Chapter 8
Chapter
Eight
FALLON
I pull my phone from my bag and type quickly before I lose my nerve.
Me: Don't forget I'll be late tonight, tutoring. Do you want me to grab dinner on the way home?
The response comes faster than I expect.
Daniel: Yeah, Chinese.
Me: Sounds good, I'll get your favorite.
I remember back when I told him about needing to stay after school on Fridays.
I caught him in one of his good moods and he didn't give me any shit about it, but that doesn't mean he won't decide to throw it in my face later.
The memory of that conversation still makes my shoulders tense—how carefully I worded it, how I made sure to ask permission like a child requesting a sleepover.
The last bell rings so I set my phone in my desk drawer and stand up. When I scan the classroom—not looking for anyone in particular, I lie to myself—I don't see Kade anywhere. Disappointment curls in my stomach, and I shove it down hard. I shouldn't feel this way. I have no right.
"Alright," I say to the handful of students scattered across the desks. "Today we're diving into the romance genre."
I turn to the board and start writing, marker squeaking against the whiteboard. Tropes. Character archetypes. Emotional beats. The familiar structure of teaching settles over me like armor.
"Romance gets dismissed as frivolous," I continue, adding another bullet point. "But it's one of the most honest genres in literature. It asks fundamental questions about what we want, what we need—"
The classroom door opens.
My hand stutters mid-word, the marker leaving a jagged line across the board. I look over to see Kade walk in, unhurried, completely unbothered by his tardiness. He walks right up to me and hands me a folded piece of paper without a word.
I don't look at it. Instead I watch him walk over to a seat in the front row and sit down. He leans back in the chair, arms crossed, dark eyes fixed on me with that intensity that makes my skin prickle.
I turn back to the board and add to the list I'm working on, my hand not quite steady. The note burns against my palm. I shouldn't look. I know I shouldn't look.
I glance down.
This is just an excuse to smell you. I wonder if you taste as sweet as you smell. Sorry I'm late, Peaches. -K
Oh God.
I ball the paper up in my hand and try to regain my composure, but I'm sure my face and neck are red. Heat crawls up my throat, spreads across my cheeks. I can't find words. I just keep adding to the list on the board, writing nonsense that I'll have to erase later.
Forced proximity. Forbidden love. Power imbalance.
God, what the fuck is it about him that has me reacting like this? I never care about male attention. Daniel trained that out of me years ago—taught me to shrink from it, to fear it. But Kade makes me feel the opposite of afraid.
He makes me feel alive.
After a few minutes I'm able to push through the rest of the lesson. I get so into discussing Jane Austen's subversion of courtship norms that the bell ringing shocks me. I didn't know an hour had already passed.
"Okay, remember on Monday we will start reading yours," I say as the students begin filing out, collecting their bags and shuffling toward the door.
Everyone leaves except for him.
When the classroom is empty, Kade stands up and walks over to me. Slow. Deliberate. Like he has all the time in the world.
"Kade," I say, my voice coming out weaker than I want. "You have to stop."
"Stop what?" His smile is devastating—all boyish charm wrapped around something darker.
"You know what." I gesture vaguely at the space between us, at the note crumpled on my desk, at everything unspoken hanging in the air.
"I'm not sure I do." He steps closer, close enough that I can smell cotton candy and amber.
"Stop flirting with me. It's very inappropriate." The words sound hollow even to my own ears. Like I'm reading from a script I don't believe.
"Okay." He says it so easily, still smiling.
"Okay?" I repeat, hearing the question in my voice. The confusion. The disappointment I shouldn't feel.
"Sure." He starts walking to the door, hands in his pockets, completely relaxed. "See you after school."
Then he's gone.
I stand there staring at the empty doorway, marker still in my hand.
What did that even mean? And is he really going to stop?
The relief I should feel doesn't come. Instead there's just this hollow ache in my chest, this sense of loss over something I never had and shouldn't want.
I sink into my desk chair and pull out my phone, checking the time. Two more classes, then tutoring. Then home to Daniel and Chinese food and the careful performance of being a good wife.
The note is still crumpled on my desk. I should throw it away.
I smooth it out instead, reading the words again. I wonder if you taste as sweet as you smell.
My fingers trace the letters—his handwriting, his words, his wanting.
I fold it carefully and tuck it into my grade book where Daniel will never look.
