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“Pah-lease, Matty.” I could hear her eye roll. While only four years younger than me, she acted a hell of a lot like a teenager in many ways, language included. “Your down-in-the-dumps voice wouldn’t change overnight unless some woman swept into your life and shook shit up.”
Bracing myself, I spoke the truth that might shake her up a bit, but I wasn’t going to beat around the bush. “He’s one of my students.”
That got her tongue.
“Alessia?” I finally checked in to make sure the call hadn’t dropped.
“Explain,” she ordered in her usually bossy manner, and I didn’t catch a hint of what she might be thinking about the bomb I’d dropped.
Wariness tightened my shoulders.
“His name is Sean. He’s a first year student—and yes, I’ve recently discovered I’m bi. Or demi. Not sure which, really, and I can’t say I care about labels all that much.”
“Sean-sexual.” She snickered with a teasing lilt to her voice that brought my smile back firmly into place and relaxed my tensed muscles.
Of all my family, I’d held hope she would be the one to not frown upon my straying off the straight and narrow.
“Is he hot?”
“More than the sun,” I admitted.
“Someone’s got it bad.” She had no idea. “Send me a pic. I gotta see the guy my big brother fell for.”
“How’s Claire?” I asked about my niece.
“Nuh uh! No changing the subject! Tell me all about this younger man—I’m assuming you’re robbing the cradle if he’s your student?”
“Fourteen years difference.”
“Oomph.” She snorted as though I’d knocked the wind out of her sails. “He’s a baby. Mom’s gonna love him.”
She would—if she could accept the fact he wouldn’t be the woman she’d been hoping for my future.
I kept to the facts but filled my sister in on what had transpired since Sean had first walked into my classroom. He’d spun my world off its axis, casting me once more into the blinding radiance of the living. When with him, the sense of emptiness that had plagued me since Katie’s death disappeared.
“He sounds lovely, Matty—truly.”
He was, and I would count down the days until the semester ended while trying to keep my hands to myself in the meantime.
“What’s the policy on fraternizing with students though?” Of course, my lawyer sister would think to question me on that subject.
Unease weaseled its way back into my stomach, clenching it tight. “Doing so could mean my job if we’re caught.”
“Fuck—Matty, please tell me you’re being smart about this.”
That was the problem though. Sean made me feel…stupidly unable to control myself. The need he exuded, even beyond the physical, called out to me in many aspects. It went deeper on almost a soul-ish level where two people bonded together without sex.
“I’m trying,” I stated quietly, all too aware of my weakness. Sean and I had to avoid one another while on campus, but outside the college would be just as dangerous if we were seen in public. Sneaking around would be an option, sure, but would the anxiety make his stress worse? Would it put me on edge until I too suffered emotionally as he did with the mental load he carried?
I’d set the boundary, and I needed to hold firm for the next six weeks.
“How’s my little pumpkin?” I asked since time ran short, and I didn’t want to talk about myself the entire time I managed to keep Alessia on the phone.
“Claire-bear is still a pain in my ass and the light of my life.”
I snickered. While Sean was quite a bit older than my only niece, I could appreciate the contradicting statement.
“Seriously though,” Alessia said, her tone calm after attempting to make me laugh with stories of her four-year-old, “be careful. Your job is more important than climbing aboard his dick or giving him yours.”
