Chapter 28 Avalynne
AVALYNNE
It's been three days since I last saw Father Ezra. He's left on a mission from God again, or at least that's what Reverend Mother told the nuns. In truth, I don't know if I'd want to see him even if he were here.
He didn't believe me.
He thinks I'm crazy, just like Reverend Mother does.
And it hurts.
In his absence, I've dived headfirst into my studies, though I could do without the math.
Every time I open the monstrous textbook, I want to scream at the top of my lungs and curse whatever lesser god invented the subject, but then Reverend Mother would definitely use my outburst against me.
She'd say I'm cursed with madness in my blood and try to exorcise me of my ancestral demons.
I finish another chapter on quadratic equations.
Algebraic formulas and variables make my head hurt.
I rub my temples, trying to press my headache away, as my gaze finds the front of the room where Professor Thatcher stands.
For what has to be the thousandth time today, I find my thoughts wandering back to that rainy day.
Lately, they wander more than they should.
Much more.
When I close my eyes at night, I remember how raindrops clung to Professor's bare chest and spilled down the ridges of his abdominals like rivulets running across smooth stone.
When I'm awake, it's worse. His words haunt me, a nightmare come to life.
Don't look at me like that, he had warned. Like you aren't a good girl, and I'm not your professor.
He must have felt the thing between us—I know he felt it—but he told me to back off. Yet here I sit, pining over a man I can never have and doesn't want me.
Stop thinking about him, Avalynne.
I can't help it, though. I look at him again, finding him at the blackboard, chalk in hand as he works on a Latin translation for Sister EllaMae.
He's wearing a bespoke charcoal suit today with a matching jacket and waistcoat.
His white dress shirt is open at the top, exposing a dusting of dark hair on his chest. He looks like he should be on the cover of a magazine, not boarded up here with me.
Stop. It. Avalynne!
With a swallow, I glance away quickly. I have to get him out of my head, and I have to do it before this crush … infatuation … obsession … drives me insane.
I set my pen to paper and begin to write. Maybe if I write my thoughts down, I can get them out of me and put an end to him playing pinball with my emotions as he bounces around inside my brain.
Professor Thatcher, I write, Pros and Cons.
"Smart," I write under the pros column before adding "Too smart" under the cons.
My pen scratches hurriedly across the paper as I continue the list.
Under the pros column, I write:
- Brings me coffee
- Drop-dead gorgeous
- Knows literature
- Intense
- Funny when he wants to be
- Is kind (sometimes)
- Smells nice
- Good listener (when debating)
Under the cons column, I add:
- Sometimes Definitely an asshole
- Too pretty and annoying aware of it
- A know-it-all
- Scary at times … most of the time
- Grumpy
- Mercurial
- Enjoys running (and is good at it)
Grinning to myself, I bite the end of my pencil and look down at the list. It actually is weirdly therapeutic, seeing it all spelled out.
I'm so engrossed with my task that I don't even notice the shadows as they cross the floor and stretch over my notebook.
Someone clears their throat, and when I finally look up, I find Reverend Mother and Professor Thatcher standing in front of my desk, towering over me.
My heartrate launches into overdrive, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.
Quickly, I move my arm to cover my notebook with my sleeve.
This. Is. Hell.
And it's so hot I can't freaking breathe.
I'm going to die.
I think I want to die.
"Ms. Immorier," Reverend Mother's voice is as frigid as her glare, "care to share what you are so diligently working on today?"
"It's, uh, it's nothing," I lie.
The tall, dark, and handsome blackhole of all my thoughts rolls his eyes.
"Avalynne, just show her," Professor tells me.
"I, um …" I look at my other books, laid out neatly on either side of me, trying to find anything else to give them. "Earlier, I …"
"Avalynne, for Christ's sake," Professor scoffs.
I know what he's thinking—just hand it over and be done with it.
He probably assumes I'm still working on math.
I wish it was math.
It's as though I'm an observer in my own body, watching in horror as Professor Thatcher snatches the notebook from beneath my arm.
