“I’mastudent. Not your student anymore.”
“Still. The optics are terrible. Fuck.”
“Won’t he leave, eventually?”
“My car is in the driveway. He knows I’m here. Or that if I’m out, I can’t have gone very far.” She grabs my hand and pulls me through the living room, checking to make sure the back deck is empty before dragging me into her bedroom.
“What do you want me to do?” She’s right. The optics are bad. And her divorce is already complicated. While I don’t care if her not-quite-ex knows I’m sleeping with her, I can see whyshedoesn’t want him to know.
She pulls my shirt over her head and rushes to her dresser. She drags a pair of cotton panties up her thighs and grabs the mismatched bra from the floor while I put my shirt back on.
The doorbell rings again, followed by knocking. She pulls a sweater over her head and throws on discarded leggings shenabbed from the floor. “Can you leave through the sliding door?”
“Are you sure you want me to go?”
She pushes up on her toes and gives me a hasty peck on the lips. “He can’t know you were here. The implications are just too . . . I’m sorry, Maverick. I’ll call you later, okay?”
23
CLOSE CALL
Clover
“For the record, I don’t love that this guy keeps showing up like this,” Maverick says.
He doesn’t fight me, though, letting me guide him toward the hallway. I go first to make sure the back deck is clear before I usher him out.
“Noted. Me either. We can talk about it later.” I reach for the sides of my cardigan, but I’m not wearing one, so all I can do is cross my arms.
He jams his feet into his shoes, grabs his jacket, kisses me on the cheek, and slips out the sliding door. I’m grateful the snow from last night has already melted, otherwise it would be a lot harder to hide his hasty exit. I rush back down the hall, pulling my bedroom door closed on the way. My bed is a rumpled mess, and there are condom wrappers and empty lubepackets littering the floor and the night table—all things I don’t need Gabriel to see.
My plan is to tell him that continuing to show up at my house uninvited and without warning isn’t appropriate, and that if this continues, I’m going to get my lawyer involved, and he can go through her. Do I want to spend four hundred dollars every time Gabriel feels he needs to reassess our division of assets? No. But I’m tired of the bullshit, and this was too close a call.
It’s one thing for Gabriel to find out I’m sleeping with another man—and I’m entirely within my rights to do so, since we’ve been separated for nearly a year and a half. But finding out I’m sleeping with one of my former students? That’s a recipe for disaster I don’t want to learn how to make.
“What are you doing here?” I ask as I throw the door open.
Which is the moment my smoke alarm goes off.
I try to close the door in Gabriel’s face, but he grabs the handle before I can shut it all the way. I debate my very limited options and let him into the house, because the alternative is my kitchen going up in flames and him seeing Maverick trying to steal his way down the street.
The pancakes are charred on the edges. Two plates sit on the counter. I quickly dump the pancakes into the sink, turning on the water. I hit the button for the fan on the stove and rush over to the window to let in some fresh air and get rid of the smoke.
Gabriel leans against the kitchen doorjamb, his arms crossed. His expression is passive, but he scans the room, eyes landing on the empty plates, then moving to the pair of coffee cups on the counter, and the full pot of coffee that’s been sitting for more than an hour now, because of a distraction in the form of sex.
My stomach flip-flops. If the timing had been different, this could have gone very wrong.
“Am I interrupting?” Gabriel sweeps his hand out.
“Sophia’s coming over for brunch.” It’s not a complete lie. Usually after her Saturday morning sessions, we have a late breakfast or early lunch. Like me, she’s flying out to see her parents later today. We scheduled our flights so we could go to the airport together.
He makes a noise but doesn’t comment otherwise.
“Why are you here anyway? I’ve already told you I’m not giving up the cabin. It’s not up for discussion, and you don’t even like it there.”
“It has sentimental value for me now.” He crosses over to the kitchen table and pulls a chair out. It scrapes loudly across the floor. “Aren’t you going to offer me coffee?”
“No, because I’m not inviting you to stay. This needs to stop, Gabriel. You can’t keep coming over unannounced and expect me to drop everything for you. If this is part of your strategy to win me back, it’s pretty piss poor.”
