“What’s going on?” I asked to fill the silence.
She got back to her feet and began to pace. “I’ve been thinking about this for a long time and I don’t exactly know where to start.”
Much as I wanted to tell her to cut the shit and spit it out, I kept silent as she fidgeted and paced.
“I guess I should start at the beginning.” She spun around and her eyes flashed. “You’re a jerk.”
My brows lifted. That certainly wasn’t what I was expecting her to say.
“You’re a jerk. And you drive me crazy more often than not. I know we spend just as much time arguing as we do having regular conversation. I’ve never been good at the relationship thing, it's why I’ve been single most of my life, and why I was a virgin at twenty-two. I’ve never met a man who made me want to stop being alone. It’s safe that way. I know what to expect, how to be. I’m used to control. If my mother isn’t dictating how my life should be, then I’m planning every second to death, so I’m not caught off guard.”
Her hands fisted at her side, she looked a bit like an avenging angel. “But I didn’t plan you. You were unexpected. Every minute I’m with you, I feel alive. Being with you makes me feel explosive. And it was scary at first how strong those feelings were. And a part of me hated you were the one who caused them.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but she shot me a look that had me slamming it shut again.
“Aside from Ember and Charlie, you are the only other person in my life who takes my thoughts, dreams, and opinions seriously. I think you push me because you know it’s the only time I show you the real me, instead of the person programmed to mimic the viewpoints of everyone else around me.”
She took a step closer, her hands coming to my chest. My whole body was wire-tight. “You’re a jerk,” she said softly, ”but I love you, anyway.”
Then she kissed me. I was so stunned, all I could do was hold on.
She tasted like salvation, and I was a sinner of the worst sort.
Then my office door flew open and Jessica stood in the doorway behind a gaping Professor Michaels.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Layla
I don’t know what Dash said to his boss as I waited in the hallway next to the smirking woman. She was lucky I never resorted to physical violence, because I’d never wanted to deck someone so much in my life.
But I knew it wasn’t really her fault. Spiteful bitch she may be, but I’d made the choice to see him. If anyone was going to be punished here, it should be me.
There hadn’t been a pause for me to speak with Dash, to decide what our story was, how we were going to protect—not only my standing in his class—but his job, too. His reputation.
There hadn’t been a moment for me to apologize. This was all my fault. His grandmother had been right about that. If I’d kept my mouth shut, stayed away, none of this would be happening. Part of me knew that wasn’t true, but the part that was still the vulnerable girl at graduation was afraid she was right.
Speaking of his grandmother, I still hadn’t told him about what happened. How had everything spiraled so fantastically out of control?
I thought I’d been doing the right thing by risking it all and letting him know how I felt.
The thing with risking it all is that you have to be willing to make the gamble…and lose.
I chewed on my thumbnail and watched the shadows on the other side of the misted glass moving around. Above the din of the students milling around the hallway and the riotous conversation, I could hear the professor’s raised voice and Dash’s calm, soothing baritone.
Had it been worth it?
I could hear my mother’s snotty voice in my head, judging me, criticizing as she often did. She’d find out soon enough, but I already knew what she was going to say. That I’d been stupid to bet everything on a man. That my future was worth more than any man, none of them could be trusted, and I was just like every other idiot girl who gave up her life for a roll in the sheets.
For so long, I’d listened to her dictate like she knew what she was talking about. But one thing I’d realized about growing up was, if there was a universal truth, it was that no one knew what they were doing. We were all like balls in an arcade game crashing around, pinging off the walls, hoping we’d win, but not really knowing how.
God, I guess I was more like her than I thought possible. I tried to control everyone in my little circle, as though it had any bearing on the outcome. In my effort to control my relationship with Dash to circumvent getting caught, what had happened?
We’d been caught.
I used to think nothing was worth throwing away my future. Like a bull, I kept my head down, forging a path from grade school to graduation, not letting anything stop me. Stubborn, as Dash would say. Until now, I would have argued with him, naturally, but deep down, I would have known he was right. Like he’d been right about so many things.
The door opened and I straightened, the breath immediately wheezing out of my chest at the sight of Dash appearing in the doorway. Jessica straightened too, and while she’d looked bored and smug while we’d waited, her face brightened when he walked out. He didn’t even spare her a glance, which caused her to deflate.
Professor Michaels, a stern man in his mid-fifties with a white fluff of hair and immaculately trimmed goatee, hovered in the doorway. He didn’t say anything when Dash came to my side, but there was a disapproving frown on his lips.
That didn’t bode well.
“Let’s get out of here,” Dash said, and took my hand.
We left Jessica and the professor staring after us—or at least—I thought we did.
I didn’t look back to find out.
Dash didn’t speak all the way back to the apartment. I was too dumbstruck to say anything. My hands were clammy and knotted in my lap the whole drive. Fear clawed at my throat, and a cold sweat dripped down my spine.
