Chapter 21
GRADY
I lived in a little house pressed up against the dunes. It wasn’t much, but it was enough for me. And I was rarely in the house. At least, I tried not to be.
I didn’t go through a bunch of trouble decorating the place. It wasn’t a big deal because the only guest I ever really had was Felix and that guy didn’t give a shit. But a woman? Shit. Not just any woman. Cece. She was different than any of the one-nighters I had.
Those women were nameless. Some were even faceless. I never invited anyone to stay over. I usually preferred to go to their place or a hotel. It was cleaner. No fuss, no muss.
I heard her car coughing and sputtering in my driveway. I cringed and shook my head. The thing was a death trap. I walked to the door and opened it, waiting for her to make her way up the walk. My cock jumped at the sight of her. Why in the hell did my body have such a literal hard-on for her?
She showed up in shorts and a loose T-shirt, hair pulled back but still perfect in a messy, casual way. Despite the plain clothes that were absolutely un-sexy, she was still absolutely stunning. My pulse kicked in like I’d just sighted the wreck of a Spanish galleon, right in front of me.
“Hey,” I said quietly, stepping aside. “Come in.”
She slipped inside. I closed the door and turned to face her. I wasn’t super worried anyone would notice her car in my driveway, but just in case. I didn’t want to have someone from the university driving by and see me talking to a student on my doorstep.
I wasn’t sure how to start the conversation I knew we needed to have. I was out of my element.
I cleared my throat. “You sounded serious in your text.”
She swallowed. “I wanted to talk.” Looking me in the eye, she exhaled. “We need to be adults. We have to see each other and work together and this weird vibe we’ve had going isn’t going to work for me. I think we have to figure this out.”
I nodded. “Yeah. We do.”
She looked relieved.
“Can I get you a drink?” I asked.
“Uh, yeah, please.”
“Beer? Water?”
“Beer.”
I walked to the fridge and grabbed two bottles. I quickly twisted the caps and returned to the living room. She was still standing there awkwardly.
“Sit?”
“Uh, yeah, thanks.”
She sat down on the sofa while I moved to sit in the only chair in the living room. Sitting on the sofa was too tempting. We had to keep our distance if we had any chance of having an actual conversation.
I watched as she took a long drink. “We can’t do this.”
It was direct. Simple. No bullshit. That was exactly why I liked her. She didn’t waste time on stupid games.
I exhaled. “Yeah. We can’t.”
“For so many reasons,” she murmured.
“Look, I’d be fired. The university’s code doesn’t just forbid fraternization—it punishes it. As your professor and boss, I’d be on Dean Carver’s most wanted list for policy violations.”
She nodded, taking another sip of beer.
“There’s also the age gap,” I continued, running a hand through my hair. “We are in different phases of life.”
“You’re not that old,” she said quietly.
“Cece, I’m fourteen years older than you. That matters.”
She was quiet for a moment, staring at the label on her beer bottle. “Anything else?”
“The power imbalance. I hold your TA job in my hands. I control your recommendations, your reference letters—hell, I hold your academic future in my hands. That’s not fair to you.”
“And?”
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. “And there’s the politics. Dean Carver, the donors, faculty politics—they’d eat me alive in ten seconds flat if anything came out. I can’t afford that kind of scrutiny.”
She was quiet for a long moment, peeling at the beer label with her thumbnail. The silence stretched between us, heavy.
“So we agree,” she finally said, not looking up. “This can’t happen.”
“Right. We agree.”
“I have my own reasons too.”
I took a long pull from my beer, waiting.
“My reputation,” she said, her voice getting stronger. “If people think I got this job because of the hot archeology professor I’m fucking—they’ll stop thinking I earned it.”
The word “fucking” hit me like a punch to the gut, especially coming from her mouth in that matter-of-fact tone. It took a little of the romance out of it.
“The TA job,” she continued, still peeling at that damn label. “If word gets out, I lose the position and the tuition discount that makes school even possible.”
I hadn’t even thought about that. Of course she needed the money. Not everyone had trust funds like half the grad students.
“And my future career.” She finally looked up, meeting my eyes. “No one’s going to hire me. I’ll have that ‘brown-noser who slept her way up the ladder’ stigma before I even get started. I don’t want to be the girl that got an A or a good job because she slept her way up.”
I nodded. “People tend to judge women more harshly for stuff like that. But for the record, sleeping with me has never helped a single person’s career.”
“I’m saying I don’t want special favors.”
“You think I’d give you special favors?” I asked with a quirk of my lips.
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to.”
I nodded, impressed despite myself. She’d thought this through more thoroughly than I had. “You’re right. All good points. A well-reasoned argument.”
“So it’s settled then.” She took another sip of beer. “Professional boundaries. No more… whatever that was.”
“No more,” I agreed.
“But we can be friends, right?” Her voice was soft.
“I’d like that.”
We sat quietly for several seconds. I half expected her to leave, but when she didn’t I decided to make the most of the time we had together. Something told me it would be the last.
“This is a cute place,” she said.
“Thank you. The house isn’t much, but the view is worth millions.”
“Yeah?”
“Come on, I’ll show you.”
I got up and walked to the curtains that shielded the sliding glass doors.
I pulled them back and then opened the door.
The ocean breeze blew in. We stepped onto the sand-covered patio.
