Page 64 of Professor


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I licked my lips, still tasting her there. “I won’t let you do that.”

“I’m not asking your permission!”

“You will not drop of your graduate program for me,” I seethed, unable to leash my sudden anger. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, Whitney. I won’t let you. I don’t care if it means you and I can’t be together. I won’t let you give up everything you’ve worked for, for me. I won’t. You’re the only thing that’s ever felt right to me. I think about you constantly. You’re the only thing on my mind, but I can’t—I can’t let you do this. I won’t let you give up your life to be with me. I can’t.”

I repeated the words over and over. I can’t. I won’t. You can’t. You won’t.

All the while, her eyes burned with tears as she looked up at me. I could practically hear her heart breaking into pieces as I continued, “The way I feel about you hasn’t changed.”

“Don’t say that to me.”

“It’s true.”

“Don’t,” she whispered, reaching up to wipe her tears. “It’s fine. I get it.”

“What exactly do you get?” I asked through gritted teeth.

“That you and I can’t do this. You said it yourself, multiple times. I get it. There’s too much on the line.”

I could tell she was just telling me what I wanted to hear.

“It’s over then, isn’t it?” she said absently, mostly to herself.

“Whitney, I want you to know that the way I feel about you is the reason we have to stop seeing each other.”

“Mm-hmm,” she hummed, adjusting the weight of her book bag. “I’ll see you around.” She turned, but I reached out and took her by the arm. “Let me go, Professor. There’s nothing left to say.”

Tell her you love her, you damned idiot.

I let her go, and she walked away, her figure disappearing beneath the shadow of the trees.

“I’m sorry, Whitney,” I said. She couldn’t hear me. It didn’t matter, anyway. Nothing I could do or say after this would matter.

I should never have given in to these feelings, but it was too late.

I’d lost her.

And I knew it was best for both of us, which is what hurt the most.

Chapter 27

Whitney

THE COMMON AREA IN my apartment building was snug and warm because of an ancient fireplace along the far wall of the room. A gas insert kept the place nice and toasty without the risk of the graduate students who lived on campus going up in flames, and thankfully, there weren’t many students living there, because over the past two weeks I found myself alone more often than not.

There was a single week of class left until winter break. The gap between semesters was a long one, a whole month, stretching from a week before Christmas to mid-January.

I snuggled deeper into the blanket I’d wrapped myself in before my leaving my room and tucked my knees to my chest, watching the gas-lit flames dance in strange shades of blue and pale gold.

Professor Ellis’s class had been my biggest challenge this past semester. His course work had been exceedingly intense, as had his mid-term and final. Now that I’d finished his class, I didn’t have much to do but thumb through my textbooks for my fine arts classes and try not to think about him.

I had one final left. Then I could close the chapter on this semester and spend a month forgetting about my tryst with the professor who would likely plague my dreams for the rest of my life.

Morning sunlight poured through the frosted windows as the sun came up, peeking through thick clouds. Like clockwork, the house began to wake up all around me, and hurried footsteps mingled with soft voices broke the sleepy silence I’d spent the early hours of the morning soaking in.

No one even looked in my direction as they left the building. No one had time to stop and chat. No, it was the last Thursday of the semester, and two days from now, the campus would be practically empty.

“What’re you doing down here by yourself?” Jessica came to a halt, her backpack slung over one shoulder. She looked ruffled, her hair tied in a messy bun on the top of her head. She glanced at her phone before rounding the couch and sitting down beside me and grabbing at the throw pillows separating us. “Have you been down here all night?”

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