Even if You Fall (Huntley Square #2)

Prologue

I nstincts were a funny thing.

I’d heard the saying listen to your gut more times than I could count, but I wondered if any of those people ever actually took their own advice. Or if, when their head and heart started getting involved, they let those drown out the warning bells.

I know I had.

“There you are,” a voice like velvet murmured behind me.

The unpleasant chill that had swept up my spine before he’d ever announced himself was identical to the one I’d experienced during our first meeting nearly three years ago...and every one after that. Unfortunately, it’d taken time to get control of the way my mind and my heart shorted out before overriding everything else whenever I so much as looked at him; listened to him speak. Anything, really.

There was just something about the way Owen Vance made you feel when he put his attention on you that was akin to being on top of the world. It made you want to earn his attention so you could continue feeling like that.

Before I’d met Owen, I was sure only those who were extremely powerful or famous could harness the raw magnetism he exuded. But there Owen was, making everyone he encountered either feel like a million bucks, or fall in love with him; all from his humble position as superintendent of the school district I worked for.

The second his arm curled around my waist and started tugging me against him, I maneuvered away. “Don’t,” slipped past my lips on a plea when I’d meant for it to come out as a harsh warning.

“Chlo, look at me.”

“Chloe,” I corrected as I did exactly that. It was hard not to do what Owen Vance asked when he’d somehow managed to perfect the line between compassionate plea and imposing demand.

And I hated that, for just a second, I faltered when I met his stare—sure and intent and like nothing else mattered in the world but me.

But that was a lie . . .

“What are you even doing here?” I asked as I put more distance between us, reaching for my desk like I needed it to stay standing. Then again, he had an uncanny ability to make my knees weak.

His head slanted and expression morphed like my question amused him. “Why else would I be here?”

My head was shaking before he finished speaking because I’d already known he would try to make me think this was about me. Just as I knew it wasn’t. “Don’t do that—don’t act like you’re here for me when we both know you aren’t. Why—” I waved a hand in front of me, my head shaking even harder as my throat betrayed me by tightening. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t care why you’re here because I don’t care about you.”

“Chlo—”

“ No ,” I cried.

Crying . . . I was crying.

I furiously wiped at the few tears that managed to slip down my cheeks and stumbled into the desk when he stepped closer. “You need to leave,” I said before he could continue coming toward me. “My students are gonna start showing up any minute, and I told you that whatever was between us is over.”

“‘Whatever was between us,’” he echoed, sounding wounded when I knew he wasn’t. Even still, the part of me that had fallen for the mask twisted and reached out, wanting to comfort this man who was so good at playing his part.

And then he shifted.

His pain changed to confusion as he took two more confident steps toward me. “Miss Whitlock, you’re confused,” he said slowly, carefully. “I’d be lying if I said some part of me wasn’t flattered by your attention over the years, but there’s never been anything between us than a professional, working relationship.”

My lips parted to argue, to defend the year of rose-colored bliss and the devastating weeks of feeling like my world was caving in once I’d realized how I’d fallen for his secrets and lies. But they snapped shut when Owen pulled a tri-folded paper from his pocket and opened it in one fluid motion, letting me see the complaint I’d filed against him.

Dread washed over me, but I kept myself standing tall, all while my mind raced, trying to figure out how the complaint had ended up in his hands. Literally.

After a cursory glance at the paper, those penetrating eyes drifted back to me. “This hurt, Chlo,” he mumbled, the low tenor of his smooth voice rippling over me in a way that threatened to make me forget that chill still clinging to my spine.

But I refused to let myself forget that feeling ever again.

“How do you have that?” I asked shakily.

A slow, devilishly handsome smirk stole across his face as he refolded the letter and slipped it back into his pocket. Once there, he pulled on the cuffs of his button-down shirt in a move that had always made him look that much more powerful to me before. But I knew better now.

It was his one tell . . . he was nervous.

“As I was saying,” he began as he continued toward me, “I’m here for you .” He glanced around my classroom before those eyes were back on me, his smirk widening. “But it has been a while since I’ve visited my campuses—what, with the holidays, and all. My staff and students need to see me, so what better campus to start with than this one? What better class to start with than yours?”

I pressed a hand to Owen’s chest when he took another step, eliminating the last of the distance between us, and grit my teeth. “I’ve told you to stay away.”

“You don’t want me to,” he crooned in a voice that would’ve had me in a puddle on the floor, ready to do whatever he asked, just a month ago. As it was, I still felt my breath hitch when he leaned in, still felt my heart speed up when one of his hands gripped my hip, trying to pull me closer.

So easy . . .

It would’ve been so easy to let my heart and head take over despite everything I now knew about him and everything we’d been through.

Grabbing his hand in my free one, I forcefully removed it from my hip and shoved him away. “The letter in your pocket says otherwise.”

Anger briefly flared through that alluring energy pulsing from him. “Speaking of,” he began in a too-casual tone that had me tensing, “I got a call from a friend that you applied to a school out of district.”

I couldn’t have stopped the way my expression and shoulders fell no matter how hard I tried. Couldn’t have stopped the oxygen rushing from my lungs as if someone had just punched me because that’s exactly what it felt like.

I’d told the other district it was a sensitive situation, considering I’d wanted to slip quietly away to heal my broken heart in peace. I’d asked for discretion until a decision was made on their end to avoid this exact conversation. There hadn’t been a decision yet, and now this ...

A smile that was as beautiful and enticing as it was wicked spread across Owen’s face as he eased his hands into his pockets and started walking backward, toward the door of my classroom. “You work for me, or you don’t work anywhere.”

“You can’t?—”

“You work for me,” he repeated, his words slower and colder than before to ensure I grasped the severity of them, “or you don’t work anywhere. And how easy it would be to keep you from working...”

I didn’t have time to consider his veiled threat or worry over how he knew what he did because not more than a second after he stepped out of my classroom, one of my students stepped inside.

Just like that, an excited smile stole across my face as a bubbly, “Good morning!” poured from me as if nothing had ever happened.

Then again, I’d learned long ago that my pain, anger, and sadness weren’t meant to be shared with others—they were emotions meant for me, and me alone.

If I smiled bright enough, no one ever suspected anything was wrong.

If I smiled bright enough, I almost fell for the pretense too.