by Blaire Drake
Fuck that.
I was done moping and wallowing in my own self-loathing and guilt. I’d been holding on to this knowledge for days, and what had I done with it? Nothing. I’d just continued on pretending like I didn’t know and letting him manipulate me.
Fuck it. Not anymore. No way. That dumbass agreement might have had me pegged as his personal whore, but that was sexually. Not emotionally.
Emotionally¸ I was still Darcy fucking Hamilton. And Professor Jordan Keaton was about to find that out.
I grabbed my keys and my phone and slipped my shoes on. I grabbed a jacket for good measure and put it on as I ran downstairs. I managed to slip out of the house without anyone stopping me and jumped into my car. Nerves bundled together in my stomach as I drove away.
I should’ve turned around. This was insane.
What if he wasn’t alone?
What if he was home but his wife was there?
What if she had no idea about what he did when she wasn’t around?
What if she did know and it was an open marriage? What if I was cutting down the boundaries they’d set by showing up?
I should have definitely turned around. I should have gone home and made plans to talk to him tomorrow after class. That would’ve be the smart idea, wouldn’t it? Yes. It would have.
Which is obviously why I didn’t turn around and, instead, two minutes later, found myself outside his house. I stopped at the end of his drive and tapped my fingers against the steering wheel. Despite the trees, I had a clear view up the driveway, and the only car parked was his own. I knew that that didn’t mean anything, but I bit the inside of my cheek anyway.
My phone buzzed in the center console. My teeth moved from my cheek to my lip, and I nibbled my way along my lower lip. I needed to leave. Right that second. I reached for the key in the ignition but pulled my hand back a second later. Then did it again.
Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat.
Two knocks at my passenger’s side window made me jump. I screamed, hitting my hand on the steering wheel and my head on the side of my car. Ouch. Ouch.
I recognized his laugh before I saw him. Jordan was bending down at the side of my car, his face creased with his laughter. I rubbed my head with one hand and hit the button to roll my window down with the other.
“What the hell!”
He was still laughing as he rested his forearms on the door. “Sorry. I thought you knew I was here.”
I shook my head. “I think I just gave myself a concussion.”
“Don’t worry. I think you have enough brain cells that you could stand to lose one or two. Or ten.”
I thought that was a compliment. “Thanks. I think.”
“You’re welcome.” He half smiled. “Is there a reason you’re doing the hokey-pokey in your car, outside my house?”
I opened my mouth and rapidly closed it again. There was something to be said for being caught, huh? Now, I had maybe sixty seconds to come up with a believable excuse. All I had was, “Um.” Unfortunately, that’s exactly what I said. Just, “Um.”
“Um? Very explanatory.”
“Um…” I cleared my throat. “I was passing by and my car broke down?”
“Really.”
“No.”
“If you were in class, I’d have thrown you out.”
“You can still do that. I can go.” I reached for the keys again, but he stretched his arm inside and touched my shoulder.
“Darcy.”
“Fine. I came here to talk to you.”
His eyebrows shot up, and he scratched his stubbly jaw. “So talk.”
“Can we not talk inside?”
“Are you wearing a dress that actually covers your ass today?”
“I’m wearing pants,” I told him, getting out of the car. “Don’t worry. If I had come here with the intention for you to fuck me every way imaginable, you’d know it.”
He snatched his arm around my waist and slammed my door behind me. Air rushed out of my lungs as our bodies collided, and I flattened my hand against his toned chest. Slowly, I lifted my eyes from his neck to his face. My gaze stopped at his mouth.
I want to kiss him.
It was a startling realization, one that came at me like a freshly pitched baseball thrown with the intention of striking the batter out.
I wanted to kiss him, wanted to see if he tasted how I remembered. If he tasted like coffee or whiskey, and if the underlying hint of chocolate would tease me. I wanted to feel the silky-smooth brush of his lips as they pressed against mine.
It was a foreign feeling and definitely unwelcome.
“Sweet thing,” Jordan murmured, his mouth ghosting across my earlobe. “Doesn’t matter if you came here with the intention for that or not. As long as you’re willing, it’d hardly stop me.”
My heart thudded with his words as desire pooled between my legs. No—I wasn’t willing. But then I was. And I wasn’t. Then I was.
“I came to talk,” I managed to force out. My voice was steady and much more confident than I felt in this moment.
I needed to get it together—stat. I couldn’t keep this inside any longer.
I didn’t know whether he’d sensed the change in my demeanor or not, but he released me and turned to the house.
“Then come in.” He led me up the driveway.
It seemed ten times longer while walking it. The gravel crunched beneath my feet, and I pushed hair out of my eyes more than one time as the wind whipped through the trees. For the first time ever, I liked the wind. Focusing on keeping my hair away from my face stopped me from fixating on the nerve-centered swirling in my stomach.
Jordan opened the front door and stepped to the side to allow me to walk into the house first. My heart jumped into my throat as I entered, and unbidden, my eyes searched every visible space to see if he really was alone.
“You look like you’re a deer and I’m a hunter about to shoot you,” he remarked, closing the door. “Is something wrong?”
