Only Mine

Chapter 1

Laura

“Miss Brown, are you paying attention?”

The question is asked in front of a hundred other students, all of whom are now looking at me. I’ve always been the shy, quiet, studious type. Not the sort of girl who draws scrutiny.

“Yessir,” I blush. “Of course.”

He has no idea how much attention I’m paying.

Doctor Rollins is the sexiest professor in Coyote Pass College, which most people wouldn’t say is saying much. It’s a small community college in a small city in California. Most people have never heard of the place. But everybody has heard of Sam Rollins.

He’s thirty-eight years old, a Scorpio with Leo rising. He’s written three books and he’s been on dozens and dozens of TV shows. He works for the FBI as a forensic psychology consultant. And he’s hot. He’s tall, and his dark hair is cut really well in swoops and fades.

I had a dream about him last night, a dream that’s making me distracted. One that kept me from paying attention to whatever question he picked me out to answer.

The dream started out just like this. We were in the lecture hall, except it was empty besides me and him.

In the dream, he was trying to teach me something I couldn’t seem to grasp.

Something about the dark triad of personalities.

I ended up bent over the podium with pages falling all over the place like snowflakes in a snowstorm. It was filthy. It was primal.

He moves on with the lecture. It was embarrassing to be called out, but I figure nobody is going to remember that ten minutes from now.

The real problem isn’t drifting off in class.

It’s the fact that I have to ask him about my most recent assignment, and now I have to do it while he thinks I’m messing around and not listening to him.

As class ends, I am so nervous I feel like I might be sick. I keep glancing down at the paper I worked really hard on, thinking that it has to be a mistake. There’s no way this is really my grade.

This assignment is worth thirty percent of my grade, and right now it has a big, fat C on it. I’ve never approached a professor before to ask for an amendment, but I know it deserves a lot more than a C. I was hoping for an A. Maybe an A+. Right now, I would settle for a B.

I have to catch him before he leaves, but after the initial onslaught of questions that inevitably follow every class. I hang back behind the small gaggle of students, waiting until they’re all attended to.

He is putting his laptop into his briefcase as I approach, paper in hand.

“Yes, Miss…”

“Brown. Laura Brown,” I say. “I’m in your class.”

I immediately wish I hadn’t said that last part.

He knows I am in his class. I’m currently in his class, after all.

He just graded my paper barely above a failing grade.

I wonder if he remembers that, or if what I’m going to ask is just going to come across really fucking entitled.

I hope it doesn’t. I’m not spoiled. Not in any way.

His lips quirk into a smirk as he catches what I just said. I am making a fool of myself and I’ve barely opened my mouth.

Dr. Rollins has always made me nervous, ever since the first class he taught.

Up close, he’s devilishly attractive in the way very few men ever really are.

He’s got good, strong features and an energy to match.

Superficially, he has thick dark hair that he runs his hand through when he’s stressed by some undergrad’s misunderstandings.

He’s running his hand through his hair now as I push my paper across the desk toward him.

“Um, I think you might have made a mistake,” I say, stammering the words. I can barely believe I’m saying them. I glance at him to see if I have made him angry with that comment.

He’s old enough to be my father, but every time I make eye contact with him, which isn’t often, I feel a zap of electricity run through me.

I feel like I am in trouble for some reason.

Maybe it’s his stern demeanor. Maybe it’s his taciturn expression.

Did I mention he has a very, very handsome face?

It’s old fashioned, in a way, like the movie stars in the golden age of Hollywood.

I am lucky to be breathing the same air he breathes, let alone talking to him.

Doctor Samuel Rollins is one of the most respected psychologists in the country.

He has a private practice that nobody can get into.

Some people say he caters exclusively to a celebrity clientele.

We’re lucky that he moonlights at the Coyote Pass College as a kind of favor to people who don’t have the money to pay for an Ivy League university.

Dr. Rollins is someone we’re all grateful for, and that’s partly why I can’t believe I’m about to do this.

“I made a mistake? Do go on,” he says.

“I just wanted… um, I was wondering why my paper was graded so low?” I can’t make eye contact with him, but somehow I know he’s still looking into my soul. Being near this man is like being in front of a walking human emotional x-ray. He’s running me through a big clanking MRI of feelings.

