Chapter 37
“Professor Thorne, wait up!”
Caleb stopped and turned to watch as April Kwan hurried to catch up with him, her long legs carrying her quickly across the manicured campus lawn.
“Miss Kwan,” he murmured when she reached his side.
“I’m so glad I caught you,” she said, panting lightly. “I called your name three times, but you didn’t hear me. You must have been deep in thought.”
“I was,” Caleb admitted, though he wasn’t about to tell April who, or what, had been occupying his mind. “What can I do for you?”
“Well, I wanted you to be the first to know that after this semester, I’m leaving Northbridge.”
Caleb looked down at her in surprise. “Really? Are you transferring to another law school?”
“Nope,” she chirped. “I’m dropping out to pursue a career in photography.”
“Really?”
She nodded. “I’ve given the matter a lot of thought, and I think this is the best decision for me. It was never my dream to become a lawyer—no offense, Professor Thorne.”
Caleb chuckled. “None taken,” he assured her. “You’re a very talented photographer, Miss Kwan. I’ve received a lot of compliments on the photos I bought from you at First Friday.”
She beamed. “Seriously?”
He smiled. “Seriously. I have them hanging in my office.” Except the one of the Majestic Theatre, which still held a place of honor on the wall above his bed.
He couldn’t bring himself to take it down, though every time he looked at it, he was reminded of Daniela and the aching tenderness he’d seen in her eyes when she’d given him the framed photo.
It’ll give you something to remember me by, she’d told him. At the time he hadn’t understood the strange note of farewell in her voice.
Afterward it had made sense.
“I’ve been selling a lot of my work,” April was telling him excitedly, “and I’ve recently been invited back to exhibit at First Friday.”
“Congratulations,” Caleb said with a warm smile. “That’s really great, April. But are you absolutely sure you want to drop out of law school now? Why not give the photography a little more time to take off?”
April grinned. “You sound like my parents.”
Caleb grimaced. “Damn. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I know what I’m doing is hella risky, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take. Photography is my passion, Professor Thorne, and sometimes I think you have to follow your heart in order to be happy. Know what I mean?”
Caleb nodded slowly, her words hitting close to home. Too close.
Seeing his grim expression, and mistaking the cause, April grinned ruefully. “I guess that makes me the second of your first-year students to bite the dust this semester,” she teased. “First Daniela, and now me. I hope you won’t take it personally, Professor Thorne.”
“I’ll try not to,” he murmured, thinking of just how personally he’d taken Daniela’s desertion. Two months later, he was still taking it personally.
“I’m having dinner with her next week when she gets back from her trip,” April told him cheerfully.
“Where’s she going?” he asked before he could stop himself.
“She’s taking a girls’ trip to Greece. I’m so jealous.
” April grinned. “I had been calling and texting her for weeks to find out how she’s doing, but she never returned any of my messages.
I finally heard back from her last night, and we agreed to meet for dinner.
Before she boarded the plane, she texted that she had something important to tell me—something about her ‘real’ reason for leaving the university.
” April frowned slightly. “Do you have any idea what she might be talking about, Professor Thorne?”
Caleb kept his expression carefully blank. “I have no clue.”
April shrugged, then glanced at her watch. “Guess I’d better be heading to class. Professor Adler doesn’t take kindly to latecomers. Although, now that I think about it, she’s been in a much better mood lately. I could probably show up halfway through class and still not get in trouble.”
Caleb chuckled. “Don’t push your luck, kiddo.”
He knew Shara’s good mood stemmed from Daniela’s sudden, glaring absence.
He hadn’t told Shara what happened, nor had she asked.
She would have previously, but these days they were barely on speaking terms. Caleb had been keeping her at arm’s length, treating her with polite civility.
Though her warnings about Daniela had come true, he could never forget that she’d threatened to ruin his career.
Jealousy had brought out something ugly in her, a cruel vindictiveness he’d never expected. There was no coming back from that.
Desperate for a distraction, he’d finally agreed to a date with Karina.
Not a coffee date. Dinner at a nice restaurant.
This Saturday. He knew it was wrong to give her false hope that one night would lead to something more.
It wouldn’t. But the reality was that he was lonely as hell without Daniela—in his life, and in his bed.
If he could find some relief from his torment, however temporary, then so be it.
