by Melissa Blue
“I would like to say yes. I would like to move on from this.”
Just like that the warmth disappeared. Shit. Eva shouldn’t have called. Those two sentences were how her sister built up to what she really wanted to say. First she agreed, and Eva didn’t doubt the olive branch was sincere. They did want the same things in the end. But then the conditions would come out.
She pressed two fingers right between her brows, a headache threatening. “Lauren, don’t do this. Just make a date to meet me for coffee or don’t.”
Her sister’s laugh was more like a defeated huff. “You’re still seeing him.”
And there it was. The food she’d whipped up an hour earlier curdled in her gut. “I talked to him for months before we met.”
“Online.” Her sister’s voice was hard, insistent. “What makes you think you’re the only woman he’s talked to? He probably trolled every attractive female on that geek forum. What do you really know about him? I worked with him for a year and I know nothing.”
Because you only checked out his ass. Eva swallowed that comment. “I met his friends, his family. He’s a good guy.”
He was hers as long as they were together, because Grady didn’t half-ass anything. When he gave, he gave his all. Where in the hell did that kind of loyalty come from? It wasn’t though. His inner circle was tighter than a drum.
“Sure,” her sister said, “but did he tell you what he did for a living before you met?”
Eva closed her eyes, regretting the phone call more with each word. “Yes.”
Lauren scoffed. “You heard professor and that was that?”
“No. I heard that and almost stopped talking to him. I know how much my mistakes ripped apart our lives. No matter how ugly the fights, I’d never wish that on you again.”
She could practically hear her sister trying to shift her argument. “But what did you do after you found out he was teaching your class?”
God. Why couldn’t her sister be her sister? This was disapproving mom. “You’re not good enough.” “Stupid, stupid girl.”
“Lauren, it’s not that simple. I just wanted to call and check in on you. Hear your voice. Not to argue.”
“All right,” her sister said over her. “You’re all about drawing boundaries. This is mine. You’re pulling me into your bullshit. Again. I work with him and I know he’s having sex with his student. Either end it or I’m going to have to report him. That’s how I’m doing. That’s when I’ll be fine and not up worrying about you.”
Her sister didn’t even wait for a reply. The line went silent. That out-of-control sensation rose into her chest. She was not going to panic. Not today. Not while he slept on her couch. Not when she’d just screwed them. Screwed him.
She inhaled through her nostrils to steady her breathing. Her sister would tell the story of how an instructor seduced her poor, stupid, gullible sister. Lauren wouldn’t be able to help it. She’d protect Eva, because that much, at least, was what Lauren did without fail.
Her sister was putting on that cape and damning Grady.
Why did Eva call? Why did she keep trying to make her sister happy while trying to keep some of that for herself?
Tears stung her eyes. “Dammit.” She sucked in a bigger breath. “Dammit!”
“Eva?” Grady’s voice was groggy. “What’s wrong?”
She brushed at the tears. “Nothing,” she said, her voice betraying her with a tremor. “I’ll figure it out.”
He groaned, sitting up. “What will you figure out?” He made a blergh noise as he tried to awake. “How long have I been asleep?”
“Two hours.”
“You should have woken me up.”
Maybe if she had, Eva would have never called Lauren and screwed everything up. Fucked over Grady. But how could she fix it? Lying seemed like the best option until she could sway Lauren to her side. Maybe if her sister saw them together, she’d get it. Then again, the facts of her and Grady’s relationship seemed damning no matter how you told it. She met a stranger online. She was dating her instructor.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
“Eva, you didn’t answer the question.”
She heard more than saw him get up from the couch. Much to her relief he’d pulled on his shorts before sitting in the kitchen chair across from her. He had creases along his face from the deep sleep.
Eva couldn’t help it; she reached forward and drew her fingers along the lines.
Sleep had started to clear from his eyes. “What’s going on?”
That’s right. He didn’t dance around something. Grady met it head on, no matter how uncomfortable or ugly. She dropped her hands to her lap and looked away. “My sister is threatening to tell the Dean or whoever about us.”
He closed one eye, rubbed it with two fingers and then said, “I wouldn’t worry about that.”
Her eyes widened at his flippant reply. “Don’t worry about it?”
Grady squeezed the top part of his face with his hands, his voice still a bit gritty from the sleep. “Nope. She can’t hurt you. Or me.”
Maybe she’d lost the ability to look at a glass of water and think half-full, but this was a Defcon5 kind of problem. Solid guys didn’t feel fear apparently. They pissed into the wind without worry of the blowback.
“Grady,” she said slow and maybe as though he couldn’t understand her words.
“I shouldn’t laugh at the way you’re talking to me right now…” He laughed, having caught her. “I’m not crazy. I’m not underselling the weight of this. It’s just that—”
“Grady, your father being friends with the Dean won’t mean anything if people find out. Enough people who don’t care about you, don’t have any loyalty to you, can get loud and ugly. You’ll be labeled as the teacher who sleeps with co-eds.”
