Chapter 3
CHAPTER
THREE
CADE
I swipe the soft cotton of my t-shirt over the fogged lens of my glasses one last time before slipping them back on. Another pass of the disinfectant-coated paper towel over the machine’s buttons, and I’m stepping down, done with this part of my day.
“Of course you clean the machine,” Noah Ryan’s husky voice cuts through the noise in my brain, and I look up to see him in a tank top and basketball shorts, his dark hair dampened by sweat.
His comment settles as I pluck my headphones from my ears and shove them into their white, magnetic case.
I nod to the laminated sign that is push-pinned to the wall behind the cardio machines.
PLEASE WIPE DOWN MACHINE AFTER USE. “You’re supposed to,” I say, and this is the side of Noah that grates me.
We should all follow the rules because the rules make everything better for everyone, but I shouldn’t have to say that. That's a fact. It’s why rules exist. But he always tries to make me feel silly for following the rules. I hate that.
Our shoulders bump as I push past him, but he hooks a hand on my elbow, bringing me to a premature stop. He nods toward the now-off clock on the treadmill I used. “How’d it go?”
I blot my towel against my forehead, and around the side of my neck. “Good.”
He blinks like I haven’t answered at all.
“What?”
His smile is slow and obnoxious and intoxicating. Suddenly my glasses are fogging, and I slide them off to run them through the hem of my t-shirt again.
“Now is when you ask me about my workout, and how it went.” Amusement dances in his eyes, and when a tenured history professor from Iowa brushes past us, Noah steps closer. The scent of Old Spice deodorant and salty perspiration sting my senses, and promiscuous, curious desire curls in my belly.
I didn’t even know he was here. In fact, he doesn’t come here.
He runs with the professors, outside, long legs and arms out for the sun to kiss, for everyone to see.
And judging by the Adonis belt I’ve caught a glimpse of while he reaches for books on the top shelf, he’s exercising somewhere else too.
“How was your workout?” I ask, pretending it’s a pain for me to ask when in truth, I want to know.
There’s really not anything I want to know more, in fact.
And in a weird way, I’m glad he’s pressed me to ask.
Noah’s smile shines, and I ignore the thump in my chest. “It was good.” He motions to the second row of machines in the cardio theater.
“I was behind you the whole time.” We both look at the empty machine, drops of sweat glistening along the dark belt.
His gaze comes back to mine, a smirk twitching at his full lips. “You’re fast.”
I lift one shoulder and let it fall. “I’m training for a half-marathon.” I scratch the side of my jaw. “You don’t work out here.”
His smile grates my nerves and makes heat flare somewhere deep in my belly. “You’re right, I don’t often.” Noah steps closer, the sting of his mint toothpaste making my eyes water. “But I do sometimes. Just not when you’re here.”
My retort surprises us both. “I’m here now.”
He grins. “Yes, you are.” I hate that my eyes follow his hand when he presses it between his pecs. “I have some extended office hours later so I came now.”
Why the back of my neck is burning, I'm not sure. “Well,” I smile, kind of. “I’ll see you,” I say decidedly, and push past him toward the exit.
Anxiety storms my ribs, and I’m about to pull apart every syllable I just spoke and internally punish myself for my awkwardness when Noah’s hand lands on my shoulder, halting me.
“Hey, wait.”
Already stopped, I turn around and face him. With the door partially open, sunlight spills through, warming my sweaty, cooling skin. “What’s up?”
“Lauren’s a nice woman.”
Lauren—I don’t even know— “oh.” He’s still thinking about the student asking me out in front of him in the office the other day.
He thinks I think it’s awkward, and he’s right, but for the wrong reasons.
“Yeah, Lauren’s sharp. She’s great.” I edge nearer to my escape, where fresh air and sunlight (and air not charged with Noah Ryan’s presence) waits for me outside.
His eyes turn to amber in the sun, and when he looks at my foot holding the door open, I sheepishly tug it back. The door closes, the sunlight and my escape disappear and his eyes return to smoky whiskey. “She is great,” he says, confirming what I’ve just stated and I realize why.
