Chapter 24 #2
Leo, with his cocky, ridiculous, infuriating math puns that shouldn’t make me laugh but do, and his body heat pressed against mine until I couldn’t tell if I wanted to strangle him or climb him like a freaking tree.
I snap my attention back to the exam room. Jesus, Tori. Focus. You’re here because you needed space. You volunteered to proctor this exam so you wouldn’t be trapped in the office with him. So you wouldn’t risk finding another excuse to knock staplers with that numbers wrangler in the copy room.
Knock staplers? Numbers wrangler? What the hell is wrong with me? My brain is writing cowboy fanfic while my body’s supposed to be a hall monitor. Fire me. Someone fire me.
One student raises his hand. “Can we use graphing calculators?”
I point to the exam packet. “Rule three. It’s right there, in bold.”
He glances down, sheepish, then nods. They always ask questions they could answer themselves if they just looked. Maybe it’s nerves. Maybe it’s the belief that exceptions are always negotiable. Either way, it’s irritating.
I settle back into my chair, cross my arms, and stare at the clock. Only ten minutes down. Nearly two hours to go.
Super. Love this for me.
My mind drifts again, this time to the trail, the boulder, to Leo’s mouth curving into a smile and saying This is more than fucking okay right before he kissed me back.
I can still feel the pressure of his hands on my hips, the way his voice went soft when he told me he wasn’t expecting more but was damn glad I kissed him.
A pencil snaps in the front row, and I jolt. The kid mutters a curse and digs around in his bag for a backup. I fish a spare from the desk I’ve occupied, stand, and walk it over. His hand shakes when he takes it.
I remember being nineteen and convinced one broken pencil could ruin my whole life.
“You’re fine,” I add, softer than I mean to be. He is. Maybe I am, too. He takes it with wide eyes, like I just handed him the holy grail.
“You’ll survive,” I mutter, returning to my seat.
He might, but the truth is, I’m not sure I will.
Not if Leo keeps this up. Not if I keep letting him under my skin. He doesn’t apologize. He doesn’t back down. He doesn’t do the dance of pretending nothing happened, the way I keep trying to. And dammit, part of me respects that. Wants that.
Which is exactly why I’m sitting here in this classroom instead of back in the pod where I belong. Because if I’d stayed, I know myself well enough to know—I would have found my way back into that copy room, and I would have kissed him… again.
And this time, I don’t think I would’ve stopped.
When the last exam thuds onto the front desk and the room empties in a stampede of relief, I stack the packets with the care of a jeweler.
Order is a spell I know how to cast. Yet today it barely holds.
Exams complete and submitted to the lockbox at the center of the building, at about eleven I duck into the women’s bathroom to relieve myself and freshen up. I wash my hands and then stare at myself in the mirror, taking a moment to give myself a mental pep talk before heading back to my desk.
The mirror shows a woman with flushed cheeks and a blouse that did not seem too low cut when I put it on this morning, but now I’m questioning my wardrobe choices. Twisting the faucet cold, I press wet fingers to the nape of my neck until the heat steps back.
I just pray that by the time I return Leo hasn’t left for lunch.
I mean has. That Leo has left for lunch.
Ok, ma’am. Pep talk time.
This has to stop. Like right. the fuck. now.
I have no business wanting him. Legally, I’m still married. Is that relationship completely over? Yes. But still.
Legally. Married. Marriaged. Filing taxes juntos.
Wait, we don’t have to do that. We can totally file separately.
We’re filing separately.
FOCUS. PEP TALK.
Chase may refuse to acknowledge it’s over—those papers were served to him, what…
three weeks ago? Almost four? Other than him calling to scream at me, I haven’t heard a peep.
Before that, I hadn’t heard from him since the day he came barging into the office and Leo shut him down.
And before that, the last time I spoke to him was the night before he left for Boston.
Which, when I think about it, is insane.
I’ve been in Grand River, what, five months? Almost six? He refuses to answer my attorney like an adult. Refuses to do anything except throw fits and ghost me in between.
This could have been done by now. It should have been done. But the reality is that Chase is not a variable I can solve for. He is a wildly unsolvable differential equation I have been trying to linearize my whole adult life.
Escaping Chase is not the reason I want this… whatever this is with Leo. God, no.
But Chase is a heavy, exhausting weight that I’ve carried far too long. And right now, the person who makes me not only feel completely free of that weight, but also beautiful, seen, and just… desired… exactly as I am, is Leo Euler.
