Chapter 4
FROM BAD TO WORSE
Clover
The student who works the desk had to come in and tell me, apologetically, that he needed to lock up the pool.
It’s already quarter past eleven by the time I’m done in the shower, and the women’s locker room is completely empty.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been the last person here.
I pause as I pass the sauna. There’s no one left but me.
It wouldn’t hurt to spend ten minutes in there relaxing before I head home.
And if someone should come knocking, I can feign that I lost track of time.
The lights are off, so I step inside and feel around for the switch on the wall, flicking it on as I let my towel drop to my waist. It takes me a moment to process what I’m seeing—and for me to register that I’m not nearly as alone as I believed myself to be.
A naked, hulking man stretched out along the bench lifts his head and blinks. A very familiar man, who I’ve seen naked before.
Who is now my student.
My student.
My naked student.
I scream in both shock and surprise and feel around for the door handle. “How the hell did you get in here?” I shout.
Maverick Waters is a big man. A very big man.
I hate that, despite my shock, I can still appreciate the way the thick muscles in his arms and chest flex and bunch as he shifts his position, sitting upright.
His abs actually ripple as he drops his hand to shield himself.
Not that it matters—I know exactly what he’s trying to hide because I’ve had my hands and mouth on it, and it’s been inside me.
I’m so busy with my internal freak out and trying to find the doorknob that seems to have magically disappeared that I lose my grip on my towel, and it hits the floor.
“Shit.” Maverick lifts one hand to cover his eyes and scrambles to wrap his own towel around his waist. It’s small, one of the ones borrowed from the gym. And it doesn’t cover much of his mammoth body.
I snatch my towel from the floor and wrap it around myself, trying not to think about the countless feet that have walked across this tile all day.
The alternative is being completely naked in front of Maverick, and while that was fine in August, it certainly isn’t now.
I’ll take the possibility of gross feet.
“What the fuck are you doing in here?” My voice is too loud, and the only thing I seem capable of doing is speaking at an inappropriately high volume.
Maverick starts to stand, but he doesn’t secure his towel, so I get another eyeful of his junk.
I finally manage to find the doorknob and wrench it open, taking a quick step out into the locker room. “Oh my God. Did you wait for me?”
He shakes his head, eyes wide and flitting around the sauna. “No, Clo—I mean Professor Sweet—”
“Did you follow me here?” My voice is high-pitched and strained, but also appropriately incredulous. “You can’t offer me your dick in exchange for a better grade!” There are so many better ways I could have phrased that statement.
His eyebrows climb his forehead, and I swear for a moment I can see the wheels turning in his head. But his cheeks flush red and he swallows, shaking his head with vehemence. “That’s not . . . I can explain.”
“Explain what exactly? You need to get the hell out of here!” I take another step back and point toward the door at the other end of the locker room.
He follows the order, turning sideways as he moves past me, but his arm still manages to brush mine.
He mumbles an apology and fists the towel at his waist. His free hand grips the back of his neck.
“I honestly thought I was alone, and no one was here. Some asshole pissed in the rocks in the guys’ sauna or something, so it smells horrible in there, like dirty ball sac and feet.
It smells nice in here—not like any of those things—so I thought I’d sneak in for a few minutes and unwind.
I wasn’t waiting for you. And I didn’t think I could offer my dick in exchange for a passing grade, even though it’s gotten rave reviews from you in the past.” He cringes.
“Are you fucking serious right now?” I whisper angrily, glancing around the room, paranoid that someone is going to catch us in here and jump to conclusions. He might be correct about the rave reviews but bringing it up now certainly isn’t going to win him any damn points.
He closes his eyes for a moment. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I don’t know why I said that. Sometimes I open my mouth and stupid shit comes out. But you know that already since I do it regularly in your class. I didn’t even know you came to the gym.”
He definitely puts his foot in his mouth. He does it on a weekly basis, in between adding meaningful points to the class discussion. It’s both infuriating and sometimes mildly entertaining. However, him showing up in the women’s sauna is the opposite of entertaining.
“I should call security! I could get you expelled for this!”
His eyes flare, and he points to his bare chest. “I could get you in trouble for sleeping with your student.”
Heat, the kind associated with blind rage, courses through my veins. There is no way I’ll allow myself to be manipulated like this. “Are you trying to blackmail me?”
His eyes bulge again. “No! That’s not—I’m just saying—”
“You need to leave. Right now!” I point to the door.
“You’re right. Okay. I’m sorry, Professor.
I’m going.” He makes a beeline for the exit, head down, broad shoulders rolled forward.
