The Professor’s Wife

CHAPTER ONE

Notes from the Dark:

A great philosopher believed that becoming a better person began with understanding yourself. That if you looked inward—at your thoughts, your desires, and the things driving your actions—you might begin to see the truth of who you were. This, said Plato, was the key to a good life.

But I am not living a good life.

I am in hell.

I stared at my shaking hands. It had been less than a week since I left my life behind. I was dizzy, anxious, and confused.

Alone.

I was completely alone, and though I had grown used to that feeling, this was a different sort of alone.

I took a deep breath and held it until my chest ached.

When I finally let it out, it came shakily.

I wasn’t about to cry. There were no tears left to shed.

This was the kind of pain you felt when you had known for a while that your life was silently unraveling—dissolving into the shadows of who you used to be.

Like watching a train wreck. You saw it coming, but the fact that it was finally here—that I had arrived at this exact point in time—felt surreal.

It was a detached sort of pain. A numbness with jagged edges.

I didn’t want to think about the moment it all changed. About how I scrambled. How I spiraled. How I snapped after drifting in a void for so long. Something inside me had been holding on past its limit, stretched so thin that it had finally given out.

Quietly on the outside.

Roaring on the inside.

I had yet to scream.

I had yet to sob.

I was just…fractured.

I brushed a strand of dark auburn hair from my face and tucked it behind my ear. Then I looked up, trying to summon the confidence to inspect my surroundings. I sat up straighter, hoping I looked every bit like a woman with choices. A woman who had come here because she wanted to.

Truthfully, I was second-guessing all of it. I was itching for the reading chair I had left behind. For the bookshelf I had poured countless hours into. Those things had provided a comfort I needed now more than anything, but they belonged to a life I could no longer return to.

I was going to crumble, wasn’t I?

But I didn’t want to. Something felt different this time.

It had to be.

There was no going back after what I had done.

The damage was catastrophic and irreversible.

I swallowed and looked down at my watch.

It was eight thirty. The night was still young.

Seated at a small table for two, I spun my untouched glass of water, lost in my self-inflicted chaos.

The entrance remained in the corner of my vision.

I had chosen the table for that reason without admitting it to myself.

Finally, I picked up the glass and brought it to my lips. I paused before drinking. Distant music filtered through the room, but it wasn’t blaring from a speaker. It was coming from the pub’s patio.

A male voice began to sing.

I closed my eyes for a moment, taking in the melody floating through the air.

Unable to help myself, I put the glass back down, stood, and walked out to the patio.

The large tables were packed, but a few of the smaller ones still had empty seats.

I chose one near the middle, directly facing the singer no more than fifteen feet away.

Out there, his warm voice vibrated through me, putting me strangely at ease.

I had heard the song once or twice before, but this time it settled differently inside me.

His voice rose and softened like a tide pulling back, then returning.

It was a song about holding on and still losing your grip.

About memories slipping through you, no matter how carefully you tried to contain them.

About wanting to let go even when your body refused.

The ache came in surges—strong, sudden, then gone again. It kept returning. Uninvited. Familiar. Relentless.

Like grief had its own rhythm, and I was caught inside it.

My eyes watered. Emotion slammed into me like a punch to the chest. I opened my eyes, lost in the moment and so painfully alone.

No one looked over to witness my distress. Everyone was quiet, enraptured by the singer sitting on a simple patio chair with a guitar in his hands and a microphone inches from his mouth.

I finally looked at him.

He was young, though not boyish, and unruly-looking in a simple pair of jeans and a loose white shirt. He held a rugged sort of beauty. Blond hair a few inches too long fell over his forehead. He had stubble, but it didn’t hide his impressive cheekbones or take away from his full pink lips.

My gaze traveled over his strong hands—one pressing chords along the neck of his guitar, the other sweeping powerfully across the strings above the sound hole.

He had nice hands.

Big hands.

They were tanned and dusted with light hair.

Women sat close to the stage, smiling widely at him, dazed and silent. But I wouldn’t stare. No way. I wouldn’t let his beauty distract me from what his voice was doing to the song.

I closed my eyes again, falling deeper into it.

