Chapter 43
GRADY
I settled back into the weathered Adirondack chair on my porch and glanced out at the ocean.
The briny smell was soothing. I felt like I had been sliced open and exposed for the world to see.
I leaned back in the chair and stared at the horizon.
My mind was a mess, thoughts swirling like the foam on the water.
I took a long drink of the smooth whiskey.
When I realized I finished the glass, I reached down and grabbed the bottle to give myself a refill.
I planned on getting drunk. Really drunk.
I wanted to forget the last twenty-four hours.
If that required me to crawl in a bottle, I was happy to do it. Anything to not think about her .
Cece. Her name alone made my chest hurt. I couldn’t stop thinking about her. The way she’d looked at me last night when I was deep inside her. The way she’d whispered my name and begged me to fuck her. It had felt real. So damn real. But now? Now I didn’t know what to believe.
Was it all a lie? Had she been playing me from the start? I kept replaying the morning over and over in my head. “I never expected you to be the one offering yourself up to him like some common whore.”
Had Cece set me up? She couldn’t bust me fucking or flirting with any of the students so she decided she would fuck me in an attempt to get dirt on me?
I didn’t know what to believe. Maybe the dean had promised her more than what she was saying.
If she could provide proof I was being inappropriate, what did that get her?
I didn’t know if I could believe her when she said she didn’t know who I was that night in the bar.
It wasn’t exactly a secret that Felix and I owned The Library.
Had she gone in with the intention of having sex with me?
When I looked back on that night, she had been pretty forward.
Knowing Cece like I do now, I didn’t think she was the type to pick up randos at a bar and fuck them in the first place she could find.
I clenched my fists, my nails digging into my palms. No.
I couldn’t believe that. Not after everything we’d shared.
Not after the way she’d looked at me, touched me, trusted me.
But then again, why hadn’t she told me about the dean?
Why had she kept that from me? If it was innocent, if it meant nothing, why not just come clean?
I groaned and ran a hand through my hair.
She invited me to hang out with her family.
Why? What was that about? I tossed around the pieces of information.
I couldn’t figure out why she had to bring me into her personal life.
No, I knew why. She wanted me to see she came from a woman who chased her dreams without letting anything hold her back.
But why had she been so desperate to get on the dive? Was it with the intention of getting me into her bed with the sole intention of us getting caught? No, none of us had known how that dive trip would play out.
I stared at the whiskey in my glass and gently swirled it.
I wanted to believe her. I wanted to believe that what we had was real, that she hadn’t been playing me from the start.
But one thing for certain was that she had lied to me.
Could I ever trust her again after something like that? Did it even matter?
Maybe not, but it still stung to think it had all been an act from the very moment I laid eyes on her. I took another long drink, the burn of the whiskey doing little to dull the ache in my chest. Had she planned it all? Had she orchestrated everything so that we’d end up together?
When I had tried to leave her bed somewhere around four in the morning, she held me close and told me to stay.
My plan had been to sneak out before Felix and Lina got up, but I had fallen asleep.
Her body draped over mine in that tiny bed had been the best sedative.
I couldn’t bring myself to leave her soft warmth.
And now I was paying for it.
I glanced over at the photo album I had brought outside with me.
I didn’t know why I did it. Feely moody I supposed.
Probably to torture myself just a little more.
The album was filled with pictures from old expeditions I had been on.
I had a feeling that part of my life was over.
I would always be an archeologist, but I was going to have to find private investors.
And if Carver had her way, she was going to trash my name and make it very difficult for me to do that.
“Bitch,” I hissed. I took a drink. The burn was gone. After a glass, it always went down a little smoother.
I grabbed the album and put it in my lap. With my glass of whiskey in one hand, I used my other to open up what was definitely one of my most prized possessions.
My fingers hesitated over the first photo: me grinning wildly from the summit of Everest, wind whipping my frozen cheeks.
I couldn’t believe I had managed to do it.
That had been nearly fifteen years ago. I wasn’t an adrenaline junkie but a buddy had done it the year before and tried to say I couldn’t do it.
So, I did it.
It nearly killed me, but I managed.
Just below that picture was me bathed in sweat in Cambodia, machete in hand and probably no less than three million bug bites covering my body. We had reclaimed some old temples from the choking jungle growth.
Again, the trip nearly killed me. I had eaten the wrong berries and hallucinated for three days. They’d found me sleeping up in a tree, with no memory of how I ended up there.
