Maybe that’s what I’ve been trying to do with my art all along. Beg for forgiveness over and over in as many languages as I can speak.
But I’ve spent so long trying not to think about my past that I can’t imagine letting it overtake me, pull me under like a tidal wave. Even now I feel like I’m drowning. Like if I opened my mouth, I’d find it full of seawater.
Art should scare you, someone told me once. Someone from an art residency back in LA whose name I can’t even remember. But their words have stitched themselves into my brain permanently.
Art should scare you.
I’m scared all right.
I haven’t told him what I did last night, and I don’t intend to. I’m used to keeping my mouth full of secrets. But something must show because a crease of concern forms between Wyatt’s brows.
“What is it?” he says. “You’re shaking.”
His hand catches my jaw, his thumb rubbing a soft, warm pattern just below my lower lip. And if I wasn’t shaking before, I sure as hell am now. That single point of contact smudges heat into my body, and a shudder unfurls down my spine.
He feels it too. He must. His eyes, initially wide with shock, have gone heavy. The dark fan of his lashes brushes against his cheeks as he draws in close, as I reach up to grasp his wrist, to keep him there.
“Careful,” he murmurs, but it’s not clear if he’s saying that to me, or to himself.
Either way, he doesn’t move. He stays right where he is with his hand on my cheek and his hips tilted in toward me. I don’t want to breathe in case it scares him off. But I couldn’t have, anyway. My chest is utterly empty, all the air squeezed out to make room for the all-consuming, the pounding need need need.
Wyatt’s thumb shifts toward my mouth, exploring the terrain of my lower lip like he still doesn’t believe he’s kissed it before.
That thumb presses in against my damp lower lip until my mouth parts, ready to let him slide his finger into my—
“Is that you, Wyatt?” a voice says from behind us, by the door.
I almost topple out of my seat, but Wyatt—thank god—is a little bit more in control of himself. He straightens so slowly, as if he wasn’t about to kiss me right then, a cool little cucumber in comparison to the way my brain has become a helpless skree of alarm bells.
“Hi, Ava,” Wyatt says, just as slowly.
Shit. I thought he had it under control. But nope. He’s only taking things slow because he’s desperately trying to figure out what to say.
“I’m surprised to see you in on a weekend,” she says.
“Haze wanted me out of the house,” Wyatt replies. “Some kind of secret cat thing.”
The moment of silence after that makes me want to curl up and hide beneath one of the desks. I still feel the phantom of Wyatt’s would-be kiss on my lips. Why couldn’t Zhu have walked in ten seconds later?
Only that would have been way worse, so. Maybe my hormonal fantasies can take a little break.
“I was about to head out,” I venture at last, because Ava and Wyatt are having some kind of silent conversation next to me, carried out in nothing but eyebrow raises and head tilts. “Um. I’ll see you in class next week, Dr. Zhu. And…um. Thank you, Wyatt. Professor Cole.”
“Wyatt,” he says.
“Wyatt.”
I can’t look Zhu in the eye as I slip past her out the door, but I can feel her watching me.
And I can tell that she knows.
19
WYATT
“What was that?” Ava says with a raised brow as soon as Ely has vanished down the hall, the far door having opened and firmly shut behind her.
“It’s not what it looked like,” I plead. “Ava. Nothing’s going on. Or I mean—well, obviously something is. But we have it under control. It won’t interfere with her work.”
I’m so stupid they should name some kind of satirical prize in my honor. If the whole plan is to hold my weaker instincts at bay and behave like a mentor for the next month or so, I’m doing a really shitty job of it.
One more month, Wyatt. One more month, and we could have done whatever we wanted, and here I am with no self-control.
Being unable to restrain myself is up there with my most loathed personality flaws of all time.
Losing control never got me anywhere good. I mean, it got me into a couple overdoses. It got me to do things for drug money that I still hate myself for.
Losing control turned my father into a monster.
I’ve built a whole life out of getting that control back and never, not once, ever, giving an inch.
Until, apparently, now.
“Wyatt,” she starts, but this is already so humiliating I want to die, so.
“Please don’t,” I say, holding up a hand before she can finish. “Seriously. I want to hide in a cave right now. Please just let me go hide in that cave.”
She’s silent for long enough that I dare to steal another glance at her face. She’s got a little quirk to the corner of her mouth, half a smile, and I have no idea how to interpret that.
“Stop whatever look that is you’re trying to give me.”
“I’m not trying to give you anything. Anyway, I think you said something about a cave you had to go hide in?”
This time I don’t let myself mess up my exit. I’m out of there before she can change her mind.
I dig my phone out of my pocket as I head for my office and tap over to the messaging app. Ely’s third on the list of most recent texts, behind Marcus and Ava but above the Uber Eats guy.
Me: I’m sorry about that
Ely: Oh don’t you start
Me: Start what?
Ely: Start pretending like you didn’t want to kiss me back there!
Me: I wasn’t going to say that.
I save the next half of that text for once I’m safely in my office, the door shut. And locked.
Even then my hands are shaking a little as I turn back to my phone, thumbs hovering over the screen for a long moment before I finally type.
Me: Because I did want to kiss you back there.
Ely replies in an actual second, so fast she must have had the response pretyped in.
Ely: Knew it.
Ely: Don’t you think maybe you should have?
I’m struggling to figure out how to respond to that when another notification pops up at the top of my screen: a message from Marcus.