“My mistake,” he softens his voice and grins as I hand him the phone back. He puts the keys into the ignition and makes his way out of the parking lot and onto the road just as my ankle starts to throb. I groan and lean back against the headrest while closing my eyes. “Please don’t puke in my car,” he pleads.
I crack an eye open to look at him. “It’s my ankle, I haven’t puked from alcohol since I was twenty-one.”
He purses his lips and nods. “Should I be impressed?”
“You look impressed,” I sigh, closing my eyes again. I resist the urge to put my foot on the seat to rub the sore ankle. I’ll take a ride home, but putting my feet up on someone’s car seat when I don’t know them feels rude.
We drive in silence. Being surrounded by his scent is doing weird things to me. His smell, paired with the liquor, is making me want to do something extremely stupid. I start to tap my foot as I try to avoid taking a deep breath and inhaling more of the intoxicating pine and sandalwood fragrance.
I’m going to maul him if I don’t get out of here soon.
He seems to be strategically avoiding looking my way, even as we pause at a stop sign and he looks both ways before crawling forward.
“Are you going to need help inside?” he asks as we get closer to my crappy studio.
“Doubt it,” I answer. I just want to get out of this car and forget that I fell and ate shit in front of Cascadia University’s hottest professor.
His eyes dart toward me and look down at my rapidly swelling ankle that’s still locked in the ‘torture devices’ he mentioned earlier. “You sure about that?”
6
ASHER
She smells like vanillaand lavender, but also like apples—thosegoddamn apple martinis.
Would she taste like apples?
I remember the tart sweetness of the drink she’d given me, and it takes everything in me not to pull over and plaster my mouth to hers to see if she tastes just like the drink.
As I drive toward her apartment, her leg won’t stop bouncing up and down. Is it a sign of nerves or impatience? Either way, it’s making me anxious.
Without thinking, I put my hand on her leg to get her to stop shaking it.
We both freeze.
My hand is on her thigh. Her bare thigh.
These goddamn skirts.
Her skin is soft and warm.
I practically rip my hand away and clear my throat, hands clenching the steering wheel so hard my knuckles turn white.
Her hand tugs at the hem of her skirt, but she doesn’t say anything. The silence is tense and uncomfortable. She chews on her bottom lip as the streets pass by.
I should not have offered to drive her home. Would I do this for any other student? Or justher? The part of me that wants to make excuses for my actions wants to argue that I’m just being a good Samaritan and that I would’ve done this for anyone, not just Summer. But the self-loathing part of me thinks that’s not true.
I hate that I’m attracted to her. I hate that I think about her when we’re not in class. I hate that I couldn’t tell her to leave me alone at the bar. I hate that I couldn’t just leave her out on the street on her own. I hate that the idea of calling her a cab or Uber myself and then leaving didn’t even cross my mind. I hate that I want her.
I have never in my career thought anything even remotely inappropriate about a student until now. I don’t know what about her makes me want to disregard my code of ethics. Why her?
I glance over at her as if the answers will be written on her skin.
She’s beautiful; anyone can see that. She has thick blonde hair that I want to wrap around my fist, delicate freckles that I want to map with my lips, and perfectly pouty lips that I want wrapped around my?—
No. Absolutely not.
I can’t think about her like that. Not now. Not while she’s sitting so close to me that I can smell her perfume, and I can see the goose bumps on her legs. Not when she might feel like she’d have to consent to any move I make on her out of fear that I’d tank her grade in retaliation. Not ever.
