Chapter 26
Lila
We cleaned ourselves up in silence, quickly dressing and going back to cleaning up the bar. We exchanged glances and smiles, and I couldn’t help but giggle at how fun it all was.
When the chairs were all stacked, I walked up to Brock and put my hand on his back. “I need to tell you something. It’s a secret that you need to keep.”
He frowned. “Okay…”
“Jace and I have been sleeping together.” It was the first time I had said it out loud, I realized. An unseen weight felt like it had been lifted from my shoulders. “For a couple of weeks now.”
Brock stared at me. “What makes you think you needed to tell me that?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never had multiple partners at the same time before. It feels wrong not to at least let you know.”
He thought about this for a few seconds, then nodded. “I appreciate that. But I already kind of knew.”
“Wait, really?” I asked. “Did he tell you?”
“He didn’t have to. You two have been kind of obvious about it.
” He must have seen the way I tensed, because he quickly said, “Obvious to me, because I know both of you. And have been watching for it. You share private little smiles when nobody else is looking. Also, you glance up at him a lot during class. I’ve seen him texting you while you’re giving your lecture.
So I suspected, but didn’t know until right now. ”
I sighed heavily. “Okay. Thanks for explaining that.”
“Anything else you need to get off your chest?” he asked with a grin.
“Well…” I licked my lips. My throat felt dry all of a sudden. “There’s one thing I need to say about what just happened here…”
“That we can’t tell anyone?” he asked.
I blinked. “How’d you guess?”
“It’s all I’ve been able to think about,” he explained. “Believe me, I understand what’s at stake if this comes out. For you, I mean.”
I smiled. “Thanks for understanding. It’s… kind of unnerving when other people have something to hold over your head.”
“I would never—”
“I know,” I said, putting my hand on his chest. “I’m just telling you how I feel. Thanks. It’s good to know I can trust you. I should get going.”
I gathered my bag and coat, but Brock still stood in the same spot at the bar. He was staring at the ground, like he was frozen.
“I want to tell you something,” he said, hardly more than a whisper.
My shoulders tensed. “Okay…”
“It’s nothing bad. Just… the whole truth.” His chest heaved with a deep breath, and he continued, voice echoing in the empty room. “When I went to college the first time and dropped out… it wasn’t because I couldn’t handle the pressure of being a student athlete.”
His eyes finally rose, meeting mine for a brief moment.
“My mom got sick.” His voice held years of pain. “Stomach cancer. She was a single mom, the only income for our house. My sister, Kerry, was still in high school, and Mom got too sick to work. So I dropped out of school to help take care of them.”
Something in my chest tightened, but I didn’t speak. I could tell he had more to say.
“I got a job in construction to help bring some money in. But the medical bills got bad. Eventually, I found a construction job that required some travel. That’s what brought me to Chicago.
I did that for a year, bunking with five other guys in a studio apartment while sending all my money home.
It kept the roof over my sister’s head and food on her table.
She had it rough being home with Mom, taking care of her while going to school, watching her… ”
Brock took a second to collect himself.
“When she passed, her life insurance covered most of the medical bills. I stayed in Chicago and worked another two years to help Kerry afford college, then made my way back to Tennessee. Throw in another couple of years where I needed to figure myself out, and here I am. Back in school.”
He flashed a smile, but it was pained.
“Why are you telling me this now?” I asked gently.
He shrugged. “I know a secret about you. The best way to balance that out is by telling you something personal about myself. I’ve never really told anyone. I don’t like talking about it.”
I hugged him, squeezing him to me like I could make all the pain go away. “Thank you for sharing this with me, Brock.”
“Thanks for helping me close down the bar.”
Smiling up at him, I asked, “Closing down the bar is one way to describe what we did.”
He laughed, the tension slowly melting out of him. “I’m glad you came in tonight. Even if it was late.”
“Me too.”
We shared another kiss, and then I walked out into the night.
The bar across the street was packed, with a line of students waiting to get in.
A cluster of sorority girls walked by, glancing my way for a moment.
I thought the tall redhead was a student in one of my classes, but I wasn’t totally sure.
Nobody knows what we just did.
I smiled all the way home, replaying our sizzling bar hookup. It felt so natural, like a wave that had been building strength for weeks before finally crashing onto a shore. And the fact that he was my student no longer worried me.
I was already breaking school policy with Jace. If I was caught, the punishment wouldn’t be any greater because it was two students instead of one.
Deep down, I still knew it was wrong. If I was a male professor doing this with two female students, I knew I would judge them harshly. But right now, in the middle of two thrilling affairs, I couldn’t bring myself to feel guilty about it.
Life was too short to delay happiness.
My phone rang as I pulled into my parking lot. “I was just thinking about you,” I said.
“Still want me to come over?” Jace asked.
“Do you want to?” I replied.
“Fuck yeah I do.”
“I’ll leave the door unlocked.”
I went inside and showered while thinking about everything. I needed to tell Jace. He deserved to know, if only because he and Brock were study partners. I didn’t think Brock would spill the beans, but if Jace found out and I hadn’t told him…
Yeah. I would tell him tonight, I decided. Or tomorrow morning. Actually, tomorrow felt better. That way we could relax tonight together without any drama. I wasn’t sure how he would take it.
I opened my notes app and wrote a rough draft of what to say. That helped me collect my thoughts, seeing it written out like that.
Jace had a bottle of wine in his hand when the Uber dropped him off. “Already had a few with my buddy. Didn’t want to drive. Hope you like red.”
“I like all wine, especially when shared with someone,” I said with a grin.
We snuggled together on the couch and put a movie on in the background. For a while, Jace chatted about his buddy Carter and his pregnant wife. Apparently she had been painting their nursery, and had changed her mind on colors four times already.
“My college roommate just had a baby, and she painted the nursery the worst shade of green I’ve ever seen.”
“I have to see this,” Jace grinned.
I opened Facebook and scrolled to her profile. “Look at this.”
“Oh my God, it’s worse than I pictured,” he replied. “It’s like they expect to get baby poop all over the walls, so they preemptively painted it that color to mask it!”
We laughed together, and Jace pulled out his phone. “Let me send a photo of this to my buddy. As an example of what not to do.”
And then I received a text from Brock, the message popping up at the top of my phone screen while Jace was staring right at it.
Brock: I had a lot of fun tonight. And I want to reiterate that I won’t tell anyone. I don’t want you to lose your job. But I do want it to happen again, if you’re down for that.
Jace blinked and turned to me. “Did you sleep with Brock?”