He rifles through my paper for a brief moment before making a sound of recognition.

“This paper centered on your theory that your ex-boyfriend, Dave—name not changed to protect the guilty—is a sociopath,” he says. “The first problem is that psychopath and sociopath were both retired in favor of an ASPD diagnosis. You might know this because I happened to cover it in my lectures.”

“Yes, I am sorry, I used a colloquial…”

He talks over me as I stammer excuses.

“True psychopathy is rare,” he says. “But it can be a tempting diagnosis when someone behaves in a repeatedly hurtful manner. You need to integrate a finer understanding of this matter. I wanted an academic paper, not a character assassination of an ex. I gave you a C because at least you did not fall back on the overused diagnosis of narcissism.”

“Yes, Doctor Rollins. But, you see, I really need to maintain my GPA, and a C isn’t going to allow that. I have a scholarship and…”

“Look at me,” he says, his voice strangely soft.

I look up and meet his eyes. I can only do it for a split second.

There’s a feeling that rushes through me, an intense charge that I don’t know what to do with.

Maybe it’s the way his eyes rake over me and then seem to go straight through me, cataloging all my weaknesses one after the other. I feel safer looking at my toes.

“If you would like to resubmit this paper, I will allow it,” he says. “But it will involve you developing a true understanding of ASPD. I can offer some assistance during office hours. Does that sound fair?”

“Yes, sir,” I say quickly, lifting my head just a little. “Thank you so much. I won’t let you down. I promise!”

His lips twist in something like a smile.

I can only see his mouth. I don’t know if it reaches his eyes.

I am sure he thinks this is silly. To him, I am just one of hundreds, if not thousands of students he has had to talk to.

I am panicking about my grade as if it is the end of the world, but it’s nothing to him. I feel very silly and quite small.

“I’m sure you won’t,” he says. There’s something in that little phrase. Said by someone else, it might be comforting. But I sense a darker undertone there. Like I wouldn’t dare to disappoint him now that he has given me a second chance.

I get out of the room as quickly as possible before he can change his mind.

I leave for my shift at the restaurant with a tingle low in my belly, and those deep words somehow ringing in my ears.

I am going to have to work extra hard to impress him.

I really need an A in his class to keep my overall GPA up.

I’m smart, but not super academic. I can get high grades, but it’s never come easily to me.

I don’t come from money. I’ve had to work for everything I ever had.

Getting into community college was a big deal for me.

Being taught by Dr. Rollins is the most exciting opportunity of my relatively short life.

I’m twenty years old, eighteen years younger than the man I’m relentlessly crushing on.

Maybe work will take my mind off it.

I work at Winslow’s, a little family-run bistro in one of the suburbs around the community college.

Everything here is a little run down. There are lots of tags everywhere, some cool street art mixed in, and the city doesn’t attend to stuff like litter and potholes very often so the street is kind of a patchwork of all kinds of temporary repairs left to be permanent.

The uniform is a green skirt that comes just above the knee, a little black apron that ties around my waist, sneakers and bare legs—though tights are allowed if you don’t shave your legs (Mrs. Winslow is particular about that)—and a white t-shirt.

My hair always goes into a high ponytail ever since I worked out that gets me the most tips.

It’s a busy night at Winslow’s. They have their chicken parm on special. You get the chicken and a beer for ten bucks. I don’t know how they do it, but it sells the place out every Tuesday night, so I spend the rest of the evening taking orders for parm, and then delivering it to hungry customers.

My phone rings on break. I get one for fifteen minutes at 6.30 p.m., right before the rush gets super crazy. I don’t want to answer the call, but my gut twists with guilt when I think about letting it go to voicemail. A psychopath wouldn’t care. I kind of wish I was one, sometimes.

“Yes?” I answer.

“Come and get me.”

I roll my eyes as I recognize the voice.

The fucking nerve of him to call me after we broke up.

He almost fucked my life up completely by distracting me so badly from school and work that my performance in both tanked.

For the last few months, I’ve been trying my best to focus on the things that really matter.

“No, Dave. I’m not going to come and get you. I don’t even have a car. And I’m at work.”

***