When I look back, that desperation really messed me up. But I was only eighteen. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. Eighteen and angry with my father for making it obvious he was disappointed with me.
On some weird, subconscious level, I suspect the fact Professor Douchebag taught at the same collage as Dad was an added bonus.
Whatever the reasons, I fell hard. Took out my heart – that moronic organ I’d spent eighteen years guarding like it was the One Ring – and gave it to him.
He took it. And for ever so long I was happy. Why wouldn’t I be? He worshipped me. Adored me. Spent long hours exploring my body with his hands and lips and tongue. Made me feel normal. Like a real girl, not the defective one I’d grown up believing I was.
I should have wised up to the fact he didn’t consider my heart as precious as I did when it became clear we were never to be seen in public together in any capacity other than that of student/teacher.
But I was in awe of this intellectual, sexy, popular god with more than one New York Times Bestselling art book to his name. I was in love with him.
Love is stupid.
And it makes you blind, which is not ideal when you’re already damn near completely deaf. Functioning on three senses is tricky at best.
Ending it hurt more than it should have, for a variety of reasons. But the thing with Professor Douchebag? He figured out very quickly he’d got under my skin. And for every No, I’m over you text I sent in reply to his I need to see you now texts, there were shamefully just as many Okay, I’m coming ones.
Under my skin. Didn’t matter what I did to try and exorcise him, he was under there. And when we were alone together at his place, or in his car, or his office . . . when he was touching me, looking at me, listening to me . . . I forgot how the us that existed behind closed doors wasn’t the us I wanted beyond them.
So when I got the professor’s text asking me to come to his place, as I was sitting on my bed with the knowledge Caden O’Dae was once again gone from my life, I went.
Was it self-punishment for refusing to acknowledge that Caden O’Dae was the first guy to ever make me feel like my life was actually fine the way I was living it? I don’t know.
I still don’t.
Thankfully, I stopped myself from doing something completely stupid and drove away from Professor Douchebag’s place before I could get out of the car.
I went to a friend’s house and we got drunk on tequila, and watched Daredevil on Netflix, and while Charlie Cox beat up bad guys with brooding, angst-ridden intensity I was wondering if maybe this time, this time, Professor Douchebag was going to take me out for dinner in public, hold my hand in public, say he was wrong for breaking my heart. Apologize for hurting me . . .
And then it wasn’t the professor I was thinking about but Caden. Caden and sock puppets, and his laugh, his grin, his eyes. Caden and his ability to make me forget I was defective. His ability to make me realize when I did remember, that it was okay . . .
His ability to make me smile . . .
I passed out before the last episode of Season One began. My friend let me crash on the couch, which was a good thing. I couldn’t have faced whatever disappointment I’d find in Dad’s eyes if I went home, and if I’d gone to Amanda and Brendon’s I would have told my sister about everything and I wasn’t ready to deal with that either.
Being messed up about who you are and what you want is really messed up.
Caden and I hadn’t spoken or been in contact since the Thor sock-puppet incident. I’d seen what he was up to on Facebook, of course. And Instagram, where he posts pics of him and the animals he cares for at the RSPCA on the weekends (the RSPCA – the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals – is the Australian equivalent of the ASPCA). Facebook is mainly dedicated to his social life.
Most of his Facebook posts involve him and his university friends being twentysomething-year-old students doing the kind of things twentysomething-year-old students do. There are lots of images of him and his friends in crazy costumes no doubt for crazy college parties. Lately, there have been a few posts involving the celebrity veterinarian he’s interning for in Australia.
I’m not jealous. Honest. It means nothing to me that she’s tall, blonde and stunning, with teeth so white my brain hurts. It really doesn’t. But seriously, people were going to talk soon if he wasn’t careful. I mean she’s older than him for starters. And she tags him all the time. And you should see the way she leans into him in all the photos she has posted on—
“. . . incoming flight . . . delayed.”
I blinked, frowning at the crowded airport around me. What was that announcement?
The noise of the place – an incomprehensible, muffled cacophony that grated on my senses and made my head buzz – seemed to swell around me. Because I was grumpy, I hadn’t bothered to charge the battery of my hearing aid, which meant it was just another thing I was carrying around that I didn’t need. I rarely wore it, because it irritated the hell out of me. Noises were either too loud when I wore it or too confusing, and the second people saw it they treated me differently.
So no hearing aid, just a lot of noise in my head.
And now an announcement I’m almost certain was about an incoming flight from Melbourne, but because I couldn’t hear it clearly I could have been completely wrong.
That happens. More than I like, unfortunately. There are ways around it, of course. Services provided for the “hearing impaired” (I don’t know why, but that term grates on me just as much as the noise of a crowd). All I needed to do was seek out one of those services and problem fixed. Or do something as simple as go check the arrivals board again.
I didn’t do either. Common sense and I weren’t on speaking terms at that point in time.
Instead, I held my ground, glared at the flow of tired-looking people ambling into the arrivals section, and waited until Caden came into my line of sight.
He didn’t.
Instead, someone else did. Someone I did not want to see.
“Shit,” I muttered, turning away.
But not before Professor Douchebag saw me. Not before he smiled at me.
Shit.
And as much as I hated the fact, my throat grew tight and my belly fluttered.
Shit. Again. Times three. God, where was Caden O’Dae when I needed him?
Caden
What was a good Aussie boy like me doing falling in love with a prickly, feisty, snarky American girl, you ask?
Good question.
The answer? Hmmm . . . not sure if there is a good answer. Just a brutally honest one. And in love – and war – brutal honesty is paramount.
The second I saw Chase Sinclair I fell in love with her.
I’m not embarrassed to admit it. Okay, I didn’t admit it to anyone but myself, and begrudgingly to start with. I wasn’t in the market for the love of my life, and if I had been, I’m one hundred percent certain I wouldn’t have been looking for an American girl who seemed convinced I was trying to kill her sick nephew with the sock puppet I’d made for him. But the heart wants what the heart wants, as the saying goes, and the moment I laid eyes on Chase my heart wanted her. It was only later the logical problems of that love sank in. Things like her being in the Northern Hemisphere, and me being in the Southern Hemisphere. Things like me being twelve months away from finishing my doctorate at the top of my class in Veterinary Medicine at Melbourne University. Things like the fact I was an intern for Australia’s most distinguished and respected vet, with the offer of joining her practice when I finished my studies.