Chapter 2
“The innocent rarely stay innocent. They are sharpened. Or they are buried.” The Count of Monte Cristo
LILAH
Two classes. Easy. Done. It really won’t be that bad.
While they’re necessary in order to get into grad school they aren’t supposed to be so hard that I have a nervous breakdown, so why do I feel that way?
Like somethings shifted in the wind? Maybe it’s the fact that fall came hard and fast this year in Portland?
I don’t know. Either way the chill hits me hard.
I decide to put on my jean jacket I had wrapped around my waist and reach for my phone.
One missed text.
Evans
TA room, five min out.
I grin down at it. I needed that distraction. Badly.
Dean’s list my ass. He’s clearly not worried about it so why should I be?
He wouldn’t take the risk of ending up on it, not Evans, he’s basically the perfect student turned adjunct professor and one of the smartest people I know.
I swear if anyone’s more calculated in this world about how they want people to perceive them, it’s Evans Harrison.
Besides, his family is old money the kind that doesn’t like any sort of scandal as much as staring in their direction.
He doesn’t think he’s going to get caught because he either never has or Daddy has so much money that he doesn’t care.
The more I see him the more I wonder if we can’t eventually turn into something more, I’ll have that talk though once I finish my classes.
Right now my brains too messed up, thankfully my body knows how to dissociate and just let itself enjoy what he can offer and the only thing I can give.
Feeling better, I rush over to the Arts Building and let myself in then walk down the dark hallway and toward the small office area for professors. I knock on the door twice.
“Come in.” His voice is a bit gruffer today.
I still remember the night of the thunderstorm when he said he liked me.
It was supposed to be a fling, so why do butterflies constantly erupt in my stomach whenever I see him?
I’m clearly incapable of having a little fling which makes it worse that this is my last semester.
We don’t normally meet before class. God, are we going to have to have the relationship talk?
Maybe we should. Maybe it’s time. Maybe it’s because I told him last week I wanted to go on a date.
I let myself in and click the door shut behind me. His hair is ruffled like he’s been running his hands through it too aggressively and his mouth is a bit swollen. Maybe he’s been sucking his bottom lip like he says he does when he gets frustrated or when he’s grading papers.
As it is, Evans is standing there, pants already unbuttoned. “Almost started without you.”
“Wow, someone’s feeling lucky.” I take a step toward him and set my bag on the chair. “Don’t you have a class to teach? Young minds to form?”
His dimples deepen as he grins and reaches for me, grabbing me by the back of the neck.
I can taste the vanilla latte on his tongue and almost taste the aftershave down his neck as his mouth fuses with mine.
“Mmmmm, missed you though. Forget the mind shaping, I just want your full attention while I feel the shape of your breasts.”
I button his jeans back up tight and pull back. “Right, and I have your class in five, the one you can’t exactly be erect for without it being weird.”
“Of course, that’s why my favorite student is here. I do love you on your knees, and by the look of murder on your face I should have led with ‘God you’re beautiful when you open your mouth’?”
I laugh, it feels hollow. This is what I need though. I don’t think I would know what to do with intense words. “You’re an asshole.”
“Kind of why you love me though,” He tugs my hair.
“Plus, I’m a good asshole, like the ones that entertain you just enough to keep around, only inappropriate sixty percent of the time, adorable forty percent of the time, wicked smart in every scenario and won’t embarrass you in any or all social situations including ones involving sports. ”
“Are we listing our strengths or kissing?” I giggle. He makes it so easy.
“Kissing.” He presses his mouth to mine again and again. “You look pretty today, but you always do, something wrong?”
“Am I tense?” Okay, so maybe we should have the relationship talk, that’s a total relationship talk question.
“You exist in a space of constant muscular tension, yes.” He grabs his bag. “Weird, I know a really easy way to get rid of some of that, but now that we’ve wasted time with you bragging about your many attributes?—”
I smack him on the ass. “Very cute.”
He holds me tighter smiling against my neck. “Dinner tonight?”
I shrug. “Your place?”