The elevator ride up to my floor was silent. Dash seemed to vibrate with tension. I wasn’t sure if he was dropping me off, and never going to speak to me again, or if he was just waiting until we had some privacy before giving me a thorough tongue-lashing. I almost wished he would. Part of me felt like I deserved it.
My hands trembled as I unlocked my door and let him inside. It felt like years had passed since we spoke in his office when, after confirming with a glance at the clock on my microwave, it had been a little over an hour.
“Can I use your bathroom?” Dash asked when he’d stepped inside behind me.
“O-of course.”
I pushed my hands through my hair and made my way to the kitchen to make some coffee to give myself something to do to keep busy. As I was pouring two mugs, Dash appeared in the hallway. I froze with the mugs in my hands.
God, why did he have to be so beautiful?
It really wasn’t fair.
His hair was slightly messy where he must have run his hands through it a thousand times. He tended to do that when he was deep in thought. His brilliant green eyes were bloodshot, probably from the stress and rubbing them too much. Maybe he was having as much trouble sleeping as I was. He wore a flannel shirt tucked into dark jeans, but he’d missed a button somewhere so it was slightly lopsided, which made me smile. Even that little imperfection didn’t take away from how good he looked.
“Coffee?” I asked when the moment stretched on too long.
He nodded. “Thanks.”
We sipped in silence until he sighed, “What a day.”
“I’ll say,” I murmured, then mustered up my nerve. “Did he fire you?”
Dash didn’t seem shocked by my question. He merely sipped his coffee as he gathered his thoughts. “I’m not sure yet. There’s going to be some sort of informal investigation. They’re going to interview a couple people, check our correspondence on the university email, your grades, and all that to see if you were given any sort of preferential treatment. They’ll probably call you for an interview, too, to make sure I didn’t coerce or in
timidate you into giving me sexual favors in return for better grades.”
I sputtered into my coffee. “Well, I guess they have to be fair. I should have thought of that, though.” That made Dash smile, but I still felt lousy. “I’m sorry. I never should have come to you today. It was a bad move on my part. If I’d kept to the plan, none of this would have happened.”
Dash sat his empty cup on the countertop and pulled me into his arms. “I’m glad you did. I was dying not talking to you. Fuck the consequences. We’ll deal with them.”
I yawned into his chest, soothed by the warm, musky scent of him. “I know we need to talk about this, and there’s a lot I still have to say, but I’m pretty worn out and I haven’t slept well since you stayed the night here. What do you think about a nap?”
“I’d say you’re speaking my language.”
I knew it wouldn’t take my mother long to stick her nose in my business. I wasn’t surprised when, later that night, she knocked twice at my door before inserting the key I certainly didn’t authorize her to have and barreling through looking like an Amazon on a mission. Thank God we were both dressed and had fallen asleep on the couch after our short conversation.
“Mom!” I exclaimed as we sat up. Dash stayed close with a hand protectively on my waist. “How did you get in?”
She glared at the space between Dash and me before saying, “I have a key. Are you going to explain why I received a call from Elizabeth Hampton, asking me to control my daughter?”
My face burned. “Why do you have a key to my apartment?”
Mom dismissed my words with a flick of her handbag and scoffed. “I pay for this apartment, in case you’ve forgotten. Of course I have a key.”
“Mom, you can’t just burst in here like this. You may be paying for the apartment, but it’s my house. You could at least call before you came over.”
“Layla Lucille you do not talk to me like that. I knew there was something going on. You haven’t been yourself for months. First it was the internship, then it was dodging my calls. It’s because of this boy, isn’t it?”
“Mrs. Tate, Layla is a great girl she—”
Mom looked at him with a freezing glare that could have flayed skin with its intensity alone. “Don’t you tell me about my daughter. Everything was going on just fine until you came along and preyed on her. You should be ashamed of yourself. If your grandmother hadn’t already reported you to the Dean, I would have done it myself.”
I jumped to my feet. “He didn’t prey on me, Mom. In case you’ve forgotten, I’ve known Dash my whole life. If anyone preyed on anyone, I preyed on him.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I know what his kind is like. Men with power who target young, innocent girls. Your father was the same way, and I refuse to let it happen to you.”
“It’s not up to you, Mom. Not every man is like Dad. I’m not going to make the same mistakes you made. I’m going to make new ones. Big ones. But it’s my life. I should be allowed to make them. I’m tired of you thinking you can control everything about me, down to the career I pick.”
“Not this again. I’m just trying to do what’s best for you. Teachers make peanuts. Finance is a stable career.”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I’d like you to leave.”
Mom looked like I’d slapped her. “You can’t be serious.”
“I think we’ll talk about this when you’re ready to have a mature conversation and treat me like an adult. That includes requesting to speak to me, not barging into my house. It means treating my opinions and desires as equally important. I’m not yours to treat like a puppet, Mom. I’m a person with my own dreams. My own visions for my life. If you can’t respect that, then maybe we need to reevaluate our relationship.”