It was easy to get choked up. I was vulnerable. My world had crashed and burned, and everything inside me felt exposed. I was drunk on emotion, drawing it from his voice and from the meaning behind the words he sang.

I kept thinking about everything I had lost. The life that existed before this one. The version of myself I would never get back.

The pain of its permanence never ebbed away.

I opened my eyes again, tearful. I looked first at the musician’s hands—strong and steady—and then up at his face.

I stilled.

My heart jumped because his gaze was latched onto mine, unwavering. I didn’t know how long he had been watching me, but as he sang, he didn’t look away.

His voice wrapped around every note like silk over skin, pouring emotion into each one.

It wasn’t just singing.

It was something deeper.

He was fucking the song with his voice, and he was staring at me while he did it.

The moment felt too intimate. Too raw.

My cheeks burned as I waited—desperately—for him to look away.

And when he finally did, the warmth vanished.

It was just me again.

After the song ended and cheers erupted for the young singer, I returned to the pub. My solitary table had been claimed by a lovey-dovey couple who looked as though they were still in the honeymoon stage, so I carried my untouched water to the bar.

I tried to absorb my surroundings, but I kept watching the clock.

The glass gave my hands something to do and made it look as though I belonged there.

To me, it also represented a choice. I could order something stronger if I wanted.

I could leave if I wanted. I could sit there all night and drink nothing at all.

Like a centerpiece, it decorated my view, its symbolism lost to everyone but me.

I wanted the night to end so I could lie in bed and tell myself I had done it. I had gone out alone. I hadn’t needed company or someone to guide me through it. I had been present and comfortable in my own skin.

But that was rubbish.

I was lying to myself. I felt awkward and exposed, and being alone out in the open was hard for me.

Still, I had to congratulate myself. I had done something I had never done before. Instead of locking myself away for days, waiting for the pain to dull enough that I might accept things and continue as though nothing had happened, I had felt something snap inside me.

And I had followed it out of the life I knew.

Now, here I was.

I wasn’t sure how long I had been sitting there, staring at the minutes ticking across the clock on the wall, when footsteps approached nearby. I didn’t look up, but I caught a trace of clean cologne drifting my way.

A voice sounded, too close to ignore.

“You look lost.”

I snapped to attention and turned.

Blue jeans. White shirt. Blond hair dusting corded, thick arms. A large, callused hand settled on the bar beside my drink. No ring. No watch. A guitar pick moved between two of his fingers, tapping lightly against the bar as his body angled toward mine.

My cheeks burned when I looked up into stunning blue eyes.

My heart stuttered.

We held each other’s gaze for a moment, and my first thought was, Wow, he is gorgeous.

Then, just as quickly: How old is he?

Because suddenly I felt old. Not in years, but in contrast. He looked somewhere in his twenties, clearly a grown man, but there was still a youthfulness in him that clashed with my weariness.

I felt it in the brightness of his eyes and in the easy way he carried himself.

I imagined this was nothing more than friendly chatter from a young man who had noticed a woman sitting alone, nervously watching the room.

“Purposely lost,” I finally said with a smile.

He smiled back, glancing briefly at my mouth. “That’s my favorite kind of lost.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s usually when the best stories start.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that. My mind darted to the large house I had walked out of with nothing but the clothes on my back.

“That’s one way of looking at it.”

He glanced at the empty stool next to mine. “Do you mind if I sit?”

I shook my head. “No.”

He sat, and suddenly the air felt tight in my lungs. My spine straightened. I tried not to fall into that awkward habit of letting silence swell until I had no choice but to smile unbearably through it.

Luckily, he didn’t seem bothered.

He turned toward me, and his knee gently brushed mine.

A strange feeling shot through me as I glanced down at the denim grazing my bare skin. There should have been resistance in me. Alarm bells should have been ringing loudly and clearly in my mind.

They weren’t.

That frightened me almost as much as it soothed me.

When he glanced toward the bartender, I looked down at my flowered dress, checking that everything remained perfectly in place.

How strange to worry about such things.

I almost didn’t recognize myself.

He ordered a beer, and within moments, one slid across the bar toward him. He wrapped his hand around it, and I stared at that large hand once more, admiring how powerful it looked.