“Um.”
“You’re fond of that word today.” He looked equal parts amused and concerned.
“Yup.” I smacked my lips together at the end of the word then licked them. My fingers slid through my hair, and I twirled a thick lock around my finger.
“Darcy. You’re starting to worry me.”
“I…” I peered up through my lashes to look into his eyes.
He was staring at me in that paralyzing way he always did, and my throat closed up.
“Are… Are you single?” I blurted out much harsher than I’d intended and then inwardly cursed. Shit.
Jordan stilled. Tension tightened his shoulders and radiated off him, tainting the air between us.
“That’s a very random question.” His voice had taken on the hard edge I was so accustomed to hearing in class. I’d almost forgotten how cutting it could be over the past few days.
“Yes.”
“Is there a particular reason for it?”
“Maybe.” I swallowed. I wanted to step back—his tone was getting harder and harder. I’d hit him right in a sore spot, and he still hadn’t answered. “I’d like to know.”
His eyes were spitting ice at me. “Yes, I’m single. Now, I’d like to know why you asked.”
I straightened my spine and pulled together every ounce of strength in my body. I was going to be honest. I didn’t care about the outcome now. I wasn’t going to dumb this down or sugarcoat it.
“I was incredibly uncomfortable following your blackmail, which forced me to sign your agree—”
“I didn’t force you into anything. You signed that of your own accord.”
“After you’d blackmailed me! Can I continue answering your question, or will I have to pause in the appropriate places for your bullshit?”
His eyes narrowed, his jaw ticking at my outburst. “You have exactly sixty seconds to spit out what you have to say before I shut you up.”
I glared right back at him. “After
you forced me into agreeing, I researched you. And what I found is that you are not single.”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“Yes. I’m also calling you a cheater, because everything I found said you’re married!”
I’d had no idea how easily an atmosphere could change until that moment. It went from tense to cold. Pure, icy coldness. The man in front of me froze, but a vein bulged in his neck. It was the only physical movement that told of his true anger. The other indicator was the darkening of his eyes.
Their usual electric blue became so cloudy that they touched upon indigo.
“Get out.” His words cut through the silence like a knife.
“What?”
“Get. Out.”
I swept my eyes over his body. His hands were trembling at his sides, and his fists kept clenching. Not in a scary way. More like he was trying to restrain his own anger.
“Did I say not it clearly enough, Darcy?” he growled. “Get out!”
I took a deep breath and turned. I pulled the door open and quickly stepped through it. I’d barely made it to the bottom step when he slammed the door so loudly that I almost tripped over my own feet.
It was cold out there, but a thin sheen of hot sweat was forming on the back of my neck, and my mind was working overtime. Had my question really been that offensive? What had been so bad that he had gone from laughing to throwing me out so coldly in seconds?
I rubbed my fingers across my chest and paused by my car door. Glancing over my shoulder, I looked back to his house. I could just about make out his silhouette in the window.
Guilt crept through my body, making me sick with its strength.
I wished I’d known why.
The echo of the door slamming and chipping the doorframe still echoed off the walls of his silent house. That had been a momentary loss of control, an outlet for the anger he’d been unprepared to feel at her questioning.
He shouldn’t have yelled at her like that, and the guilt was already setting in deep in his heart. His rational mind knew she was only trying to protect herself. But fuck. Fucking hell. Of course, out of all of them, Darcy was the one who did research. She was the one smart enough to dig far enough into his past and tear it all up.
Not that she’d had to go back far. Four years was it. Four long, fucking torturous years back into his past was the deepest she’d had to delve.
Jordan grabbed the nearest thing to him—a glass—and threw it. It flew across the room and hit the wall just above the fireplace. It shattered on impact, sending tiny shards exploding across his carpet.
That didn’t ease his anger, either.
Anger. Guilt. Frustration.
He’d kept them all at bay for so long, defying every piece of advice he’d ever been given. “You need to talk about it,” his therapist had told him. “You’ll only hurt yourself if you keep it in.”
Bullshit, Jordan had called it. It had been bullshit four years ago and it was bullshit now. It was a part of his life he’d left behind in Colorado. It was the reason he’d left. He didn’t want to hear that preachy shit—about how talking would help and praying would heal his soul.
Prayer hadn’t saved Amanda. Even as he’d sat there next to her and begged to an entity he’d spent his whole life believing in, it hadn’t worked. Not a single fucking one had been answered until after he’d said goodbye.
Then he’d prayed to forget. He’d made that one come true himself. Most of the time. He’d taken steps to keep the pain and the memories at bay.
Like sex. Sex was his outlet. Focusing on carnal, primal needs meant there was little time for the emotional. He liked it that way. There was no intimacy to his relationships. Not the ones before Darcy and not the ones after—and sure as hell not with Carly Banks.
The thought made him feel sick.
He crossed his living room, and glass crunched beneath his shoes. He’d deal with that later. He grabbed the heavy whiskey bottle and a clean glass from the shelf on the bar. The cap fell to the ground after he’d unscrewed it, and he ignored it as he poured three fingers of the amber liquid out. The bottle clinked against the mahogany glass as he put it down only to pick his drink up.