I shake my head, and give my favorite pair of running shoes a glance.
He doesn’t usually press this way, and for some reason, nerves curl at the back of my throat, making words sticky and uncomfortable.
I meet his eyes. “I’m not interested in Lauren.
Had you not been standing there, my answer would have been the same.
” I nod, with finality, hoping that he understands the subtext of my body language, of the way I’m inching toward the door again. “I’m not interested.”
He nibbles his bottom lip as he too focuses on my running shoes for a moment. I pull the door open and Noah stops me, yet again. “Can I—” he uses those two words to stall me, and with my foot between the door and the jam again, I sigh and give him my focus one more time.
“Can I just say, if you are attracted to her, the rule about professors and students is really… you know. Not for people like you. You and Lauren could—”
“I’m not attracted to her,” I say definitively, to end this conversation but also, to answer the attraction question with finality, allowing no room for error. “I have no interest in Lauren.”
My heart is racing, and the longer his honeyed eyes stay on mine, the worse it gets. “And if I did,” I continue, because the faint smug curl at the corners of his lips irritates me. “I wouldn’t pursue it because the rule is for everyone, even me.”
I’m walking away, the fresh air finally licking at my sweaty, anxious skin when I realize Noah is behind me. “You know,” he starts, and I’ve had just about enough of his pressing, so I stop, and he nearly collides with my back, stopping himself with the tips of his fingers into my traps.
Despite being outdoors, I still can hardly breathe. Stepping back, I face Noah and adjust my glasses, waiting for him to finish the thought that was so important that he followed me outside to share it.
His smile is slow, and it softens the rigidity in my neck and shoulders, though I don’t show it. “I was just gonna say. I give you a bad time about being a rule follower but… I respect it.”
“Hey, Professor Mercer. Hey Professor Ryan,” a female student greets, leaving the gym not more than ten paces behind us.
Noah greets her as she brushes past, a pink towel draped over her shoulder, outfitted in a tiny workout set that doesn’t leave much for the imagination.
I barely look her way as I say, “hey, have a nice weekend.”
Noah watches me, still wearing that irritating, intoxicating smirk. “Did you see the petition in the library?”
I shrug. “Yeah.” When I first saw the petition for new copiers, I wanted to ask Noah if he’d seen. After all, we’ve been complaining about the copiers for years. But as colleagues, things have to come up conversationally. Organically. It just hasn’t yet. “Did you put that up?”
He lifts one shoulder. “I didn’t. But I didn’t take it down.”
Two students burst between us on rollerblades, laughing, music playing from one of their devices. In the distance, someone locks their vehicle and verifies the alarm is on. Noah’s hair lifts in the breeze, but he remains focused on me.
“Maybe it’ll yield some results this time.”
He bobs his head, a little mindlessly. “Where are you going now?”
I nudge my glasses up the bridge of my nose. “My house. Gonna shower, eat, and grade some papers before coming back for my evening lecture.”
He continues bobbing his head. “Alright, well, I’ll see you in the annex.” He holds out a closed fist, and I bump his. He started that the first time I walked into the office to discover I’d be sharing it with the young, handsome professor on my panel.
While Noah saunters off, a student pops up from a blanket on the lawn to beg for a moment of his attention, I head to my place, and lose myself in a memory.
The evening before my first lecture. I’d waited until six o’clock in the evening before making the trek to the English department annex to find my office.
The anxiety that clung to every fiber of me upon imagining myself walking in during school hours was just too much, so I opted to set my things up when the halls were relatively empty.
The lights were low and the orange sunlight that poured through the windows onto the old tile casted a soft glow in the hall.
I stopped, banker's box on my hip, and just…
took it in. I considered a cell phone photo but thought better of it when a flurry of students erupted from an office door, scattering into the hall with books and traces of laughter on their lips.
When I came to the last door on the left, I realized that the students had come out of my office, the exact one assigned to me from the department chair via email.