This pep talk is not going in the direction I thought it would be going.
But we’ll keep going. Because even though this is not going to plan, it is very much ridiculous and terrifying and feels like the most honest thing I’ve admitted to myself since… well, since I realized my marriage had been a series of compromises in which I was the only one compromising.
I was tired of compromising by giving more of myself than Chase was willing to give.
And, dammit, now I’m tired of compromising by giving less of myself because Chase is holding me back.
He doesn’t get to make the fucking rules. He doesn’t get to dictate my happiness. I do. I have been living my life according to someone else’s thermostat for years—too hot, too cold, and never my hand on the dial.
And since I am the one who dictates my happiness, I have decided that my first order of business as Mistress Dictator(ess?) of Thine Life is to walk out of this bathroom, into Leo’s office, shut the door, and tell him that yes, Professor of Corny Math Puns and A Beautiful, Not-Quite-A-Beard Jawline, I do, in fact, want. that. dick.
The thought is a flare in a midnight field, and everything in me rushes toward the light. I dry my hands, square my shoulders, and head for the door.
Exiting the bathroom, I expect to return to my office and find Leo behind his desk, or, worse case scenario, out to lunch.
What I don’t expect is to be intercepted halfway down the hall by a frantic, stressed out looking Alis. The snap in her voice she usually saves for Dex is gone; what’s left is frayed edge and white knuckles.
“Tori,” she says, pulling me aside. “Have you seen Leo?”
“Earlier, why?” The look on her face is terrifying. “Is everything okay?”
“Dexter has been trying to get ahold of him for about an hour, and he’s not answering his phone.”
Weird. But also, not the end of the world?
“I’ve been proctoring a test, so I haven’t seen him since this morning. Have you checked the office?”
“I did. He’s not there.” She’s wringing her hands together, looking around every which way. Something is obviously very, very wrong.
“Alis.” Saying her name turns her attention back to me. “What happened?”
“It’s George,” she says. George. Leo’s George? Obviously, otherwise Alis wouldn’t be looking for him. Still, I repeat the name.
“George?”
“Stephanie’s dad. They’re close.”
I nod. I think I knew this. We’re going to pretend that I most definitely knew this.
“Ok, what happened?”
The look Alis gives me communicates that I have said something stupid. Awesome.
“He… died.” My eyes go wide. “From cancer.” My mouth drops open. “Today.”
The hallway tilts a fraction, that vertigo when an elevator stops one inch off level. Somewhere, a copier starts, and the mundanity of it makes my eyes sting.
“I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
“Leo didn’t tell you? Skye didn’t tell you?”
I shake my head, because no, he hasn’t told me anything about his life. Not his life now, anyway.
And… wait. “Skye?”
“Yeah. She’s close with them, too. Both George and Linda.”
I swear it’s like I don’t even know the people in my own life. Where the hell have I been the past year?
Oh, right. In Moraine. With Chase. Not here.
And after I moved here? I’ve been coddled. Everyone focused on all my trauma and drama. Nobody sharing their lives with me because they’re too focused on the shit storm happening in mine.
The realization lands like a stone in my gut. For a second I can’t find words, so I reach for action instead. “Okay,” I say, voice steadier than I feel. “Where would he go? House? Hospital? With Stephanie? Do you know if Linda—”
Alis shakes her head, biting her lip. “Dex thinks he might be at the house or—honestly—just… driving. He does that when he doesn’t want to break down in front of anyone.”
I nod. That, I understand. “Text me if you hear from Dex. I’ll check his office, the lot, and then I’ll call him. If he doesn’t answer, I’ll go to his place.”
“Thank you,” she whispers, eyes glassy.
I squeeze her forearm once—brief, decisive—and head for the pod, already pulling up Leo’s contact. The screen reflects my own worried face back at me as his line starts to ring.
One ring. Two. Voicemail.
“Leo,” I say, and my voice is softer than my spine feels. “It’s me. I—call me, okay? I’m here.”
I end the call and stand in the corridor, phone warm in my palm, the hallway suddenly too long, the air too thick.
A week ago, I would’ve told myself to mind my business.
Today, I don’t hesitate. I turn toward the stairs, toward the parking lot, toward wherever he is, because grief is a language I understand and because—whether or not I’m ready to say it out loud—he’s become one of my people.
Maybe even my person.
And my people don’t do this part alone.