Chapter 9
Chris
She gathered her things and took off into the rest stop.
As soon as her door slammed, I sucked in a breath. And again. And again. Each time, the air felt thinner, barely able to sustain me. A long, slow exhale wracked my body and my arms shook from where I still gripped the steering wheel.
I stared straight ahead, not really seeing the side of the tractor trailer parked in front of me. There was just a sea of dirty white nothing in my field of vision, like the end of my career leering back at me.
I’d worked so hard for everything I’d achieved in my career. For almost twenty years I studied and tested and published and worked long days in multiple jobs; volunteering, forgoing a social life, family obligations, and relationships to get to where I was now: at the top of my field, making a difference in the world.
Now it was all about to be worthless. I’d have to start over again from scratch. I’d retain my dental license. I could move away, open a family practice somewhere where my reputation was still intact, but that wasn’t the career I wanted. It wasn’t what made a difference. It only made more money.
Pressure built inside my chest, enough to shatter my ribcage. I sat, imagining how my body would look if anthropologists picked through my remains after all this emotion surged out of me like a bomb—fragments of ribs and vertebrae scattered across the highway, down embankments, and nestled in the dried brown grass. The team would consider it the work of an animal, maybe a wolf or a mountain lion; something strong that could crack a rib in its jaw and drag it away from the rest of my bloody corpse. No one would ever guess my feelings had grown so big, so insurmountable, they’d blown me into bits.
I punched the steering wheel until my knuckles throbbed, screaming into the windshield.
A shadow darkened my window. I raised my eyes as a man walked up beside the car, bending low to see beyond the tint.
“Heard you honking.” He shouted into the car. “Need some help?”
“Sorry man. I’m good. Appreciate it.” I waved and tried to smile. His brows pinched in the middle, obviously unconvinced, but he nodded and headed back to his cab.
Great. Now I felt like a lunatic on top of being a disgusting asshole who’d fucked a student.
Of fucking course she’d be a student. The first woman I’d been completely and utterly enamored with, and she was untouchable.
Oh, but I had touched her. Every silky inch of her. Inside and out. That was the worst part. Knowing what she felt like under my hands, how she moved her body under mine, how she moaned when I kissed her neck and licked her clit. Oh, God, I couldn’t stop thinking about the feel of her clit on my tongue. My hands had already memorized the feel of her. My nose knew her scent.
I’d only gotten a few moments of her and my body cried out for hers.
Now I had to give her back. It was unfair and cruel.
And where in the ever-loving fuck was she? Did she hitch a ride with someone because I’d called our situation undignified? We’d driven ahead of the storm, but it would be on us again if we didn’t keep going.
I unclicked my seat belt and stepped out of the car. The cold smacked me in the face and stole my breath.
The vending machine alcove on the side of the building was empty, so I waited outside the women's restroom for several more minutes, watching people come and then go, giving me suspicious looks when they realized I was camped outside the door. I wandered inside the welcome center. It was the only place left to check before I’d call the cops and start the search.
Sure enough, there was Daphne, standing next to a Middle Tennessee carousel, clutching a stack of maps and brochures for tourist attractions she’d probably been to a million times, smiling with a man in plaid flannel and a baseball cap with a fishhook on the brim.
When I stopped next to her, the man’s face became much less friendly. “Oh, hey!” she said when she saw me. “I was talking to Jeff, and he says we should go to this place.” She sifted through her brochures until she found the right one, and thrust it in front of my face. “Fiddler’s Grove Historic Village.”
I raised my eyebrows at the uncharmingly rustic barn on the front of the brochure. “I presume you’re Jeff?” I nodded once to the man.
“And you’re Chris, I can tell by the scarf.”
I shot a look at Daphne. “And you thought no one would find out.”
Her eyes widened with the realization. “Sorry. He asked what brought me here.”
“And you told him about us?”
“Well, not us us. Not exactly how... involved we are. Or were.”
“Excuse me, ma’am. I better be on my way.” He tipped his Cabela’s cap to Daphne and gave us a wide berth.
“It was nice meeting you, Jeff. Good luck with your baby.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
I stared down at her, unmoving.
“What?” she asked.
“Are you ready? Or were you planning to move in? There’s a fireplace, at least. I know how much you like those.” I stormed off across the parking lot.
“You don’t have to be so grumpy,” she hollered after me.
“I think I have an excellent reason to be grumpy. We’ve just lost twenty minutes because you were in here collecting brochures for places we’re not going to. Do I have to remind you not to talk to strangers? That guy was hitting on you.”
“No, he wasn’t. His girlfriend’s about to have a baby.”
“That does nothing to prevent him from hitting on another woman.”
“At least someone was interested in me,” she grumbled under her breath.
I stopped walking and her head ran into my back. I turned. Raised my arm to tip her chin up to me before I remembered my new no-touching rule and let it drop again.
“It’s not lack of interest, Daphne. It’s ethics.” I took a deep breath, inhaling the smoky, woody fragrance of a nearby campfire. “I won’t budge on that. No matter how tempting you look when you sulk.”
“I’m not sulking.”
I narrowed my eyes at her.
“Okay, I am. But now that I know it tempts you, I probably won’t stop.”
“Oh, Lord,” I groaned. The next three hours were going to be hell.
“I may as well warn you, I won’t stop trying to convince you that we should be together. We have something really special, Chris, and it’s not because I’m young and starry-eyed. I know you feel it, too. Why should we let an institution dictate our future happiness?”
“Because what we feel is insignificant when it comes to a breach of ethics. That institution prohibits relationships between faculty and students. I can be fired. Other schools might be more lenient, but not this one.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?” Something told me she wasn’t okay with my decision.
“Okay." She smiled confidently. "I know better, but I’m choosing to believe that you think you know what’s best.”
It was almost word for word what I’d told her two nights ago, about the power imbalance I thought would be our biggest issue. I took a deep breath. “Why does that sound ominous?”
“Because your beliefs can be incorrect. Haven’t you ever gone to therapy?”
“No.”
“Well... me neither, but I have friends who go to therapy and that’s what they tell me. Your belief in a thing doesn’t validate it. You have to consciously examine your false beliefs.”
“Tell that to the employee handbook.”