He looked toward the front of the room, then had the audacity to take the empty seat directly across from me. “You tell me, Miss Hart. You’re the teacher, after all.”
I pressed my lips together, unimpressed by his nerve. After causing my insomnia and emotional collapse the night before, he now wanted to sit in my classroom and look smug.
Fine.
I set the laser pointer down on the desk and folded my arms. “I think power reveals character, yes, but I also think people treat morality as if it’s fixed and objective when most of the time it’s tangled up with culture, law, and who gets to decide what is acceptable in the first place.”
A few students sat up a little straighter.
Good. If I had to suffer through this conversation, so did they.
“Society approves of harmful things all the time,” I went on. “And condemns things that, in a different context, might be understandable or even necessary. So no, I don’t think approval tells us whether something is right. It tells us what a given group has decided it can live with.”
Pietro’s expression didn’t change, but his attention sharpened.
I looked directly at him now. “Which means morality isn’t only about what someone does when they have power. It’s also about what they tell themselves in order to live with what they’ve done.”
Silence settled over the room.
Ben, to my surprise, raised his hand halfway. “So you’re saying bad stuff can be justified?”
I turned to him. “I’m saying people justify bad stuff constantly. That doesn’t automatically make it moral. It makes it human.”
That got a few thoughtful looks.
And one very intent blue-eyed stare from the back of the room.
I glanced at the clock before the whole thing could drift any further into territory I wasn’t prepared to unpack before coffee.
“All right,” I said, picking up my notes. “That’s enough philosophy for one Monday morning. Don’t forget, yourresponse paper onThe Princeis due next week, and if any of you quote a motivational Instagram account instead of Machiavelli again, I will take it personally.”
A few groans rippled through the room as everyone started packing up.
“You’re dismissed.”
I watched the students file out, far too aware that Pietro stayed exactly where he was. A few of them threw us quick, calculating looks on their way past, and I could already feel the rumor mill beginning to grind.
Emily Hart fishing in the student pool.
Perfect.
“You’re about to inspire at least three terrible attempts at flirting for grades,” I said as I stacked my papers into a neat pile. “They’re all going to assume I’m dating in the student pool now.”
“That’s unfortunate,” Pietro said, still wearing that composed, unreadable expression of his. “Especially since you’re already in an exclusive relationship.”
I paused.
“Am I?”
I kept my eyes on my notes, straightening pages that did not need straightening rather than looking at him. If I met his gaze too quickly, I was fairly sure he would see far too much of the hurt I had not yet managed to shake.
“I would very much like you to be.”
Instead of answering, I looked up and let my attention catch on the cup in his hand. “Nice cup, by the way. It suits you.”
He glanced down at the pink capybara cup as if he had forgotten he was holding it. “I’m glad you think so. It’s for you, obviously, but Olivero refused to collect it this time, so I had to get it myself. I didn’t want to waste it, which means I was forced to drink whatever crime against coffee they put in it.”
His nose scrunched in a way that should have looked ridiculous and only made him more attractive.