He trips on his way and stumbles, hitting the door with a grunt.
He pushes it open, and I wait a few seconds, my heart thundering in my chest, before I rush across and turn the lock.
I’m shaking and on edge as I gather my things and quickly dress in one of the stalls that locks from the inside. I half expect him to be waiting outside the locker room again, but I slip out into the darkened hallway and manage to leave the building without running into anyone else.
It isn’t until I’m in my car on the way home that I finally feel like I can breathe again. I don’t know what to make of that entire situation—or whether I should believe him when he said he didn’t follow me.
The second I’m in the door at home, my phone dings with a message from Sophia.
I scan the first line and ping her back right away.
I’m much later than usual, and she’s been worrying for the past half hour.
She doesn’t like the way Gabriel keeps calling and messaging me. She’s afraid things will escalate.
He’s a control freak and good at manipulating situations, but I don’t think she has to worry about him seeking me out here. I haven’t told him where I’m working, and the only address I’ve given him is a PO Box in Pennsylvania. The mail goes there first before it’s forwarded here.
I’m aware I can’t keep my location a secret forever, especially if I plan to finalize the divorce before my contract with the university ends, but if I can get through this semester, so my one-night stand is no longer in my class and stops being a constant reminder of my bad decision-making, that would be great.
A minute later, Sophia is at my door, letting herself in and locking it behind her. “Is everything okay? I figured you’d be home an hour ago.”
“I’m sorry if I made you worry. I stayed at the gym longer than I meant to.”
“It closes at eleven, and it’s almost midnight,” Sophia points out.
I motion for her to have a seat. It’s not as though I’m going to keep what happened to myself, and I feel like not reporting Maverick to security right away was on brand for me. I don’t love conflict. It’s part of the reason it’s taken this long for me to serve Gabriel with divorce papers.
“I closed down the pool and thought I’d sneak into the sauna for a few minutes after hours.”
She arches a brow. “For a rule follower, that’s pretty un-rule-followy.”
“I know. And I should have come home and used the hot tub, but I was the only person in there, or so I thought.”
Sophia is the only person I’ve told about Maverick. She advised me to ignore and avoid him as much as possible and to pass his assignments over to my TA, which is exactly what I’ve done. And while it’s been awkward having him in my class, it seemed to be working fine until tonight.
I explain what happened, starting with Maverick’s failing grade, him trying to smooth talk me after class, and me being less than accommodating.
Then I add in Gabriel’s insistent messages this afternoon that we need to talk, and me needing to decompress with a swim.
I end with stepping inside the sauna and finding Maverick there, naked and sprawled out on the bench seat.
Sophia asks all the same questions I did—did he think he could sleep his way to a better grade?—and then the one I’ve been fighting with ever since I left the gym.
“Did you report him to security?”
I shake my head. “I should have. But I was in there after hours when I shouldn’t have been.
” Regardless, the smart thing would have been to go directly to security and tell them.
“I’m sure there’s even video footage of him entering and leaving the women’s locker room.
” I hadn’t thought about it at the time.
I’d been so panicked, discombobulated by how cavalierly he lay there, as unaware of my presence as I was of his for a few seconds before I managed to hit the light.
“Did you feel threatened?” Sophia asks, her expression full of earnest concern.
I consider that. I was shocked, and I reasonably questioned what he was doing there and why, but he seemed as surprised to see me as I was him.
I’ve proven to myself already that I’m not always the best judge of character when it comes to men, though. It wasn’t until I was out from under Gabriel’s thumb that I could see exactly how bad things had been.
“I don’t trust my instincts,” I tell her. “But he seemed contrite—and genuinely horrified.”
She nods. “Maybe you need to have a conversation with him?”
I run my fingers over my lips. “Maybe.” But emailing him to request a meeting would be opening a whole different can of worms. And if I don’t go to campus security, what kind of message am I sending? “Probably.”
It would have been easy enough to tell security I’d lost track of time.
It’s true. I did. But I willingly snuck into the sauna after hours, and now this is what I’m contending with.
And if I say something to security, Maverick can turn around and out our past relationship to my superiors. I feel like I’m trapped.
I shake my head. “I don’t understand what he was thinking.”
“He’s a twenty-year-old student. He wasn’t thinking,” Sophia points out.
“Twenty-one,” I correct, scrubbing my hands over my face.
It was the first thing I checked after he showed up in my second-year class.
I’d been relieved that he was a fourth-year student who happened to end up there.
“I just need to get through the rest of the semester. Then he’s out of my class, and I can close the door on that chapter of my life. ”