Chapter 4
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Lucas
“Alright, I’ve handed back your case study tests. This is a tricky subject, so I highly encourage anyone that has specific areas they’re struggling with to make an appointment with me during office hours. Just shoot me an email and bring your test and questions with you.”
Looking around at the defeated expressions on my students’ faces, I shook my head. “This is practice, guys. The whole point is to figure out your weaknesses in the curriculum and work on them before exam season. I’ll see you then.”
The room scuttled out, and I packed my things and headed for my office. I wasn’t expecting any of the students to have sent an appointment request just yet, but judging by the results of the test series, I was hoping they’d find the time sooner rather than later.
It’d been a disaster.
But it also allowed me the opportunity to see which students were really serious about their future careers and which ones were simply coasting through.
I began responding to other messages, until a new one popped onto the screen.
My finger hovered over the touchpad, my eyes glued to the From Line of the email.
June Price.
Of course she’d been the first one to make an appointment. Ironically, she’d had one of the higher scores for this test but knowing what I knew about her already, that wouldn’t be enough for her to have just passed. Not for her.
I confirmed the appointment for tomorrow afternoon but despite the indifferent tone of my response, my head was swarming. During that dinner, I’d essentially offered to be her mentor.
I wasn’t sure I would’ve done that had I been one hundred percent sober, or if she’d even remembered it. And after I’d warned her about Ronan, we hadn’t spoken about anything else except the coursework since then.
But now, if we were going to be in such close proximity, I was going to have to make sure I had my shit together.
June was a brilliant student, one of my best if not the best. A single lapse of judgement could lead to an irreparable mistake and that was the last thing I wanted.
Regardless of the conflict that rose in me every time I thought about her.
On the day of the appointment, she arrived on time down to the minute. Of course.
“You’re the only one who’s taken me up on the offer, you know,” I said as I welcomed her into my office. I gestured to the seat opposite my own, the desk between us. “I’m truly starting to think that I’m scaring my students.”
She laughed a little, sitting down with a slight rigidness to her body language that betrayed her discomfort.
“I still don’t bite,” I said, trying to make her feel a bit more at ease. My words, the same ones I’d said to her at the cafe, seemed to work. She visibly relaxed a little, then put the thin file of notes she’d brought with her on the desk.
“I think they’re intimidated, that’s all. It’s not that you’re doing anything wrong, but this is a pretty tough topic and, well, it is difficult to admit when you need the help,” she said.
“Not for you,” I reminded her. A light blush dusted her cheeks, but she didn’t respond.
“Okay, hit me with it. Where are you struggling with this module?” I asked, taking my seat.
We began combing through her test, and she’d gone through the effort of making notes on the specifics she’d stumbled over. I’d been a professor for a couple of years already, and I was used to tutoring students one-on-one. But there was something so different about spending time with June.
Ronan was right. I always enjoyed engaging with students who had potential from an intellectual standpoint. But the longer I listened to June speak, the more I got a glimpse into how her mind worked, the less I felt the way a professor should feel towards his student.
A professor wouldn’t notice the way her voice changed slightly when she was particularly excited about something.
A professor wouldn’t have noticed that she had exactly seven faint freckles scattered like stars across her nose, and how they only became noticeable when she scrunched it up as she concentrated.
A professor wouldn’t have noticed that her hair was almost the exact same shade of the maple trees outside, combined with eyes that made her the embodiment of Fall.
A strand of that brilliant red hair fell into her face and she absent-mindedly tucked it back behind her ear. She was so engrossed in the notes in front of her that she hadn’t noticed the neckline of her oversized jersey slipping over her shoulder, revealing smooth milky skin.
I was well and truly fucked.
“See, this is the part that I’m struggling with the most,” she murmured, frowning.
Her emerald green eyes flickered to mine. My throat constricted, the grip on my pen tightening.
“Real-time traffic management is a tough subject to begin with. But I think what tripped me up is how to integrate the technological aspect in the solutions. We don’t know how far AI is going to be included in future development models, so the current data model is too static for me to come up with anything.
At least for now,” she said. “Here, I brought a copy of the SDF.”
I craned my head to see what she was referring to as she tried to rotate the copy. It was an awkward arrangement if we were going to swap ideas without constantly having to turn the document around, so I got up and moved next to her as a compromise.
What a compromise.
My arm accidentally brushed against hers as I leaned over to get a closer look.
