Mrs. Linden had taken care of Scottie for free. I knew it was because she was bored and lonely. She’d said she enjoyed his energy, even though I knew he had to tire her out. Mostly, I thought she did it for me.
I was, this morning aside, a good girl.
Sometimes, there was no evading what you were. I was born to be walked on—be it by a parent or a boyfriend. I could only thank God that I was too busy for a partner, because if I had one, I knew he’d dump on me too.
As it was, dealing with my mom, Scottie, and Mrs. Linden was enough to handle.
But, as a child, when I’d seen Mrs. Linden struggling up the stairs with her shopping bags, I’d helped when I could.
The day her dog, Charlie, had been put down? I’d been with her.
And these past eight or so years, when I was too young to be doing my own grocery shopping, never mind someone else’s, I’d even grabbed her food for her because the elevator was continuously broken, and the stairs were too much for her.
She was my only friend, and that friend was nearly ninety and in a hospital I didn’t know the name of.
If I wasn’t terrified for Scottie, I was terrified for Mrs. Linden. And where those two terrors dueled, there was the fear over what I’d done and what Maclean was going to say to me to worry about.
I spent most of his class avoiding those beautiful brown eyes of his. They were, I swore, as dark as molten chocolate and set in a face that would make the angels sigh. But those angels didn’t know what he was capable of.
Cutting words.
Menacing looks.
Disgusted sneers.
I wasn’t sure what I’d done to him, but ever since I’d plunked my ass in the seat in his class that first day, he’d hated me on sight.
Not only was I barely passing because his grading was impossible to predict, but because attending his classes was torture. And I knew what torture was.
Being tied to a mother who trapped you with a child she didn’t want, who delved the depths of degradation to get her fix, was misery.
Yeah, I knew what suffering was, but for three hundred and sixty minutes a week, this torment was worse.
“A story isn’t just words on a paper. If you approach any project with that in mind, you’ll get nowhere. People don’t want to read words, they need a visual representation of a world they wish they could dive into, but one they’re glad they’re safe from—”
His eyes cut to mine again, as they often did, catching the gaze I’d forgot to evade while I was mesmerized by his beauty. More often than not, he watched me. Like he thought I’d steal something. Like this morning was what he’d expected of me, and that I’d fulfilled his dire prediction of my character.
I ducked my head, letting his words spill over me like water.
He didn’t know me.
He didn’t understand what my situation was.
To him, I may have been a filthy thief, but I wasn’t.
I was a good person in a desperate situation.
My palms grew slick as I stared at the clock above the whiteboards behind Maclean.
As the minute hand approached twelve, my nausea grew to the point where I wanted to puke in my bookbag.
Only knowing that my uniform for tonight was in there stopped me.
God, I’d never felt so sick in my entire life. This was worse than when my mom had undercooked the chicken at Thanksgiving one year and I’d had salmonella—I’d thought I was dying back then. That was how bad I felt right now.
When Maclean gave us our homework, I felt the sweat beading on my face as my terror manifested itself. With shaky hands, I wrote down what I needed to read before the next class, and as the rows of seats slowly emptied, I slunk down into the chair and waited.
And waited.
And waited for everyone to leave.
Of course, Maclean didn’t.
Did he think I’d run off? That I was going to avoid him?
I saw the bastard three times a week, and apparently, he visited the coffee shop where I worked—how had I only just realized that? But, with him at school and potentially at work too, how was I supposed to avoid him?
“My office,” he ordered grimly, that steel-like jaw clenching as he stared at me like he hated me.
Like I was his worst enemy.
I was nobody.
I was just some girl who’d barely made it into this college, who’d only done so by working her ass off at high school, and who was in this place from a scholarship.
I didn’t deserve to be loathed.
I really, truly didn’t.
And it wasn’t even related to this morning. That was the kicker. He’d judged me that first morning I’d come to class, and had condemned me ever since.
Inhaling a shaky breath, I got to my feet and hauled my book bag over my shoulders. It bulged with all the clothes inside it, and wouldn’t you know?
That split seam I’d been worrying over for a month?
It just happened to burst open right at the moment I made it to the stairs.
As my uniforms dropped to the ground, my books too, eliciting echoing thuds, a deep, resonant silence filled the lecture hall.
I stared down at the ground and wanted to bawl my eyes out. Seriously, I’d never wanted to cry so damn hard in my life, and this was a day for tears. A day for misery.
My bottom lip wobbled as I got to my knees and began collecting things. When I heard footsteps, I shuddered and, keeping my head bowed, carried on methodically folding clothes and gathering books together.
When brown Oxfords peeped into my line of sight, I gnawed my bottom lip and huskily whispered, “Sorry.”
He didn’t say, ‘Don’t be. It’s not your mistake.’
Didn’t tell me I had nothing to apologize for—it wasn’t like I’d wanted my damn bag to break at that moment, was it?
Instead, he just stood there.
Looming over me.
I could feel his eyes on me, crawling over my body and finding me wanting.
I’d never felt so small in all my life. So humiliated and mortified to be at this man’s feet, picking up my crappy clothes, stuffing them into a crappy book bag, and smelling of the cinnamon and coffee from the cafe.
I was everything he wasn’t, and I’d never felt that more keenly than I did now.
The only thing that could have made this more unbearable was if I allowed my rumbling stomach free rein. Puking over his three hundred-dollar shoes would really set the tone for our meeting, that was for sure.
With my shit stuffed into the open sack, I tipped it so the weight rested against the strong half of the bag, and hugged it to me to keep it upright. When I got to my feet, I wobbled a little as all the blood rushed to my head.
Dizziness hit me, but any color that came into my cheeks disappeared when I saw the look in his eyes.
“Why do you hate me?”
The words were whispered, stolen from me by circumstance rather than intention.
“I don’t care enough about you to hate you, Phoebe,” he replied calmly, as though his words weren’t like a knife to the belly.
If anyone knew the power of words, it was him.
How such a beautiful mouth could say such mean things, I didn’t know.
“Now, if you’re done making a spectacle of yourself, my office. Now.” He didn’t wait for me to respond, instead he turned on his heel and began his descent to the classroom desk.
After he gathered his things together in an elegant attaché case, he began to move toward the door and I, like the beetle I was to him, scurried in his wake.