His face falls a bit. “She’s stopping by to grab her shit tonight, might not be the best scenario, the ex-wife of two years seeing the undergrad eating pasta on the table I used to fuck her against you know?”
Harsh. I almost jolt from my spot. I mean, that’s just him when he’s with me and it’s not like this is anything serious.
We both know I’m the rebound after his wife cheated on him with his best friend, besides, I’m still an undergrad, he’s still ten years older than me, it’s still, wrong for students and professors to be together even if I’m twenty-two and he’s thirty-two, with the sometimes maturity of a high school kid.
The haunting reality of the Dean’s List sits in the back of my mind like an unwelcome stalker, not that any stalkers are welcome I guess, but if people found out would it really be the end of my career that I was sleeping with him?
No. But his? Yeah, and I can at least have some sensitivity toward that.
He’s not a bad guy, he’s just not…commitment material just yet. At least not toward me.
So why do his words actually bother me? They hit. I know we’re just having sex, it’s just sex, but hearing him confirm it out loud, say it, cheapens whatever I had going on in my brain, I guess.
Ugh, I don’t know.
“Yeah.” I say quickly. “That would be a bummer, anyways, I’m going to go find my seat, knock ’em dead, sir.”
What the hell did I just say? I almost puke right then and there. I hate that phrase. Charlie used it and now I’m saying it? Worst day ever.
Because you killed him.
I didn’t though. I didn’t.
It wasn’t my fault.
You lied.
I had no choice! I clench my hands into fists.
Evan’s head jerks up, a smirk follows. “Save some energy for me, Lilah. I want you on this desk in as many angles as I can manage.”
Which, knowing him, is a lot. That’s what I need, a distraction. I need him. My brain isn’t in the right place right now anyway.
“Right.” I force a smile and bolt from his office and make my way to the lecture hall.
It’s big for such a small class size. Ugh, two more classes and I’m done.
I can’t believe I’m pulling it off. To say it was hard getting here would be a gross understatement, it nearly killed me, physically, mentally.
I put in my ear buds and plop down into an empty seat close to the back but not so far away that he’s going to be pissed I chose to semi ignore him, but the last thing either of us needs is for me to have front row seats and accidentally slip up and get caught staring at him with interest. I can’t mess up.
That’s the thing, he thinks I’m just being cautious because he’s my professor.
I’m being cautious for entirely selfish reasons.
I don’t need my past haunting my present or ruining my future, and I keep him at a distance because nobody will ever replace what I had.
How could they?
I have to graduate and get my degree. That’s all my parents ever wanted after everything I went through in high school.
It didn’t just destroy me, it wrecked parts of me I’ll never get back—which is why we moved to Portland right after the incident.
One day we everything was normal. A week later I was standing in the rain staring at a casket.
The toll it took on me emotionally was so severe I thought I was broken for a while, I thought I wouldn’t ever be whole, until Charlie found me freshman year and threatened to be my friend.
She was truly the first bright spot after moving, finishing high school, and starting college.
That and art. The one part of my past he was still tied to, because we both loved communicating with our hands more than our words.
Proven later, when I used my words to damn him.
I let out a shaky breath. Today’s been off.
Weird. I don’t like it. Maybe I really should have let Evans strip me down in his office, bend me over his desk, and distract me.
I glance up again. Evans walks in looking every inch the professor he is while I turn on some Chase Atlantic in the background and keep it down so I can kind of hear what he has to say.
Slow Down has just started to play when I notice Evans look up at the back of the room, the entrance to be exact.
His face shifts, darkens. It’s not a normal look for him he seems almost—intimidated, which would be weird for a narcissist unless an even bigger one walked through the door and he’s acknowledging he’s bottom on the food chain.
Maybe the president of the university walked in?
Maybe the police? Is that sweat on his lip? What the hell?
I don’t turn around, though, because that would mean I cared, it would mean I was paying close attention to my professor/boyfriend’s clear freakout. So, I pretend to be bored. I keep listening to my music and then I see a pair of Dior Jordans—custom.