There was a long tense silence. Mom’s shoulders heaved as she breathed heavily. Her eyes were bright with a fury I’d never seen before. Then again, I’d never stood up to her before, either. For a moment, I was afraid she was going to throw a tantrum like a toddler right there in my living room, but she merely shouldered her bag and gave me a disdainful look. “You are making a mistake. The difference is, I won’t be there to correct it when it blows up in your face.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” I said to her retreating back.
“Not as sorry as I am,” she said. She took two steps through the doorway, paused, and then turned back. My heart fell to my feet. I braced before she spoke in a low, guttural voice. “I always knew you were a stupid girl, but I tried my hardest to do what I could to make you successful in this world. I gave you every opportunity and in return, you practically spit them back in my face. When I heard Elizabeth Hampton offered you a fortune to walk away for this boy, I thought ‘Finally, Layla will see some sense.’ Money like that would have taken you much farther than a man ever could. But no. You were too stupid to know a good thing when it hit you in the face.”
With that little bomb deployed, she spun around and disappeared through the door.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Dash
It took a few heartrending moments for the gravity of Layla’s mother’s words to penetrate. ‘Offered you a fortune’ kept repeating in my head like a battle cry. My grandmother, my family, bribed Layla. I should have been surprised, but the only emotion I could muster was disappointment, which battled with a numbness I couldn’t quite shake.
I couldn’t look at Layla while the information sank in, afraid to see the expression on her face. Was it true? One glance at her would tell me the answer.
But I didn’t even need that.
Her silence told me everything I needed to know.
When I found my voice, I asked, “Is it true?” while staring at the plush rug beneath my feet. My head felt too heavy for my neck to lift. “Is what your mother said—is it true?”
Layla’s sniffles were an arrow straight to my heart, but I held myself away from her, afraid if I looked, I’d shatter. After a moment, she sighed heavily, and said, “I was going to tell you.”
I surged to my feet, but there was nowhere to go. I rounded on her. “Why didn’t you tell me? When did this happen? What exactly did she say to you?”
She studied her feet, the top of her messy bun coming undone, tendrils of hair framing her ghost-white cheeks. “I didn’t tell you because I knew it would hurt you. You love your family. I didn’t want to be the one to break your heart. I thought—if we didn’t work out—it wouldn’t matter anyway. You would never find out. If we did, then I’d cross that bridge when I figured out what I was going to do about us.”
“When?” I demanded in a bark that caused her to flinch.
“After the gala, I think. She came to me when I was doing my student teaching and pulled me out of class.” Layla shuddered as she spoke. It pissed me off that I was too angry to comfort her. It pissed me off that I wanted to comfort her. It pissed me off that so soon after she admitted how she felt, I was being confronted with this shit. “She told me you deserved better and if I knew what was good for me, I’d take the money and keep my mouth shut.”
“Why would you tell me you loved me now?” I thought of all the women who’d chased me because of my family. The ones who’d only cared about my money or my looks. Layla wasn’t like that. She was headstrong, stubborn as an ox, and the smartest woman I knew. She wouldn’t use me that way.
But there was an insidious fear inside of me that slithered and coiled like a snake. It whispered fuel into the doubts that sprang free. If your own family thought they could buy your future, why not the woman who cared about you?
At this, her head snapped up, eyes flashing like lightning. “Because I do love you.”
It hurt to hear the words. If my own family could treat me like a commodity, what was stopping her from doing the same thing? “And yet you took the money. How much was I worth to you, Layla?”
My words shocked her to silence and she gaped at me, her previously pale cheeks flooding with color. She jumped to her feet snarling, “
How could you ever think I would do something like that?”
“Are you saying you didn’t?”
She glared and bared her teeth. “Of course not. What kind of person do you think I am?” She held up a hand to stop my answer. “You know what? Don’t answer that. I think it would be insulting to both of us.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? Were you going to change your mind?” I don’t know why I said it, don’t know where the words came from, but they were out before I could take them back. It wasn’t really her I was angry with, but I didn’t want to believe the alternative.
“Now you really are being insulting. You need to go before I say something we’ll both regret.”
“Layla.” I reached out for her, already regretting how badly this had gone, but she brushed my hands away.
“I think now is probably a good time for us to take a breather. We’ll deal with the fallout from what happened today and then—I don’t—I don’t know.”
Layla wrapped her arms around her waist, but flinched when I tried to step closer. My hands dropped to my side in defeat. How had we gotten here?
There wasn’t anything else I could say.
So I left.
I drove around for an indeterminable amount of time, taking backstreets and cutoffs until I was riding on a red dirt road in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t want to go home, it was too close to Layla, too tempting. My temper had already gotten the best of me, and she didn’t deserve it. The people who did, I was terrified to confront.
My grandfather, he’d always been a cold, hard man. It was surprising my dad had ever grown up to be the kind, warm man he was with parents like his. I couldn’t go to my grandparents’ house, not yet. First, I needed to know if my parents had a part in this. Mom never would have gone along with it, but Dad—he didn’t really grow a spine until he met her. Had he knuckled under to grandmother’s machinations? I didn’t want to think so, but I had to know.
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