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I grabbed her, had her, and she returned to me with an easy accuracy, her body warm and that close when her lapels grazed my chest and her flow
ers touched my nose. My whole suit had smelled like her after we’d parted, and I’d left it out, still hanging there on the other side of my walk-in’s door. I told myself because I needed to get it dry-cleaned.
Unsure now as my blood heated, hovering above her as my body instinctually wanted to glide over her. I was painfully aware of how suddenly uncomfortable my pleated pants were, needing to go into the office today after my classes. I planned to work Monday through Friday, or more. Classes be damned. I was still my father’s son, more than one thing instilled in me unfortunately. Just because the firm had my name on it didn’t make it mine. It was still his, his until I took it.
That was something he’d reminded me every day before he went away, that I wasn’t entitled, nothing could be mine until I’d earned it. Took it. My father was a fan of tough love as much as making bad decisions, but even if he wasn’t, I was going to show up. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of anything else, the first to think me weak if he ever got the chance. He’d never say it, of course, too proud to put weak and his son in the same sentence, but that fact wouldn’t stop him from thinking it.
Honestly, I didn’t know why I cared and didn’t in this moment now, roses and wild flowers misted in a spring rain surrounding me. Hell, a monsoon assaulted me, as equally torrential as this woman was soft. That was Brielle Whitman-Quintero, as tough as she was pliable. She didn’t take shit, and now, I knew she was a doctor too.
My professor.
I saw that completely in her eyes, what I was to her, what she was to me. Whatever the case, I probably wasn’t supposed to have my hands on her, her body stiff, her hands stiff. She had them curled and embedded in my shirt. I believed to keep from falling.
I righted her, and she let go, backing away. She straightened her top before tugging the jacket. “Thank you.”
My response was handing her extra syllabuses, for which she thanked me too, before I pocketed my hands. “No problem.”
I was happy to help her out, see her again.
I’d really wanted to see her again.
And here she was, right in front of me. A vision to dream, a memory to a ghost. She’d been in and out of my life so quick my head spun, and I was still recovering from the whiplash. I shrugged. “So, you teach at Pembroke.”
I hadn’t asked her—obviously. In fact, we hadn’t done a whole lot of talking at all that night.
Restless fingers had Bri tucking some of that raven black behind her ear, her shrug a subtle one before giving me her back and sliding the syllabuses into her messenger bag.
“Appears so.” Laughter awkward, nervous. She shook her head. “And you’re my student.”
“Appears so.” Definitely awkward, but I didn’t laugh. I didn’t want to make her more uncomfortable than she clearly was. I made an attempt to see her eyes, but she denied me. “Though I guess I should have figured when you said you were a professor.”
Pembroke was the closest campus to Maywood Heights. I suppose she could have taught at the local community college, actually in town, but I hadn’t questioned a lot of things that night. We hadn’t talked at all, things so fast.
Did you really fuck this shit up? Again.
It seemed like it, but I wouldn’t go there. Not yet. More nervous laughter on Bri’s end before she whipped around, hands cuffing her jacket sleeves.
“But you are at least in your twenties, right? Didn’t lie to me to make yourself look cool or something?” Frantic, she flicked and weaved her fingers through her hair. “Because if you’re like eighteen or something I’m seriously about to lose my shit right now.”
She looked on the cusp of an expedited breakdown between us, my eyebrow arching slow. “I’m twenty-two.”
Though it makes sense why she asked. One of my gen-eds hadn’t transferred coming out of Brown, this typically a freshman class.
The announcement of my age didn’t seem to comfort her at all, and if anything, her laughter grew more frantic, more manic.
“Brilliant.” She rose and dropped her hands. “Anything else I shouldn’t assume about you?”
“What did you assume?”
“I don’t know. That you weren’t over a decade younger than me and my student.” She growled. “Ramses, do you realize how bad this is?”
Not really. At least, not to the degree she was taking it. I cuffed my arms too. “I wasn’t your student when we got together, Brielle.”
“Oh, yeah. You were. I just didn’t know it. That was two weeks ago, Ramses.” She held up two fingers. “Two weeks. You were obviously enrolled in my class.”
“And?”
She groaned. “And I can’t do this. I can’t. I…”
