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Mostly because I hadn’t wanted to.
A huge fucking mistake. Especially after the last class. I was almost terrified to see her this week, worried that she might show up in another of those short, tight dresses.
Fortunately, she stepped through the door in a pair of jeans and a sweater instead.
Unfortunately, Carver was right behind her, handing her some sort of drink. “You owe me,” he told her, his tone teasing. “Carrying an iced mocha across campus in this chilly weather wasn’t fun.”
She laughed. “I’ll make it up to you.”
“You will,” he agreed, settling beside her in the second row, as usual.
It was on the tip of my tongue to separate them, but I didn’t have a valid excuse as to why I would separate them. Other than to play the protective-big-brother card.
Does this little dick even know what I am to her?
I suspected he didn’t, or he wouldn’t be openly eye-fucking her in every class.
Why didn’t she tell him about me? I wondered, my brow threatening to furrow. Is she protecting me? Protecting herself? Does she not really see me as a big brother to her?
That last thought stung a bit.
Of course, I deserved it after basically ignoring her all semester. I’d even gone as far as to not message her on her birthday—something I did religiously every year.
But she was my student now, and it felt awkward crossing that personal line.
Which would make it weird now for me to tell Carver to go sit in the hall instead of next to her.
Grinding my teeth, I pushed the thoughts away and focused on the lecture ahead instead.
Somehow, I managed to deliver it without once looking at Jenica. It helped that she was properly covered. Yet I felt a niggling of guilt when she silently left after class.
I’d placed feedback notes from last week’s assignment on my table for everyone to pick up.
She hadn’t even bothered to collect hers.
Probably because she assumed I didn’t have anything for her.
I sighed. This was not working.
After class, I sent an email to her school account and attached the feedback. It was all favorable because she’d slayed her presentation. Which naturally made it that much harder to grade her. I felt like I had to be harder on her because of our history, yet I couldn’t find a lot to critique.
She responded around midnight with a mere “Thanks.”
I glared at the message.
That’s it? That’s all you have to say?
It’d taken me all of last week to figure out how to grade her, and she replied with a single word? Un-fucking-believable.
I grabbed a bottle of bourbon from the liquor cabinet in my kitchen and poured myself a healthy glass of it.
Then I downed the contents in a few gulps and poured another one before taking in the foggy night view from my floor-to-ceiling windows.
Beyond it was a view of the mountains overlooking Portland. Which I would have enjoyed seeing if it weren’t for the perpetual clouds that seemed to hug the skies over this part of the country.
A very different experience from my New York City home. I’d purchased a condo in Manhattan last year, wanting to be closer to the Wakefield Pharmaceutical headquarters. It was a two-bedroom, which would seem modest here, yet fit for a king there.
It was a bit of an overindulgence on my part, but I’d worked hard, and the company paid me well.