Instinctively, I checked to see if she felt uncomfortable, but she didn’t pull back.
She also didn’t seem as stiff as she had earlier, in fact…
when it happened a second time, I could swear that she moved just an inch closer.
“Have you considered what other factors you need to include in your problem-solving?” I asked. “Think beyond just the limits of spatial planning codes. If your current obstacle is the fickleness of technology, then…?”
She thought for a moment. Then her eyes lit up. “I could request access to look at what is currently attainable for the district and work from there. There may be alternatives that can be upgraded as the tech progresses.”
“Attagirl,” I said.
I hadn’t meant for it to sound like anything other than a show of professional pride, but her breath hitched imperceptibly. I ignored it and continued asking more questions to try and goad her into reaching the answer herself.
Focus, that was what I needed to be doing right now.
My eyes were pinned to the SDF document but I was keenly aware of every point of contact between us. Every now and then, I’d turn to look at her when she would respond to a question, and more than once I pulled my gaze from hers a moment too late..
It was like I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her no matter how hard I fought to try. If I was a more disciplined man, I might’ve retreated back to my seat, if only to set distance in place that could’ve countered the magnetism drawing me to her.
My self-denial seemed to be failing me at the worst possible moment.
But within that hour session, we’d managed to come up with a solution that would’ve scored no less than a perfect A in a retest. I was impressed and told her so.
She glowed with the compliment, looking even more beautiful than she normally did.
“That’s the type of thinking that more and more companies are going to start looking for,” I said, pride temporarily eclipsing my desire. She truly was brilliant and perceptive, and the acknowledgment of those traits only made me feel even guiltier while simultaneously fueling my attraction.
“I admire the fact that you decided to see me today. You technically passed the test already but now? Now you’d blow it out of the water,” I added.
“I have the tendency to want to make sure I get as close to perfect as possible,” she said. “I don’t believe in half measures, not when it comes to things I’m passionate about.”
“Neither do I,” I replied. My traitorous eyes trailed down to her mouth.
June seemed largely unaware of the effect she was having on me. Every smile, every glance had me feeling like I was suffocating in my own restraint. But I couldn’t afford to give into it.
Not when it could compromise her potential. Not when it could result in me losing everything I’d worked so hard to achieve up to this point. Whatever these unreasonable feelings I was experiencing, I had to ignore them.
She was my student and nothing more.
But…
“I had a good teacher,” she said, her voice soft and barely above a whisper. Shy, restrained in her own right. “You said that you owed much of your success to good mentors. I think I’ll be able to say the same thing about you.”
“You’ll get there on your own merit,” I said, my own voice sounding strangled. “You’re brilliant.”
And beautiful. And enticing. And tempting in a way that was breaking more boundaries than I could lay down. Somehow we’d moved closer, to the point that I could feel her breath on my face.
Whatever perfume she was wearing mixed with her own natural scent to produce something clean-smelling, warm with a hint of incense and leather. My head began to spin.
“June,” I said quietly. A warning both to her and to myself. A reminder of who she was and who I was and why this shouldn’t be happening. But the scent of her, her warmth, those eyes…each one of them a knock to my already fragile control.
I leaned closer, just an inch. A question, an invitation. And God, she met me there.
Our lips had nearly touched by the time my senses finally overrode my impulse and at the very last possible second, I turned my head, my nose brushing against her cheek. I pulled back with a gasp, putting a hand to my mouth.
“I’m sorry,” I said, turning away from her. “This was my mistake. That should never have happened.”
“Lucas,” she began, and the way she said my name only kept me from facing her again.
“Please leave,” I said. “This will never happen again, I promise.”
There was a beat of stunned silence. Then I could hear the shuffling of papers and the hurried scrape of chair legs against wooden floors as she pushed back and stalked out of my office.
It took a few minutes before I could finally turn around. I placed my palms on my desk and leaned forward.
What had I just done?
I had never, not once until now ever crossed this line with a student. I’d noticed beautiful women around campus but the boundaries had always been clear and I had never before been tempted to break them.
That code was part of the bedrock of who I was. I followed the rules, did what needed to be done. Just like June. It was a reflected quality that I think only drew me even closer to her, tied us together like string.
But now, that same string was going to strangle the both of us if I wasn’t careful. And I couldn’t afford to not be careful, not when both of us had so much to lose.