Page 61 of Teach Me Your Ways

“When we buy a house, will it be here?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “It will depend on where I can find a teaching job. It could be anywhere.”

“And will you come with us, Granny?”

Mom grinned and winked. “Just you try and get rid of me.”

I didn’t know what my mom had planned for the future. We hadn’t really talked about it. Eventually, I imagined she would want to move on with her life. That was a bridge to cross another day. I had enough burned bridges to deal with.

My phone pinged in my purse. I fished it out and saw it was an email notification on my university account. We didn’t really have rules about phones at the table. Eventually, we would. I opened the email and froze.

It was from Grady.

Cece—I’m sorry to do this by email, but with the storm headed to South Carolina, conditions are looking rough offshore. I don’t want to risk anything. I’m afraid you’ll need to sit out the dive trip. I’ll sort out your TA duties—I’m still counting on you for grading and logistics, but I don’t want you underwater until we’re sure conditions are safe. I’ll make it up to you in class, promise.

—Grady

I stared at the screen. There was no way it was real. Was he out of his fucking mind?

Did he really think it was appropriate to shun me because we had sex? Because he found out I had a kid, and since he didn’t want to fuck me anymore, he could toss me to the side? That son of a bitch didn’t get to mess with my future and my career because he was pissed his piece of ass had responsibilities.

Mom reached over and touched my hand. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” I said again, a little too quickly. “You know, I think this omelet’s not sitting right with me after all.”

Sophie finished her last bite of waffle and climbed into my lap for a hug. I hugged her back, breathing in strawberry and sugar and childhood.

“I’m going to go use the ladies’ room.” I set down my fork and gently put Sophie in her chair. I rose and headed for the bathroom with my jaw clenched.

I stared at myself in the mirror, eyes prickled and wet. He’s a jerk. A sexy, magic-cock-toting jerk. A jerk who tells me what I can and can’t do. On a diving trip—our diving trip. That he invited me on. It was part of the perks of being his TA. He has no right!

Technically, he had every right but it still made him a son of a bitch.

Grady Stone, with his stupid perfect abs and his stupid perfect mouth and his stupid perfect dick, didn’t get to decide what I could or couldn’t do. He didn’t get to bench me from the dive trip because he was suddenly too chickenshit to deal with the fact that I had a kid. A kid who was none of his damn business, by the way.

I stared at my reflection, my hands gripping the edge of the sink so hard my knuckles turned white. My face was flushed, my eyes blazing with a mix of anger and humiliation. How dare he?

How dare he?

The dive trip wasn’t just some extracurricular activity for me. It was my chance to prove myself, to show him and everyone else that I belonged in this program. That I wasn’t just some grad student he could fuck and then discard when things got too real. It was my future, my career, and he had no right to take it away from me because he couldn’t handle the fact that I had a life outside of him.

I splashed cold water on my face, trying to calm the fire raging inside me. It didn’t work. If anything, it just pissed me off more.

I was going to find a way to talk to him. To ask why. To get my spot back—my goddamn spot. Maybe tell him not to make decisions for me. Grady’s email didn’t say he didn’t want me on the trip. Just that conditions were dangerous. How was it too dangerous for me but not him? Was Lina still going on the trip?

That thought made my blood boil. Now that he got to fuck me and satisfy his curiosity, he was ready to move on to what Lina was offering. He didn’t want me in the way. It would be just the two of them with her in a tiny bikini and him half-naked in those damn swim trunks.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to do about this, but there was no way I would sit back and let him treat me like that.