was time for him to leave.
Chloe giggled even as she waved to a retreating Kip. "I love it here; this is definitely where I am going to go to school".
"Because of Kip or the coffee?" Lex asked, hoping that it was the coffee.
"Neither, big idiot", Chloe scoffed at him and Lex felt his stupidity. It was true that Chloe had been toying with the idea of attending MetU for Clark, but he had known him for years and even she admitted that she wouldn't really have done it. In the end Chloe would have made the sensible decision, with or without him. He was merely smoothing her way a little. He felt guilty for having doubted her sense, even for a few seconds. He just couldn't help it when the evil green eyed monster of jealousy flared up; he briefly wondered if the Snark could take it.
"Because I love it here, it had great courses, an amazing library and I don't know … I'm just happy here. It is as if all of that stuff in Smallville, all of that drama didn't exist", Chloe tried to explain the way that she was feeling and hoped that she was making some sense.
"What about Clark?" Lex wondered, wanting to know what her feelings for him were after last night rather than because he actually thought that she would consider MetU now.
"Clark is a good friend but nothing more, he never was really. I guess that it was just safer to have that school girl crush to cling on to rather than getting on with my life", she smiled. "I am certain that I was never in love with him".
Lex felt his heart leap and he wanted to lean over and kiss her but knew that that was inappropriate and that he could end up alienating her if he did so. So, instead, he said, "I'll be back in a moment, I have a business call that I have to make. It shouldn't take more than a few minutes".
"Take as long as you need, I don't want the world economy to crash just because Lex Luthor wasn't there to take a phone call", she teased him.
"If you take economics I'll give you a hand", he offered, before he muttered under his breath, "it looks like you could use it", as he made his way away from the blanket, he couldn't have Chloe hearing his phone call. When he was far enough away, he looked over his shoulder just to check that she was where he had left her and still alone.
"I want to speak to the chancellor, tell him that it is Lex Luthor calling", he said into his cell, "Yes, hello I've just been walking around your University and noticed that you have one of the largest academic libraries in the western world how would you like it to be the biggest? I thought that that is what you would say. You have offered a full scholarship to an incoming student called Chloe Ann Sullivan. No I don't fucking want you to revoke her scholarship, any talk like that again and I'll close down your fucking University." Lex took a breath as he heard the pleading on the other end of the phone.
"Now I will tell you what I do want. The scholarship she has been awarded covers her student fees, her accommodation in first year and a small amount of money is given to her after that and nothing else. Well, you are going to explain that you have made a mistake. Every first year student is guaranteed accommodation in a basic hall and there are special ones for scholarship students. There was some problem with the one which she was supposed to have but as you are required by law to provide her with accommodation she will be put into the best room you have for all four years with all bills included without her having to pay a penny", Lex explained as he thought this all out.
Gabe was now making pretty decent money but Chloe's education would still be difficult after so many years of struggling and he did not want Chloe to have to worry, or even think, about these things. She was going to have the best of everything. Tuition fees were taken care of, accommodation with rates and her meal plan were done, and he knew that Gabe would have taken care of the little extras that she needed that only left one other big thing.
"Tomorrow morning I will send you the most state of the art laptop that money can buy, you will send it to her saying that she won a competition. Make it believable", he ordered sharply.
"You can't mean that", Lex finally got out, although his voice was far weaker than he would have liked.
He had heard what she had said, her words still echoed in his head, but that didn't change what he had seen in her eyes all of those years ago. The truth in her eyes when she had said that she never been in love with Clark could not be doubted. She had said those words the night after they had made love. That had to mean something. She couldn't be going back on that, she just couldn't.
She had tried to hurt him earlier that night, maybe that was what she was trying to do now. That would make sense. Her back was turned to him as she looked around the room, hiding her face from his view.
"Chloe", he gasped, reaching out to grab her shoulders. He needed to see her face; then he would be able to tell if she was lying and she had to be lying. She just had to be. Even if she did not care about him as a lover, that did not change the friendship which they had struck up.
