I lift my phone to take a picture. “You’re part of history, my friend.”
I send the image to Olivia.
Sawyer: Looks good in the light of day.
Cherry: Better than me.
Sawyer: How are you feeling?
Cherry: Like I was in a car accident.
Fucking Adam. But she had to file reports and is waiting on the insurance company’s valuation of the damage.
Still, being there for them was the right thing to do.
I was pissed at all of them for being reckless. Was that what my father felt like with me?
I hated that I couldn’t grab her by the arms and shake her, tell her she was insane.
Kiss her to make sure she was all right.
Sawyer: Stop by after your midterm.
I haven’t seen her since I dropped them off here Saturday night to work on their tower. I need to see for myself that she’s unharmed.
Cherry: You’ll see me in class.
Sawyer: Insufficient, Miss Barclay. I’ll get lunch. With chips. We’ll eat in my office.
“Any action on your house?” Daniel asks as we head across campus, him to his office, me to mine.
I pocket my phone. “An offer came in, but we can do better.”
“But if you close during winter break, you can leave by next year. Unless you want to stay and you’re looking for excuses.”
“Of course not. The plan is to leave at the first opportunity. In six months, I’ll be building something new. Leave all this behind, go back to my life. Friends in New York.”
Strange that I don’t miss New York much.
“You want to walk away from her like nothing happened.”
No. I don’t want to walk away from her at all.
Seeing her in an accident scared the shit out of me, because it made real the possibility I could lose her.
I love having her around. I want to protect her. Be with her.
I think she wants the same thing. But I need her to admit it.
I collect my belongings from my office and head to class.
Olivia’s there, and every time I scan the students, I linger an extra beat on her. It’s instinctual, I can’t stop it.
She’s got a bruise on her face and I want to erase it.
Or kill the kid in the row behind her wearing a sling who keeps sending her looks like he’s sorry.
I grip the marker so hard it’s a wonder the thing doesn’t explode all over the whiteboard.
When I ask a question about circuits, Liv’s hand goes up, and Madison’s.
“Adam. I’ll spare you the discomfort of raising your hand, but assume you have an answer.”
He straightens in his seat, looking at his papers. “Ahh…”
“Any day now.”
“I’m not sure.”
“You want to live dangerously, incompetence isn’t the way to do it.”
I turn back to the front.
After the lecture, I’m cleaning off the whiteboard when motion at my side has me looking over.
“Are you okay?” Olivia wipes off the second board, pressing up on her toes to reach the top. “That was harsh.”
I drop my eraser and step closer to inspect her face. “This must hurt.”
“Only a little.” Her hand wraps around my wrist, and that small contact grounds me. I huff out a breath.
We’re in the middle of a classroom.
I lower my hand.
“So now you’ve seen me. Does this mean I don’t need to come to your office, Professor?” she teases.
“Not a chance.”
I watch her leave, the sway of her hips calling to me.
Yeah, I’m gone for this girl. And I need to know she feels the same.
When I get back to the department, I notice that the elevator’s operating.
About damned time things were going right around here.
“Mother trucker…” comes a female voice from the staff and faculty kitchen.
I poke my head inside the door where Betty’s wrestling with the coffee maker.
“Takedown at the ten-yard line?”
“Something like that.” She grimaces as she stabs at the “start” button. The machine offers only stubborn silence. “It probably needs cleaning.”
I wave her off and set to work.
A couple of junior faculty come in the door, groaning when they see the state of the coffee maker. “Five minutes,” Betty promises.
They retreat and I roll up the sleeves of my dress shirt.
“You’re good with your hands, Professor.” Her teasing tone makes me grin. “Oh, I know what you’re thinking. But I’m twenty years too old to find out. Fine, thirty.”
“Any man would be so lucky.”
“Charmer. It’s going to be a long day. Industry members are visiting campus. It’s been on the calendar for weeks, and the dean’s way to drum up interest in our graduates—as well as potential funding sooner.”
“He didn’t invite me to any meetings. I must be bad publicity.”
“No, he probably thinks you’d steal his attention.”
I finish my work and tell Betty to run the cycle again.
She does and the machine whirrs to life.
I roll my sleeves back down. “All this for worse coffee than the cafeteria.”
“It’s not the best but it’s what we’ve got.”
It’s what we’ve got.
I cross to the kitchen window, taking in the packs of two and three and four jacket-clad undergrads drifting across the expanse of green and paved walkways. “Some students got in trouble at Black Build this weekend.”
“I did hear about that. Most of the department heard about it,” she concedes. “There was an article in the news, and it made the campus paper too. Didn’t help they’re all sporting bruises and scrapes.”
“They crashed a car in the middle of town.”
If Olivia’s right, there was an animal running across the road. But if they’d been doing the speed limit, it could’ve been handled. Easily.
“You’re all worked up because they were your kids.”
I shake my head. “They’re not my kids.”
“They are. You get attached to them. And they fuck up,” she says. “They’re lucky to have you.”
I glance back over my shoulder. “Why’s that?”
“You show them it’s possible to grow and change at any age. This place is changing you. Like it changed your father.”
“I never saw him change. That’s why I left.”
Betty lifts a mug to her lips, sipping the coffee and considering me over the rim. “That’s what changed him.”
Before I can respond, an unwelcome shape appears at the door.
“Sawyer. We have a special guest,” the dean says, but it’s the man in a suit next to him that has my abs tightening in surprise.
“Tate.” My voice echoes in my ears. “I didn’t realize you were part of industry day.”
He clasps my hand in his. “I wasn’t but he called personally yesterday and insisted I participate. Sent a car and everything.”
What the fuck?
“He wanted to meet some of our finest students firsthand,” the dean goes on, the smugness coming off as pride. “Including yours.”