16. Max
MAX
The red ink on my grading pen looks like a trail of blood.
I keep circling the same grammatical error in a sophomore’s essay, my mind miles away from the syntax of the Renaissance.
The courtyard conversation echoes in the quiet of my office—the scent of damp stone, the vulnerability in Baleigh’s voice, the way the moonlight caught the gold in her hair.
I should be preparing for next week's seminar on the Medici.
Instead, I am staring at the door, waiting for the click of her heels in the hallway.
When I finally see her near the administrative desk, my heart does something unprofessional.
It stutters. I smooth the front of my linen shirt, feeling the uncharacteristic dampness of my palms. I have led archaeological digs in hostile territory and debated scholars in three languages, yet a twenty-eight-year-old from North Carolina has me losing my breath.
"Baleigh," I say, stepping into the hall.
She looks up, a quick, expectant smile brightening her face. "Professor? Everything okay with the schedules?"
I let out a shaky breath. "Forget the schedules for a moment.
This isn't about the program." I pause, watching her expression shift from professional to curious. "I’m going to dinner tonight. At a small place near Santa Croce. I’d like it if you came with me.
Not as my assistant. Just… with me." The silence lingers.
I expect a polite refusal or a joke to break the tension.
Instead, she nods, her eyes softening. "I’d like that, Max. Just us."
Evening descends on Florence like a velvet curtain.
We walk through the Oltrarno, the golden lanterns casting long, cinematic shadows across the cobblestones.
The city feels different tonight—less like a classroom, more like a playground.
We find a table at a trattoria tucked so deep into an alley that the tourists haven't found it yet.
Over a bottle of Chianti and plates of carbonara, the pretense of our roles vanishes completely.
She tells me about her family’s expectations back home, the suffocating safety of a life she nearly resigned herself to.
I find myself telling her things I haven't whispered in a decade—the burnout I hide behind my lectures, the way academia started as a passion and became a cage.
"I spent so long trying to be the man everyone expected," I say, watching her swirl the wine in her glass. "I forgot to check if he was actually happy."
"I think I’m just now learning how to check," she says, voice low.
I reach across the table, my hand covering hers. The contact is electric. There are no students here, no colleagues, no expectations. Just the hum of the city and the realization that for the very first time in twenty years, I don't want to be anywhere else.
The bridge beneath our feet hums with the distant vibration of a passing scooter, but the space between us feels silent and charged.
Usually, I walk with a purpose—shoulders back, chin level, calculating the most efficient route.
Tonight, my gait matches hers. I don't correct her pronunciation of the statues we pass.
I don't offer a historical footnote. The title of Professor feels like a heavy coat I’ve finally left on a hook by the door.
"I used to think being indispensable meant being successful," I say, leaning against the cold stone of the overlook. Below us, Florence is a sea of amber lights and bright rooftops. "I collected accolades like they were armor. But armor is heavy, Baleigh. It doesn't let much light in."
She rests her elbows on the railing, her shoulder brushing mine.
"I spent my life trying to be invisible so I wouldn't disappoint anyone.
I wanted to open a small gallery, a place for local artists who don't fit the 'safe' mold.
But in North Carolina, people want you to get the college degree and marry the boy next door.
" She looks up at me, her eyes searching. "I think I’m done being invisible."
"You were never invisible to me," I admit. The honesty feels raw, scraping against the back of my throat. "I’ve spent years looking at maps of where I've been and never at where I'm going."
The night air turns sharp, a mountain breeze rolling off the Apennines. Neither of us moves to leave.
"My apartment is just around the corner," I say, the invitation hanging in the air with a weight that has absolutely nothing to do with coffee. "I have a moka pot and a View that rivals this one. We don't have to end the night just yet."
She offers that warm, signature smile. "I’d love to see where you hide all those books, Max."
My living room is a graveyard of half-finished research papers and fossils I’ve picked up from the Levant to the Andes.
It’s a space designed for a man who works until he sleeps.
But as Baleigh walks through the door, the clinical coldness of the room evaporates.
She lingers at a shelf, touches a cracked Roman coin, then a photo of me in my thirties, covered in dust at a dig site.