Chloe tottered along the winding hallways back to her apartment, unable to see where she was going as she was carrying so many books. She had been having remarkably good luck with winning things since she had started at University, which was rather strange as she had never had much good fortune with that kind of thing before. First there had been her apartment and meal plan which had both been upgraded for the four years with no extra charge, then her laptop and now she had won all of her school text books for the year in a raffle which she didn't even remember entering. If she had still been in Smallville she would have started to wonder whether she might not have some sort of meteor freak ability. Chloe was of course delighted with her run of good luck and the fact that she had just been saved several hundred dollars on books, she knew wished that she didn't have to carry all of them plus her coffee in one go. She couldn't wait to get back to her apartment and relax.
She smiled a little as she thought of her apartment. It was the most beautiful place that she had ever lived, if you didn't count the night that she had spent in the mansion with Lex when someone was trying to kill her, or the night in the hotel, also with Lex - which she didn't as she had only been visiting whereas now she lived there properly. It was a penthouse apartment in the most prestigious apartment block on campus and took up the whole of the top floor. It was large and spacious with hard wood floors, large windows with magnificent views in every direction. It had come ready furnished with pieces that Chloe guessed had cost more than her newly won laptop. She had been to several other apartments in the block and had noticed that while the others were nice, they were no were near as extravagant as hers – and her flatmates'. She knew that she shouldn't, but she was rather pleased by it. She normally never had the nicest things. It looked like things were turning around for her.
University suited her down to the ground. When her father had driven her up on the first day she had been excited but also a little scared. She had had to remind herself several times that she was Chloe Sullivan, hardened Metropolis-ite, head of The Torch and woman who had thrown down with more meteor freaks than she could shake a stick at. University held no terrors for her.
By the time that Gabe had seen her apartment – and stopped gushing over it -, helped her unpack, gone around the entire University with her checking that she knew where everything was and that all of her paper work was done – even though Lex had already taken care of all of that -, and bid her a tearful goodbye Chloe was fully settled in. She had made some new friends at the coffee cart and continued to do so and expand her social circle in her classes which she found incredibly interesting. Furthermore, the boys were a lot more appreciative of her than they had been back in Smallville – she didn't know whether it was just because she was running with a different, more educated crowd now, or whether she was simply more confident now that she had shared the Luthor scion's bed. Whatever it was, life was good.
In fact, everything would have been perfect if the girls she lived with would have been a little nicer. There were four of them in the apartment, the other girls were: Charlotte, Katie and Elizabeth. They were all from rich families and had been lovely to her when she had first come through the door and had even continued to be so when they had seen Gabe in his suit and had found out that he worked with Lex Luthor. However, when they had found out that she was a scholarship student they had decided that Gabe must have meant for, not with, and flatly refused to believe Chloe when they asked if she had ever met the billionaire – thinking to embarrass her – and she had answered in the affirmative. Since then things had been a little frosty between them. They weren't exactly mean, but they weren't friendly either. Still, Chloe wouldn't let them get to her. She had the nicest room anyway and soon she would be inside it.
Chloe was just considering whether she wanted to go out for dinner or order in, trying to keep her mind off the way that her arms were now burning but it wasn't really working.
"Come on arms, just a little further", she coaxed them before feeling herself jostle someone. "Sorry", she called out as her eyes widened as the entire tower began to teeter, she couldn't manage it. She splayed her fingers as much as possible; maybe if she could get a good enough grip on the ones at the bottom then she could …. It was no good. She could only watch in horror as they began to fall in a perfect line.
She wanted to cry, she knew that it was stupid but she had loved her new books. Normally her books were brought second hand and were already bruised and battered but these had been perfect and now they were going to be scruffy just like everything else she had ever owned.
Blinking in surprise Chloe witnessed a miracle. The person she had bumped into reached out his hands and took them from her, somehow managing to manoeuvre them so that the tower stopped leaning and falling. They were all safe and beautiful.
"Thank-you", she gasped, clinging onto her coffee cup as she reached out to try to take them back from the stranger.