I gestured to the chairs. We sat down and fell quiet again with our gazes on the horizon. The moonlight bounced off the waves.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“Yeah, it is. The sand is kind of a bitch, but you get used it.”
“It’s the logical option,” she said.
We were back to talking about our non-relationship. We were both academics. Logic was how we lived our lives. Getting derailed by a sexual relationship would be bad for both of us. We both made big plans. We were two parallel lines but never meant to meet.
We sat in comfortable silence for a while, listening to the waves crash against the shore. The ocean had always been my sanctuary, but tonight it felt different with her sitting beside me.
“So where did you learn to dive like that?” I asked, genuinely curious. “You move like you have webbed feet.”
She smiled, and for the first time tonight, it reached her eyes. “My dad. He was a boat repairman—did underwater maintenance on hulls, propellers, that kind of thing. The moment they could get a mask to fit on my face, he had me down there with him.”
“How old were you?”
“Six, maybe seven? Most kids that age are afraid of putting their face underwater. I was begging him to take me deeper.” She took a sip of beer, her expression softening with the memory. “He used to say I was part seal.”
“And your mom was okay with that?”
Cece laughed. “Mom loved the sky—always had her head in the clouds, literally. She’s a pilot. Dad loved the sea. They used to joke that between the two of them, they had the whole world covered.”
“Which parent did you take after?”
“Definitely Dad.” Her voice grew quieter. “I think that’s why I fell in love with underwater archeology. It combined everything he taught me with something that was entirely my own.”
The way she talked about her father, past tense, told me everything I needed to know. “He would be proud of what you’re doing.”
She looked at me, and I saw a flicker of vulnerability she usually kept locked away. “I hope so. He always said the ocean had stories to tell if you knew how to listen.”
“Sounds like a smart man.”
“The smartest.” She turned back to the water. “He would have loved this view.”
I nodded to give her time.
She shut her eyes. “He died when I was seventeen. Heart attack. He never got to see me get this far.” A single tear slipped down her cheek.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She shook her head. “It’s fine. It’s been six years.”
“It could be a hundred years,” I said. “Grief never goes away. And it sounds like you were close to your dad.”
“I was.” She smiled.
“And your mother?”
“She’s here with me,” she answered. “We’re close.”
“Good. Where are you from?”
“Virginia,” she said.
“How’d you choose the Zoo for your grad program?”
“Good archeology department,” she said. “And I know there are lots of ships out there.”
I laughed. “Yes and I would guess a lot more buried treasure is still to be found.”
“I hope so,” she said. “That would be my dream. I can’t wait to dive.
I don’t care if I find a silly coin. It’s the history.
The stories. Thinking about the men and handful of women that never made it to shore.
My dad used to tell me all kinds of stories about lost ships and their brave captains. It was our thing.”
Once again, she let out a shaky breath. I could see her bottom lip quivering. She was trying not to cry, but even in the moonlight, I saw her eyes brimming with moisture. I felt like an asshole for making her sad.
I moved next to her, jerking my chair across the sandy concrete, and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “It’s okay,” I whispered. “Let it out.”
She shuddered and pressed her face to my chest, tears soaking through my shirt.
I held her steady, heart aching for her.
It might have been six years since she lost her dad, but I knew from first-hand experience that the pain never went away.
Some days it was buried so deep it didn’t even cause a twitch.
Other times, it left a person feeling like their nerves were raw and exposed.
I buried my nose in her hair and rubbed slow, comforting circles across her back. Her hand pressed against my chest before her fist clenched in the fabric. I did my best to offer comfort, but shit, I was only human.
She was pressed against me. It was intimate. The heat from her body and the smell of her vanilla shampoo or body wash or lotion was intoxicating. My cock twitched, pushing against my jeans. I tensed, trying to breathe around it but it was very uncomfortable.
She lifted her head and looked me in the eyes.
I couldn’t tell if she noticed my body’s reaction but something shifted.
There was a whole new kind of heat bubbling between us that had nothing to do with the humid air.
Her gaze dropped to my mouth and then back to my eyes.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out what she was thinking about doing.
I had a chance to stop it before it happened. I needed to stop it.
I should have pulled away. Should have reminded her of everything we’d just agreed on. Should have been the responsible adult in this situation. But I lost around fifty IQ points every time I looked into her eyes.
So instead, I cupped her face in my hands and kissed her to ease her pain.
The moment our lips touched, every rational thought I’d had in the last year evaporated. She melted against me with a soft sound that went straight to my cock, her hands fisting in my shirt like she was trying to anchor herself.
I meant for it to be gentle. A moment of weakness, nothing more.
But then her tongue swept across my bottom lip and I was done for.
I deepened the kiss, my hands tangling in her hair as she pressed closer.
She kissed me back with a desperation that matched my own, all soft gasps and needy little sounds that made me want to merge our bodies together into one.
When we finally broke apart, we were both breathing hard. Her pupils were dilated, lips swollen from my mouth. She looked as wrecked as I felt.
“Fuck,” I breathed, resting my forehead against hers. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. We can’t?—”
“I know,” she whispered, but her hands were still twisted in my shirt, holding me close. “We just said we wouldn’t.”
“We agreed,” I said, even as my thumb traced along her jaw. “Boundaries.”
“Right. Boundaries.” But she leaned into my touch. “No fucking.”
I groaned. Every time she said that word it felt like her hand was directly on my cock gently stroking.