He drank it in three mouthfuls.
It burned his throat as it went down, warming him from the inside out and distracting him from the dull ache in his chest. He hated himself for turning to it right now. Alcohol was the very thing that had destroyed his life, but he needed it. Needed its companionship, even if it only lasted for a mere few seconds.
He slammed the glass down and grasped the edge of the bar, dropping his head. He squeezed his eyes shut and let the hit of the alcohol invade his bloodstream. The heat traveled with the speed of adrenaline, and he welcomed the numbing of his emotions as it came.
Every emotion except the guilt.
It was reflexive, the yelling. He had known exactly where Darcy had been going with her questioning as soon as she’d asked him whether or not he was single. He’d thought he had been ready for it. He would be estranged, divorced—anything but the reality that kept him in a perpetual emotional limbo.
It didn’t matter that it was a limbo he’d chosen for himself. What mattered was that he was happy—whatever that truly meant.
Fuck. The whiskey hadn’t numbed him as much as he’d thought. He could still feel, still think, still process those goddamn emotions. He didn’t want to feel or think or anything at all that might make him remember.
He poured another three fingers. This time, it only took two mouthfuls for the spirit to burn its way down to his stomach. Once again, he slammed the glass down. The loud clink cut through the silence. He wished that it could cut through his thoughts as smoothly.
Of course, that would have been too easy. And if he’d learned anything, it was that life wasn’t easy. It wasn’t supposed to be.
Meaningless affairs and sick desires were all he had.
He ran his fingers through his short hair as he backed toward his sofa and sat down. Then, leaning forward, he contemplated picking the phone up and calling someone to give him exactly that—a meaningless affair, just for one night.
The problem was that he’d just sent away the person he wanted to call. Viciously, at that. Cruelly, even. Certainly unexpectedly.
He took hold of his phone and stared at it as he turned it in his hand. It’d be too easy, wouldn’t it? Call. Drown himself in sex. Let the alcohol take hold and his inhibitions disappear.
But fuck, he needed a bit of easy. He was done with everything. It amazed him how he’d become so revered professionally yet so fucked up personally.
He didn’t linger on that thought as he unlocked his phone and went to his contacts.
He knew he’d regret this tomorrow morning, and it could have been the whiskey talking, but he wasn’t sure he gave a fuck.
After all, you couldn’t take a thing from a man who had nothing to lose.
Dear Professor, honesty is underrated. So is confusion. Confusion sucks. Xoxo, Darcy.
“Get out.”
The words had echoed in my mind all day. They were just so…flat. Like what I’d asked him had taken every last inch of emotion and drained it out of his body.
Now, I knew he was hiding something. He wouldn’t have told me to get out so angrily if that weren’t the case. But what? What was it about his wife that he needed to hide?
It was driving me crazy. Like loop-the-fucking-loop crazy. The worst thing was that I had nothing to distract myself with, either. Without my job, I felt lost. My instinct was to get dressed in my best lingerie, put new batteries in my vibrator, and get on camera. That way, I’d be so focused on what I was doing that it wouldn’t matter what I felt inside.
Unfortunately, the only camera I was on was Skype to my parents. It wasn’t very successful, given the two crazy seven-year-olds who kept intercepting the call.
“Mom! Where’s the football?” Brandon yelled.
“No! The basketball!” Brady countered.
Mom pressed her fingers to her temples. “In the shed in the backyard. How many times?”
“I already looked,” Brandon whined, coming into the shot. Yep, definitely Brandon.
“Then I don’t know, sweetheart. Wherever you left it last. I’m trying to talk to your sister.”
“You are?” He barreled forward and half climbed on Mom. It took him a second to focus, but when he did, his grin stretched from ear to ear and he waved enthusiastically. “Hey, Darcy!”
“Hey, dude.” I smiled. “How are you?”
“Great. Better if I can find the football.” He cut his eyes to Mom.
“Brand!” I scolded him. “Don’t blame Mom if you didn’t put the ball away. That’s your fault if you can’t find it, not hers.”
“Yeah, Brand.” Brady grinned from the corner of the room.
He was just in the shot, but what the hell.
“Brady! That goes for you, too.”
“Aw, man.” His groan was more fitting of a teenager than his seven years.
“Apologize. Now.”
“Sorry, Mom,” they said in chorus.
Mom’s lips twitched. “Now, you go think about where you last had those balls and go find them.”
“Yes, Mom.” They both scuttled off, but not before waving goodbye to me. Then they disappeared into the kitchen.
I couldn’t help my smile. We didn’t share a single gene and they could be the biggest menaces ever, but I loved the hell out of them.
“You’re a good big sister to them,” Mom said once they’d disappeared. “They miss you.”
“I miss them, too. And you and Dad. I’ll try and get back soon.”
“How about next weekend?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll have to let you know in a few days.”
“Is it money? Dad can send you some for gas.”
“No, Mom. It’s not money. It’s school. It’s crazy right now with my applications for law school.” I scratched my forehead and sat back.