"Allow me", a muffled voice came from behind the tower and Chloe had little choice but to acquiesce. They were right in front of her apartment so she ferreted around for her keys and quickly opened her door, "This is my apartment", she explained lamely and watched as he took the opportunity to enter. Chloe was about to take the top section from him and put them on the side table when her flatmate distracted her.
"Oh the scholarship student is back", Charlotte greeted her spitefully, then gasped, "Oh my God".
"What is it?" Chloe asked, turning back around to see what had shocked Charlotte. Surely she didn't think that someone offering to help Chloe was that strange.
"Lex", she squealed with delight, her arms flying out to embrace him. She only caught herself at the last moment and clasped them behind her back, wondering, "What are you doing here?"
They hadn't seen each other since the day that they had been to look at colleges. That evening Lex had taken her back home to Smallville and had even insisted on being there when she told her father of her decision and made the acceptance call and found out about her accommodation upgrade. He had been brilliant. Chloe would have loved to have spent more time with him and had called him the following day to thank him only to have him tell her not to bother as it had been his pleasure and that he had some news for her. She had been offered an internship at The Times and that the Luthor Corp jet would be waiting for her as soon as she had finished packing. With her father's help Chloe had packed and been in the air in less than half an hour and as much as she had enjoyed her summer in England, part of her wondered what Lex had had to do with her getting the job and whether it was so that he wouldn't have to see her. She had decided not to call him; he could be the one to decide if they were to have any contact.
"I was just passing through", he said, not mentioning that he had opened a new enterprise nearby just to make sure that he would always have an excuse to be just passing through. He had waited for her outside her apartment for just over an hour, wondering how she would react when she saw him. He knew that she could have misunderstood his sending her away to England and not having called her since then, not that he had ever called her before that, but sleeping together changed that. Well, actually normally they didn't for him, but for a woman like Chloe they would.
He had been hoping that she would at least speak to him rather than ignoring him but when he saw her arms go to hug him, his heart soared. He had never hoped for anything that good. He would never have hoped for so much or tried to force a hug on her, but as he took that as an offer he wrapped her in a bear hug and swung her around, asking, "Is that anyway to treat a guest?" It was overly demonstrative for him and he was fairly certain that he had never done anything like that before, but Chloe made him want to do things like that.
Chloe couldn't answer him for some minutes, as she was lost in the feeling of being in his big strong arms. She never wanted him to let her go. Her time away had been fantastic, but sometimes she did miss home. But as she stood there, cocooned in his warm embrace, breathing in his wonderful Lexy smell, she felt completely safe and relaxed and as if she were exactly where she was supposed to be. This was the feeling of home.
Lex was having much the same feelings, plus a good deal of annoyance as he had not been deaf to the way that Chloe's living companion had referred to her. That was going to change.
"It's been ages", Chloe declared, feeling that she really should say something rather than just staying cuddled up to him.
"Yes", he agreed., then added, "You look gorgeous", unable to help himself.
Chloe had let her hair grow a little and had clearly been putting her new found money to good use, she had a new wardrobe which had as much spunk and Chloevage – as he had taken to referring to it – as her old one but was a little more sophisticated.
"Thank-you", she blushed, "You don't look too bad yourself". That had to be the understatement of the millennium. He looked amazing! He was wearing a dark business suit but had taken off his tie and unbuttoned the top few buttons of his shirt.
"Oh gosh where are my manners?" She closed the door and ushered him inside properly. "Come in. Let me show you my apartment".
Lex looked around, seeming not to notice that there was another person in the room. "You like it? I mean, nothing is wrong with it, is there?" Everything looked to be in order and the reports that he had got on the place showed that everything down to the heating was perfect.
"Oh no, it's great", Chloe assured him, surprised but touched that he cared so much about her living situation and comfort. She had never been so happy to not be living in the scholarship section, she wasn't generally that house proud but she would have felt awkward showing Lex into something shabby. "You wouldn't believe it but it is the best in the building, I can't understand how I got it". Chloe babbled on for a few minutes.