"It's a lot of history for one person to carry," she whispers, turning to face me.
I set the coffee cups on the low table, ignoring the steam rising from them. The professional distance—the miles of 'assistant' and 'coordinator'—is gone. I see the pulse at the base of her throat.
"I’m tired of carrying it alone," I say.
The silence isn't a wall anymore; it's a bridge. I take a step toward her, seeing my own vulnerability mirrored in the way she doesn't look away. The summer is fleeting, the program is temporary, but the way she studies me makes the rest of my life feel like it hasn't even started.
The moment my fingers skim her jawline, hesitation evaporates. Her breath catches—warm against my lips—and then I kiss her like the maps I’ve studied all my life have led me directly to this. She tastes like wine and summer and something indefinable, something mine to discover.
Her hands clutch at my shirt, pulling me closer. The way she arches into me ignites a hunger I thought academia had buried decades ago. "Max," she gasps when I trail kisses down her throat, lingering where her pulse thrums wild. "So this is what you do when you're not lecturing?"
"Only with you." My voice is rougher than I’ve ever heard it. My hands cradle her waist, thumbs brushing under the hem of her sundress where the fabric bunches.
Her answering laugh shivers into a moan when I twist us, pressing her back against the weathered oak bookshelf.
The impact sends a few forgotten volumes tumbling to the floor with muted thuds, their yellowed pages fanning open like startled birds.
Dust swirls in the lamplight, golden and weightless, as ancient as the artifacts lining my office walls—all of them forgotten now beneath the heat of her body against mine.
Her fingers tangle in my hair with surprising urgency, nails scraping deliciously against my scalp as she arches into me.
I can sense the warmth of her skin bleeding through the thin linen of my shirt, relentless and intoxicating.
Every ragged breath she takes presses her closer, until I'm drunk on her scent—sun-warmed skin, citrus shampoo, and something that makes my pulse stutter.
I want to unravel her completely, to see her desperate and undone beneath my hands—just like she's making me with every teasing touch.
"I should've guessed," she murmurs against my jaw, her voice thick with amusement and desire.
Her clever fingers make quick work of my tucked-in shirt, tugging it loose before sliding up my torso with deliberate slowness.
The contrast of her cool palms against my overheated skin makes me shudder.
"All those meticulous notes... that organized desk...
I knew there had to be a wild side buried under all that professor polish. "
"You have no idea," I growl, capturing her lower lip between my teeth in a gentle bite that makes her gasp.
I swallow the sound greedily as my hands slide up the smooth expanse of her thighs, bunching the gauzy sundress higher until my fingers brush against the lace edge of her underwear.
The hitch in her breathing tells me everything I need to know.
She toes off her sandals, kicking them aside, and hooks a leg around my hip. The pressure is exquisite torture. My belt buckle jingles as her fingers fumble with it, and I groan when she palms me through my slacks.
"Not here," I manage, though the idea of taking her against the shelf of first editions nearly shatters my resolve.
Her eyes darken. "Then show me."
I lift her effortlessly—her weight nothing against the strength of my arms—and her startled laughter spills into a gasp as her legs instinctively wrap around my waist. The aroma of her shampoo, something floral and summery, fills my senses as I carry her down the dimly lit hall, my steps quickening with every breath she takes against my neck.
My bedroom is austere, all dark walnut furniture and muted earth tones, a space designed for order and quiet reflection.
But the moment I lay her down on the crisp duvet, she ignites the room like sunlight breaking through storm clouds.
The gauzy fabric of her sundress pools around her waist, revealing the golden expanse of her thighs, the faint constellation of freckles across her shoulders—each one a mark I trace with my lips before claiming them with gentle bites.
"Look at you," I rasp, pinning her wrists lightly above her head, relishing the way her breath quickens at the restraint. My gaze roams the flush spreading down her chest, the rapid flutter of her pulse beneath delicate skin. Every reaction is a revelation, a map of desire I intend to memorize.
Her eyes, darkened with need, lock onto mine as she arches beneath me. "You," she whispers, voice trembling. "All of you."
The words unravel me.