I want to disappear as his gaze, razor-sharp, scours quickly over the words. His lips part, exposing a sliver of teeth, as he reads them. This can't be real. This can't be happening.
No, no, no!
There's not a hole deep enough on earth for where I want to hide. Every inch of my flesh nettles with heat beneath my habit, and I silently pray I will evaporate into thin air.
"See me after class, Immorier." He tsks and clears his throat. His dark gaze pinpoints mine and hits me with the force of a tidal wave come to shore.
I am drowning, unable to surface.
My lungs can't work.
What is he thinking?
That good girls don't want their professors?
That he doesn't want me?
I should look away, but I can't as my heart hiccups, and I see something in the burnt umber of his irises. Only what is it that swirls there?
The moment is shattered as he turns to head back to the front of the room. He takes two steps before Reverend Mother plucks the notebook from his hands.
"What the hell are you doing, Georgina?!" Professor hisses.
A scattering of nuns around us gasp and begin to pray for his eternal soul. It would be funny if it wasn't my life.
Noooooooooooooooo!
I want to melt into a puddle and seep beneath the cracks in the floor and cease to exist.
Worst nightmares do, in fact, come true.
Reverend Mother skims the notebook as he tries in vain to grab it from her, but she is quick, quicker than she should be for her many years. Her expression contorts with disgust before she begins to read the list aloud.
"Professor Thatcher: Pros and Cons," she announces. "Pro: Smart. Con: Too smart. Pro: Brings me coffee. Con: Sometimes—scratch that—Definitely an A.S.S.H.O.L.E. Pro: Drop-dead gorgeous. Con: Too—"
"Enough!" Professor Thatcher's voice cuts through the room, a blade finding its mark, before he finally captures my notebook back from Reverend Mother.
My foolish words poison the air of the classroom, and my cheeks burn as heat unfurls, stretching down my neck.
My vision blurs behind unshed tears, and I clench my fists beneath my desk, my fingers bunching the itchy fabric of my habit shirt.
I barely hear Reverend Mother's condescension over the roar between my ears.
This cannot be happening.
THIS. CANNOT. BE—
"Mr. Thatcher!" Reverend Mother admonishes. "What on God's earth have you been teaching in my convent?!"
Professor's expression goes rigid, his jaw clenching as his nostrils flare. Even his cheeks seem to flush with his fury, a dappled red unfolding across the bridge of his nose.
"I have taught nothing except what Marcus Immorier requires," he sneers. "Let me be perfectly clear with everyone in this room."
His attention turns to me, pinning me to my seat with a withering stare.
I blink away my tears and force myself to look at him.
I want to disappear.
"Ms. Immorier," he growls, his voice laced with disdain and something else—something almost vulnerable.
"I have no interest in you whatsoever. I am here solely because your grandfather demanded Reverend Mother find an exceptionally qualified tutor for you.
You, on the other hand, are here to fulfill whatever pedagogical punishment your grandfather sees fit.
You are an entitled, albeit intelligent, little girl living in a world of make-believe monsters and happy endings.
I have no desire whatsoever to play school games with a child.
" His dark gaze dips to my lips before ricocheting back to my eyes.
"If you ever become a distraction in my class again, I'll fail you in less than a beat of your pathetic, na?ve heart. Am I understood?"
I nod, my tears overflowing and spilling down my hot cheeks.
"Of … of course," I murmur a moment before Reverend Mother grabs my arm, yanks me up and over my desk, and pulls me out of the classroom.
"Georgina!" Professor shouts behind us, but I don't hear the rest of his words. I choke on a sob, and the world swims beneath the sea of my tears. Everything tastes like copper pennies and snot.
"Have you not learned, child?!" Reverend Mother hisses as she shoves me down the hall, her fingers carving deep into my flesh. "Lord help us if your grandfather finds out about this!"
She murmurs a prayer before she yanks me down another hallway and then a third, nearly lifting me off my feet with every sharp turn. She leads me into a room I haven't been in before and signals to two nuns.