The next series of pictures were from my time in Petra.
The rose-red city. The first photo was of me standing in front of the Treasury.
I remembered the awe I’d felt that day, the way the ancient carvings seemed to breathe life into the rock.
I’d spent weeks there, mapping out sections of the city that hadn’t been fully explored.
The heat had been brutal, but I didn’t care.
Every step felt like walking through history.
The next photo was of me crouched in a narrow passageway, my flashlight highlighting a series of intricate carvings on the wall.
I’d found them by accident, hidden behind a pile of rubble.
They were unlike anything I’d seen before.
They didn’t match any known Nabatean art.
I’d spent days documenting them. It was definitely one of the highlights of my career.
Then there was the photo of me sitting on a ledge overlooking the valley. I remembered how peaceful it had been up there. I had blisters on my feet and hands. Pretty sure I had been dehydrated and had very little sleep but it was easily one of the best views in my life.
I didn’t know who I was without my work. If the whole thing with Cece cost me that life, I didn’t know what I would do with myself. I had always expected to either die on some dig in the desert or at a very old age all wrinkled and dried out after a lifetime spent outdoors. Now what?
A familiar creak of the front gate jolted me from the past. Felix appeared carrying a bottle of whiskey and a plastic cup. His eyes went to the bottle sitting by my chair.
“I had a feeling we might need a fresh bottle.” He sat down on the chair beside me.
He opened the bottle, poured some into his cup, and then made a show of putting the bottle down on the other side of his chair like he was afraid I might steal it.
We sat in companionable silence for a moment ,sipping whiskey and watching the waves.
“Reminiscing?” he asked and nodded at the album in my lap.
“Yep.”
“I’m sorry, Grady,” he said quietly. “For the shitshow.”
I closed the album and put it on the table between us. “I’m sorry for involving you. I hope there’s no blowback on you.”
“If anyone can weather a scandal, it’s you. But maybe not a scandal with a grad student.” His voice was calm, but I knew he was pissed. He had warned me over and over.
“What do you think my options are?” I asked, swirling the whiskey in my glass.
He shrugged. “You can appeal to the board. Hire a lawyer. The dean’s not letting this drop. You might scrape by on this one, but she’s going to keep looking for a reason. When it’s time to renew your contract, she’ll never let it happen.”
I sighed. I had come to the same conclusion. “Yeah.”
“There’s always the bar. You could walk away from academia.”
I snorted. “Ten years teaching, thousands of students. I’ve built something. I can’t just walk away if there’s a chance.”
“I get that. Hell, I respect that. But no matter what, I’m here for you.”
I closed my eyes to the sun. “Thanks.”
He took another slow drink.
“I know you’re dying to tell me you warned me,” I said.
He chuckled. “Nah, I don’t need to. You know.”
He picked up the album and opened it. I watched him flip through the pages.
He stopped on a picture of the two of us in Egypt.
It was from our first big dig together there.
We were standing in front of the Great Pyramid of Giza, both of us covered in dust and sweat, grinning like idiots.
I remembered that day like it was yesterday.
The sun had been brutal, baking the sand until it felt like walking on hot coals.
I had sand in my teeth, eyes, and my ass crack, and I had never felt more alive.
“That was a hell of a trip,” Felix said. “Remember when you got that scorpion sting? I thought you were going to die on me.”
I chuckled thinking back to Felix turning into my personal bodyguard. “Yeah, and you were the one freaking out, running around like a madman trying to find the antivenin. I was fine.”
“Fine?” Felix raised an eyebrow. “Your hand was three times the usual size and I swear you were hallucinating.”
“That was Cambodia.”
Felix laughed. “Idiot. What have I told you about double-checking unfamiliar jungle berries?”
“To do it,” I said.
“Yeah, do the research,” he said, shaking his head. “Or end up thinking you’re a monkey until we drag you back to civilization.”
“Was that what happened?” I chuckled. “I thought I just wanted more berries.”
“Either way, you’ve always been a little reckless. But not like this.”
“Apparently, I should probably start listening to you. You’re like my guardian angel.”
“If I was your guardian angel, I would manage to keep you out of the shit you always step in,” he countered.
“I do have an uncanny knack for finding trouble.”
“Have you talked to her?” The question was quiet and he didn’t need to specify who he was talking about.
“No.”
“I liked her,” he said.
“Yeah, but maybe that’s because neither of us actually knew her.”