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I got off work a little early and headed out. Another chance to avoid Beckett. I wasn’t as relieved as I thought I’d be. Honestly, I’d started to look forward to seeing his car waiting for me in the lot. Leaving work before he arrived, because Gary had sent me home early, felt like it scored a point for me in the petty little war Beckett and I were waging.
War? Get real, Eve. You’re just playing together, like always, scoring points until your willpower to resist him crumbles. Which should be any day now.
It was impossible to deny just how much I missed Beckett. So damn much. I missed the dorms and our room. I missed sleeping with his arms around me and the smell of him on my skin. I just missedhim. I didn’t feel whole without him.
I stepped outside into the cool night air and zipped up my jacket. Fall was really coming in, and soon all of Hade Harborwould erupt in a Maine-style blaze of oranges and golds. It was my favorite season. The thought of spending it without Beckett made a lot of my excitement fade away. Somehow, in only a few short weeks, he’d woven himself into the inner fabric of my life. I had no idea how to get him out. And I didn’t want to.
I considered going back into the diner and waiting for him to arrive, pretending that I’d just gotten off.Stop being so pathetic. He kicked you to the curb as soon as he had the slightest doubt. He called you a gold digger!
Right. I had always been a pushover in arguments. I was always the first to back down, the first to apologize or make things right. Not this time. I might be powerless to keep being mad at Beckett in the long run, but he could sweat a little longer for pushing me away so ruthlessly and striking right at my most vulnerable points.
I started toward the bus stop.
“Eve?” A voice broke me from my introspection.
I was halfway across the diner parking lot. Professor Jefferies was leaning against his dark blue car, smiling at me in a friendly way.
“Do you need a ride back to campus?”
“You’re still here?” I wondered aloud. He’d left over an hour ago.
He nodded. “I had to go along Main Street for something. I left my car here. Good timing, it looks like, since I can give you a ride. I’m heading back to campus myself.”
“Isn’t it late to be going back to work?”
He barely missed a beat. “My place is right by there.”
“Oh, right.”
I stared at him, and he stared back. I wished Beckett was here.
“So, you want a ride?”
“It’s fine, actually. I’m just going to take the bus,” I said, my cheeks flaming. I felt rude as hell, and even though I didn’t trust or like Jefferies, he was still my teacher. My innate respect for authority figures, impressed on me from a lifetime of part-time jobs, was bearing down on me.
“Why would you take the bus when I can give you a ride? We’re going to the same place,” Jefferies pointed out, making me sound totally irrational.
He took a step toward me. The parking lot was deserted this late at night, and we were standing slightly to the side of the diner’s huge front window. No one could see us from inside.
“Unless you don’t trust me. Is that it, Eve? You don’t trust me with your safety?”
“What? Of course I do. I just have my routines, and I relax on the bus. Besides, I don’t want to put you out.”
“You’re putting me out right now by forcing us to have this awkward conversation,” Jefferies snapped.
I was shocked at his tone. He was losing his temper with me over a ride to campus.
Run.
I had no idea where that voice came from, but I couldn’t ignore it. I took two quick steps in the direction of the diner and safety before Jefferies blocked me. He was closer now than when he’d first called my name.
“Eve? What’s going on?” Jefferies asked steadily.
“Nothing, I just want to get my bus.”
He looked over my shoulder. “Well, you’d better hurry. Isn’t that it coming?”
I turned to peer over my shoulder at the road. Maybe I was overreacting and making things weird? He seemed normal now. A bus had appeared at the end of the road, its headlights not reaching the Chickadee’s parking lot yet. It had to be my bus. There weren’t many buses running in Hade Harbor at this time of night.