As soon as the last class ends, I rush out into the hall heading to the teachers' lounge. I missed lunch today since I had lunch duty, so I want to grab a snack and a drink before tutoring begins.
When I get there, I see Carl organizing papers at the back table.
"Hey," I say.
"Hi, Fallon. How was your first whole week?" He glances up with that friendly smile that reminds me why I liked teaching in the first place—before Daniel made me quit, before everything became about survival instead of passion.
"It was good." I walk over to the vending machines, use my card and buy a Coke from the first one and a Snickers bar from the other. The chocolate is already calling to me—I'm starving. "Well, I'm off to my first tutoring session."
"Good luck," Carl says, returning to his papers.
"See you Monday." I manage a smile that feels almost genuine before making my way back to my classroom.
I sink into my desk chair and tear into the candy bar like I haven't eaten in a week. The chocolate melts on my tongue, sweet and grounding. I'm halfway through when footsteps echo in the hallway, then stop at my door.
Kade walks in and his words from earlier sink in.
I'll see you after school.
Oh God. What is he playing at? He has a B in this class—I looked it up. He doesn't need tutoring. This is something else entirely.
I wrap the rest of the candy bar back up and set it on the side of my desk. Open my Coke and wash down the chocolate that suddenly tastes too sweet, too rich.
"What are you doing here?" My voice comes out sharper than intended.
"I'm here for tutoring." He says it so casually, like this is completely normal.
"Yeah, I see that, but you have a good grade. You don't need help."
"Checking up on me Peaches?" The nickname sounds—intimate, possessive.
"Mrs. Reid," I correct him, putting emphasis on the formality that should exist between us.
"I prefer Peaches."
"Well, I don't." The words snap out of me. "And if you keep this up, I'm going to have to file a complaint."
"We both know you won't."
I choke out a laugh—harsh, disbelieving. "We do?" I stand up behind my desk, getting angry. "What makes you so sure?"
He stood up the moment I did, and now he's closing the distance between us with that slow, predatory grace—unhurried, deliberate—the kind that makes my pulse spike before my brain catches up.
"Because you fucking like it." He stops right in my space, close enough that I can feel the warmth radiating off his skin. "You like me."
"Kade—"
"I can tell by the way you look at me." His voice drops to something quieter, more intimate—meant only for this room, only for me.
"The way you blush when I say your name.
The other night in the parking lot, you wanted me to touch you.
" He steps closer still, and I should move back, should put my desk between us, should do something sensible, but my legs have other ideas.
"And right now? Right now you're leaning into me. "
I am. God help me, I am.
His hand finds my hip, palm heavy and warm through the fabric of my skirt. "And I bet," he murmurs, close enough that his breath ghosts across my face, "if I pushed your panties aside right now, you'd be soaking wet."
His hand bunches my skirt upward—slowly, deliberately, giving me every opportunity to stop him.
I don't. I'm frozen in the space between wanting to run and wanting to stay right here while he discovers exactly how right he is.
His fingers find bare skin on my upper thigh and the contact jolts through me like electricity finding ground.
"Kade—" His name comes out breathless. Desperate. My hand closes around his wrist. "Please don't."
He stops immediately. No argument, no pressure. He drops my skirt and steps back, and the loss of his heat hits me like a door swinging open onto cold air. The worst part isn't that he touched me.
The worst part is how badly I want to pull him back.
"Do me a favor." His voice is rough now. Strained at the edges, like the control costs him something.
I nod because words have completely abandoned me.
"When you fuck your husband this weekend?
" The crudeness of it should shock me back to myself—should work like a slap.
Instead it sends another wave of heat pooling low in my belly.
"I want you to imagine it's me touching you.
Me thrusting into you. Me kissing you. Making you come all over my cock. "
Then he turns and walks back to his seat. Unhurried. Calm. Like he didn't just burn every remaining boundary to the ground and pocket the ashes.
I hurry to sit down, pressing my thighs together desperate to relieve the pressure building there. He's right—I'm soaked. I don't remember the last time I got wet, and I've never been this wet. Ever.
I don't bother telling him that I won't have sex with my husband.
At least not willingly. And if I do, I definitely won't come—Daniel's never made me come.
Only I have, and I don't even care to do that anymore.
My sex drive died somewhere between the first time he hit me and the first time he raped me.
Except for right now.
Right now, I'm alive in ways I forgot were possible.