At first I’d gotten concerned that they’d done something, some sort of new professor hazing thing, but when I opened the door and saw two desks inside with Noah Ryan sitting at the other, I realized I was wrong.
I longed to find a hazing mess of upturned papers and books posed backward on the shelves.
I longed to have the reason those students were in my office be anything other than what I was discovering the truth to be.
That I share an office with Professor Noah Ryan, and that my attempt to fly under the radar before my first day was bested by the same man who voted for me to have this very job.
He nodded, and the sun shifted in the sky at that exact moment, tucking itself behind a swathe of gauzy clouds, stealing its umber glow, leaving Noah’s profile half-shaded.
He reached out, tugging the little gold chain on his desk lamp, and within a moment, he was illuminated again, but it was too late.
I’d already seen him in the partial dark, jaw sharp, eyes bright, strong shoulders pushed back with sexy confidence that comes with a man who never has to try, who simply charms effortlessly. Heat flared in my belly, and spread through my chest, igniting in sharp peaks behind my ribs.
Professional jealousy. That’s all I let myself believe it was.
He’s so loved in the department, taking students in office long after hours have ended, sharing his space with the new professor, volunteering for panels—he gives me a run for my money where success and aplomb are concerned, and my body reacted to him as such.
That’s all it was.
Still, after sliding my banker’s box onto my desk, he got to his feet and we shook hands.
It was a palm to palm display of acceptance and camaraderie, and that’s all.
But when I took my hand out of his and turned back to my desk, I found myself indexing the strength with which he gripped my hand and the intense set of his eyes on mine.
“I’m glad you came in tonight. I was hoping to see you again, you know, before your first day,” he’d said as I unpacked my framed degree from my box.
“Oh yeah?” I offered nonchalantly as I silently calibrated to the fact that I’d be tucked into this shoebox office with him every day until one of us gets a new job or dies. More likely the latter, too, because once you’re tenured, death is the only goodbye.
He waited for me to stop messing around with my stuff, and when I turned to face him, I found his eyes soft, head tilted, body comfortable.
He’d been sitting there just watching me and for whatever reason, no part of it felt condescending or like he was sizing me up.
It almost felt like he was… I don’t know.
“I apologize that you don’t have your own space.
When the department head realized that we were short an office, I volunteered to split mine.
” He motioned to the office with his eyes, looking around, and I followed him, peering at the floor to ceiling shelves built behind both of our desks, the cherry wood molding, the windows facing the quad and the way the oak tree leaves scratched at the fogged glass.
“Mulroney would never have shared, even though the old bastard has the biggest office by far.”
Our eyes met again in the comfortable conversation, and I faced him as I pulled more things from my box.
“He’s the most tenured, I assume?” I placed a photo on the desk of me and Kat, and looked back to find Noah’s eyes lingering on Kat’s wide smile.
He nodded, then cut his gaze back to mine.
“Yeah, he is. Even though it would make sense for him to split his office, he’ll play the tenure card any chance he gets. ”
I laughed a little at that, because I knew a man like that at the community college I worked at.
“I spared you, in a way.” He sat up, and started righting things on his desk, stashing papers away, putting pens back in his drawer. “Had they forced Mulroney to split his office, you’d have probably died within a week.”
I paused unloading a photo of myself with my dad and Kat, and cut him a curious glance. He smiled. “Boredom. No one ever visits Mulroney. Hell, I don’t even know if he puts office hours on his syllabus.”
I placed the photo next to the other, then placed the lid on my box before facing Noah, who was now on his feet, bag slung over his shoulder. He outstretched a hand. “Glad to have you, Cade.”
I shook his hand, and hoped my neck wasn’t flared with red from the way his soft, large hand was making my chest tight. “Glad to not be dead.”
He smiled, and then he left, and I sat there in my office not wondering about the first day of my new job, or what the students would be like, but rather, thinking then the very same thing I’m thinking now.
It’s annoying how much I like being around him.