"Fit Ms. Immorier with the heretic's fork," she directs. "Let her feel the sting of her lustful transgressions until she can learn to control herself."
"Yes, Reverend Mother," they answer in unison.
I hiccup with a sob.
I'm a stupid girl, and I've ruined the only good thing I had left.
A breath later, I'm backed into a leather chair. My gaze rolls as I'm held in place by the sisters, tears now falling uninhibited down my cheeks.
This room reeks of ancient metal and old leather, and it scalds my nose and stings my eyes.
"Hold still, child!" Reverend Mother chastises as one of the nuns grabs my hands and the other forces my head back.
Together, the three of them fix the heretic's fork onto me.
The device is terrifying, shaped into a small, pointed trident with three sharp prongs at the top.
One end of the cold metal presses against my clavicle as the prongs dig into my chin.
The nuns tighten the leather strap at the back of my neck, the buckle digging into my flesh and making it impossible to move my head without feeling the fork's razor-sharp edges.
Each breath I take is shallow and measured, the slightest movement threatening to send the prongs slicing into my throat. My heart pounds fast and hard, and its drumming is all I can hear as I try to calm down, to not move, to …
I cough on my snot and spit.
Owwwwwww!
More tears float in my vision. I can't even cry without pain.
"Make sure it's tight!" Reverend Mother orders, and I squeeze my eyes shut, pressing the back of my head to the chair, trying to not move.
Just when I think I can't endure it anymore, the door to the room bursts open, knocking into the wall behind it. I peek over to see Professor Thatcher inside the room, his fists clenched at his sides and his upper lip curled over his teeth.
"Get that off her!" he roars.
Reverend Mother scoffs. "I will do no such thing!"
"She is a child!" His words hurt even more than the prongs spearing my throat. "You embarrassed her in front of the entire convent. She's been punished enough, Georgina!"
Reverend Mother's gaze narrows on him as I take shallow breaths through my nose, wincing when the prongs dig into my chin again.
"And why do you care so much, Mr. Thatcher?" she asks, stepping forward, her thin hands clenched around the rope knotted at her waist. "Perhaps you're developing an attachment to the girl?"
Professor's face tightens, and he steps closer until he stands over Reverend Mother, looking down at her. The nuns holding me to the chair shift and murmur to each other.
"Need I remind you why I'm here?" he snarls. "You. Called. Me."
"Yet you seem to have forgotten your purpose and your brother."
"Don't ever mention my brother," he sneers, stepping even closer, the toes of his loafers brushing against her habit. "I have not forgotten anything, though you seem to have forgotten what it means to be human, to show compassion. She's a girl, not a pawn! She has suffered enough!"
A silent battle of wills plays out between them as they stand toe-to-toe with each other before Reverend Mother, at last, acquiesces.
"Very well." Her words are as cold as the room. "But mark my words, Mr. Thatcher. This is not over."
With a final, searing glance in my direction, she motions for the other nuns to follow her and leaves the room. Professor Thatcher steps to my side, his brows drawn together as his gaze meets mine.
"Are you all right?" he asks, his words gentle.
"Yes," I whisper around clenched teeth.
His fingers find the back of my head, combing across the habit and my hair to the latch at the back of my neck. He undoes it and tosses the heretic's fork to the floor. It tumbles across the ground with a series of clangs.
I rub the marks it left on my neck, the skin tender, and wince.
"Thank you." My voice is hoarse.
I don't look at him as I say it, though.
His words play on repeat inside my head.
An entitled, albeit intelligent, little girl living in a world of make-believe monsters and happy endings.
Pathetic.
Naive.
Child.
Each word shoots a poisoned arrow, slowly killing me from the inside out.
"Always, Clarissima Stella." He helps me stand. "Can you walk?"
I nod. Still, I don't look at him.
I was a stupid girl with a stupid fantasy, and it cost me everything.
He opens the door for me, and I don't say a word as he escorts me back to class.
As I take my seat, all I can hope is that tomorrow will be less cruel.