As he sent April off to class and started toward the faculty building, she called out, “Professor Thorne?”
He turned back, one brow cocked expectantly.
“Is there anything you want me to tell Daniela when I see her?”
His heart knocked against his rib cage like a fist.
Tell her I wish I’d never laid eyes on her.
Tell her the sight of her empty seat in class is driving me fucking insane.
Tell her I’ll never look at another bowl of vanilla ice cream, or tiramisu, the same way again.
Tell her I can’t close my eyes at night without seeing her face, without remembering the way she fit perfectly in my arms. Tell her that no matter how many times I wash the bedsheets, I still smell her in my dreams.
Tell her I love her.
He said none of those things to April, of course. “Tell her I said hello,” he murmured, because it seemed the only appropriate response he could give without arousing the girl’s curiosity.
Grinning, April gave him a mock salute. “Will do, Professor Thorne.”
As he continued his trek across campus, he fished his phone out of his pocket and pulled up Instagram. His thumb hovered over the screen, hesitation rippling through his chest.
Shortly after he ended things with Daniela, he’d gotten drunk one night and looked her up on Instagram—her real account under her real name, not that sterile facsimile she’d tried to pass off as authentic.
That fake ass page had tweaked his lizard brain and seriously put him on edge.
It should have been his first clue that something was off about her, but he was too far gone, too caught up, too pussy-whipped, too everything, to heed the warning bells clanging in his head.
The moment he clicked on Daniela Roarke’s page and began scrolling, it had been like stepping through a portal and into the dazzling orbit of the woman he’d fallen head over heels for.
“There you are,” he’d whispered to his phone that night.
There were hundreds of pictures of Daniela at work conferences, car shows, wine tastings, music festivals.
Spending a summer abroad in Spain. Trawling through antique shops and flea markets.
Mugging for the camera at Paris Fashion Week, her arm curved around the waist of a hazel-eyed beauty nicknamed Kenn.
There were fashion shots. Shoe haul videos. Foodie porn. She’d dedicated an entire post to her love of coffee with ice cream, and he’d almost liked the picture before he remembered he was supposed to be lurking incognito.
He saw photos of her beautiful mother, brothers, cousins, aunts and uncles—all the people she couldn’t show him while she was pretending to be someone else.
There was an old appreciation post praising Brandon’s brilliance after he debated a white nationalist on a popular podcast. He’d dismantled the motherfucker with surgical precision, a brutal takedown that went globally viral.
There were thirst traps, but not as many as Caleb had feared.
One picture showed Daniela leaning back in an office chair with her feet propped up on a desk, displaying the red soles of her high heels.
She had her hair up, leaving a few curls loose to frame her face and caress her neck.
She wore a pair of naughty-librarian glasses, a tight black skirt and a silky white blouse unbuttoned low enough to reveal mouthwatering cleavage spilling out of a red lace bra.
She was staring seductively into the camera while twirling a long curl around her finger, full red lips wrapped around a lollipop.
The photo had racked up thousands of likes and shares, and far too many lewd comments from thirsty simps and pervs.
Caleb read them all, every last one, gnashing his teeth and gripping his phone with tight knuckles.
From what he could glean from her cousin’s comment (“Yasss hunty!!! Now that’s how you clear a bitch!”) and a few others, Daniela had apparently posted the picture after a nasty breakup. It was a diabolical middle finger to the braindead asshole who’d been dumb enough to cheat on her.
Unable to resist, and mad as hell about it, Caleb had sullenly saved the revenge pic to his phone, along with several others that would fuel his fantasies for years to come.
He saw now that Daniela hadn’t posted in two weeks.
He wondered if she would share photos from her girls’ trip.
In his younger, wilder days he’d visited some of the hottest nightclubs in Greece, partying and fucking his way through scores of beautiful strangers.
The thought of Daniela having just one fling made him want to burn shit to the ground.
He scowled, as disgusted with the direction of his thoughts as he was by his physical weakness. Why couldn’t he stop obsessing over her? He didn’t want her back, so why couldn’t he just let her go?
Shoving his phone into his back pocket, he reached the law faculty building just as Shara came walking out the door. Her steps slowed, and their eyes met. When he nodded curtly, she responded with a wistful smile.