Lex smiled as Chloe talked and was glad to see that she hadn't worked it out yet as he was sure that he would catch it when she did, but it would be worth it if she was comfortable. He did another sweep of the room and this time his eyes locked with Charlotte's. She bet that she could work out exactly how Chloe had got it.
"And everyone is being nice to you?" He gave Charlotte a pointed look.
Chloe looked up at them and noticed what he was doing. "Yes Lex, everyone is being nice enough so you don't need to bankrupt anyone's entire family". She didn't like Charlotte but she would deal with her on her own, she didn't want Lex to fight her battles for her – he would probably use a real tank.
"Only too happy to do it", he said but not entirely for Chloe's benefit.
"I know", she assured him, this time glancing over at Charlotte who she was fairly certain she had just witnessed pale. Well Chloe supposed she could hardly blame her. Before Lex could say anything more and make the girl pass out she resolved to get him out of the room.
"Come and see my room, it is amazing. It used to be two rooms – and they were huge even when separated – but there was some sort of problem last year and they had to re do them and they knocked them into one ginormous room. I have a bedroom bigger than my dad's, an en suite bigger than our family bathroom with a whirlpool, my own study sitting room and mini kitchenette – not that I cook but it is nice to have. I even have my own washing machine. It is great", Chloe practically skipped into her room.
Lex smirked at her girlish delight and womanly behind before following her through. He knew that he was expected to examine the room and did so. It was good, exactly as he had ordered and Chloe had in essence got her own studio apartment. He was glad to see that Chloe had done it up a little more to her own tastes and that she had made a bit of a mess of it, with books and clothes littering parts of the apartment – it proved to him that she had made herself at home and that she was not having money worries.
"What are your lessons like?" He asked, thinking that that was probably the next obvious question to ask – if he weren't already getting weekly updates from the professors. Also, he found himself wanting to hear about it from her own lips.
"Fantastic", Chloe enthused. "There are so many different courses, I am taking literature from so many different genres it is incredible and writing courses and philosophy and languages. It is amazing! Can you believe that you can actually just sit around reading and discussing books and that that is considered work?"
"I'm sure that you do work hard at it", her enthusiasm was contagious. "What about friends?"
"They're brilliant too! Everyone here is so nice and open", certain girls not included of course. "I can't believe that I only had two real friends throughout the whole of high school and here I had ten in this first week". An odd expression flashed across Lex's features and she realised that she had been talking an awful lot about herself. "How is life back home?" She wondered, finding it odd that she still thought of it as home when she was so settled where she was.
"I have moved back to Metropolis, your Dad is in full control of the Smallville plant. I am surprised that he didn't tell you", Lex informed her, wishing that they could go back to talking about her. He could listen to her babble about University – or anything else for that matter – for hours with that light in her green eyes.
"He did but I wanted to hear it from you", Chloe explained thinking that Lex was very funny sometimes. It was as if he thought that people would only talk to him to get something out of him, even if it was just his interpretation of information that they already knew. As she realised that that was probably the case, she felt as if a bucket of cold water had been thrown over her.
Lex stood almost awkwardly for a moment as he saw her expression change. He had wondered if he should have called her, but he wouldn't have known what to say.
"Would you like some food?" Chloe asked. It seemed a better option than throwing her arms around him and telling him that someone cared about him and wanted him in their life without asking for anything in return.
Chloe opened her cabinet, mini fridge and a draw to reveal her array of snacks. Lex had to admit that he was rather impressed but had to declined, "You see I would like to take you out".
"Because you want to or because you want to show off in front of Charlotte?" Chloe asked suspiciously.
"Because I want to see you", Lex answered certainly.
Chloe grinned at him. She looked radiant.
"Tell me the truth Chloe", he beseeched her, placing his hands on her shoulders. He felt a shudder go through her but she kept her face hidden from him so that he couldn't see the glimmer of tears in her eyes or the quiver of her chin.
Forcing her voice not to waiver, she answered, "The truth is that I want that I want to be with Clark, or someone like him".