Page 220 of The Professor's Wife

Now my eyes flickered to his, intrigued by the tormented look in him. “What’s your name?”

“Tristan,” he offered easily.

“Tristan,” I repeated, and he stilled, his focus pinned to my mouth now. His jaw tensed again, and he quickly rubbed at his stubbled cheek, recovering. What did he think at that moment, I wondered.

“Please tell me your name,” he whispered, and there truly was a plea in his voice as he stared harder at me.

My heart thumped faster, but it wasn’t from excitement. I was frightened. This was banter that was escalating in the wrong way. I swallowed hard and forced out, “Daisy.”

“Daisy,” he repeated.

Then he repeated it again, more slowly, as though testing the sound.

“Daze.”

A zap of something thrilling and dangerous shot through me. I couldn’t breathe. Not when he said my name like that. Not when he condensed it into an affectionate nickname, as though we were familiar.

I looked back at Oliver, desperately hoping he wouldn’t look at me and that he would be swept away by one of those women. Let him find a new person to destroy. I didn’t even care anymore.

I just wanted this stranger to keep talking to me. I wanted his smoke clouds and cruel eyes and his beautiful fucking attention—

Run away with him.

I froze, startled by my selfish and callous thoughts.

What the hell had gotten into me?

This wasn’t the way, I reasoned. This man was a depressed and angry singer and, oh God, it sounded so clichéd. I knew nothing about him except that he was heartbroken and judgmental. He could be another Oliver, charming me in some weird reverse-psychology sort of way.

I decided to do the right thing. I spun around and took a step in my husband’s direction—

“I saw you,” Tristan said solemnly, making my skin tingle at the deep and quiet tone in his voice.

I stopped moving. Though my body faced the restaurant, my eyes found his, and I stilled at the sharp look he was giving me.

“While I was singing, you appeared out of nowhere. Seeing you felt like getting punched in the gut.”

His words again were not delivered in some passionate way so as to flatter me. This made me wary of him, yet I stayed put, listening, too cowardly to confront my curiosity in its entirety by asking him what he truly wanted.

I couldn’t figure out why he was saying any of this to me, or if he truly meant those words. A shiver ran through me because he wasn’t staring back at me now. His gaze was latched on my left hand, and the wedding band burned my flesh where it sat.

This wasn’t flirting, I was certain at that moment. His nostrils flared as he looked back up at me, those blue eyes burning with an emotion I couldn’t decipher.

“I practically leapt out of my chair when you disappeared.” His teeth ground together, a brief flicker of bitterness crossing his features before he tightly said, “He’s a lucky man.”

Like a switch had been flipped, my eyes welled with tears. A lump formed in my throat, thick and aching. I began to shake my head at him. My lips parted.

I was about to stutter out some words, like Oliver wasn’t lucky, and neither was I, and everything was fucked, and my boy was in the ground, and it was my fault because I mistakenly thought I had rescued us when I met that lucky man currently sweeping those stupid, naive women off their feet.

And fuck them all.

Fuck that university and fuck that school and fuck the library I crammed those hours in, learning biology and the body and all those dumb, stupid fucking dreams I chased.

That poor little girl.

That poor little girl I used to be.

All she wanted was love.