His cocky smile faded as he settled into the wooden chair. “I’ve thought about this. I wouldn’t have taken you to meet my brother if I hadn’t thought about every angle.”
“And what you decided is that we shouldn’t worry our heads about it?”
He was quiet, too quiet before he asked, “What’s your solution?”
She clamped her mouth shut. He shook his head like he’d read her mind. “You cave to you sister and what’s the next thing she takes from you?” He stopped and then asked, “Why did you call her?” The soft-spoken words felt like an accusation.
“I haven’t spoken to her since the fight in your classroom.”
His shoulders lowered. “Okay. You wanted to make sure she was okay. Is she always like this? So demanding?”
Without thought, she touched the scars on her left wrist. So, no. Her sister hadn’t always taken charge, but for a while Eva had been a special case. It’s why she gave Lauren so much leeway now. In all the ways that were important, her sister had saved her, taken care of her, but even parents stepped back to let their child sink or swim. They moved away further when they saw their kid could swim. Eventually, they learned to only come to the rescue when their child asked for help.
“Okay,” Grady said again. “You have to trust me here, we’re going to be fine.”
“You don’t know what it’s like, Grady.” That’s what kept the bile in her stomach churning.
Aiden was a single man with enough academic connections to help him weather the storm of the scandal. But he had a Ph.D. And as always it wasn’t about the truth, but who had their story out first. Who shouted the loudest about their version of events.
Horny co-ed tries to pass her class, any way she can.
Having lived it before, Lauren would know this. An ache started between Eva’s shoulder blades at the tension trying to squeeze every muscle. Was she spiraling or just being realistic?
Grady gripped her arms. “Eva, we do this together. No matter what. And you’ve got to trust me.”
She couldn’t bring herself to agree right away. Or ever. She’d ridden this twirl-o-whirl before, gotten nauseous, threw up and then couldn’t sit upright for days on end afte
rward.
“You don’t know my sister.”
Grady was silent for a long time, his gaze shutting down in slow degrees. He pulled away, taking his warmth with him. “My parents wanted two normal kids.” His voice went hard as granite. “They got Wade. They had a certified baby Eisenstein but they couldn’t be real parents. He just learned much faster than they could keep up. So they treated him like he was a mistake.”
He spread his hands and pushed out a bitter laugh. “Then they got me. I was a miracle. They could be parents. He would bend over backward to make them say, just once, they were proud of him.”
The sickening sensation in her gut settled in deeper. “Grady, I knew but I didn’t know all the details. I’m so sorry your parents were shitty.”
He showed no outward reaction to her words. “Your sister wants you to bend over backward. Don’t do it. It won’t make her or you happy. Trust me, Eva. I lived it, was raised in it.”
She clasped her hands together. “Is that why you need control? Your parents put your back to the wall, again and again? Either take their praise and hurt your brother or tell them to fuck off?”
“Pretty much. They know what they did, especially my father. I ask him for anything and he will get it done. If I tell him I have a problem at Cal State with the Dean, then I don’t have a problem anymore. I’d hate to do it. Wade and I don’t deal with them much anymore, but I will.”
She hated to say the next. “I can’t let you do that. And I can’t let you resign and start over somewhere else. You would basically be walking away from your career, your beliefs. Not for…”
“What?” he pushed, his gaze no longer soft or understanding. Grady sucked in a breath. “I’ll ask, again, what’s your solution?”
The thought of reliving her scandal kept knotting in her gut. “Grady…”
“Don’t.”
Just like when she’d called him Professor Addison in the coffee shop, he just shut her down.
“Don’t what?” she threw at him, anger climbing up her spine, tightening it. “Worry about you or take the easy way and let you grovel back to your parents? Don’t feel sick to my stomach that this shit could happen all over again. No one is going to care how we met. How we feel about each other. It’s just going to be the teacher screwing his student. Or the student trying to get a better grade.”
“Or,” he said so quietly she had to strain to hear him, “is it the way you feel about me that matters the most?”
A chill ran straight down into her bones. “What?”
“All in, Eva. I meant it. I play for keeps. I will fight dirty for the people I care about.” He dragged his hands through his hair, his jaw working like he wanted to spit out nails. “If you just wanted to fuck you should have said so.”
She gasped. “How—”
“How could I say that?” His gaze flashed hot as he glared at her. “You’re sitting there trying to rationalize why we should give in to your sister’s blackmail. Sitting there trying to say everything but what you really feel. You don’t trust me. You don’t lo—” He dropped his hard stare for a moment. “You’d rather end things and use this as your excuse.”
He’d almost dropped the L word and she couldn’t fight the desperate clench in her chest. “I wasn’t—”
His voice was flat when he said, “Then what was your solution, Eva? Mine’s ugly but it’s ironclad.”
To end things. To walk away for both of their sake. To run because her fear of scandal was too big even for her to face. She’d found a home, again, and didn’t want to lose it. They’d met three weeks ago if she didn’t count the four months before that. His brother hated her. Her sister would ruin him, Dean on their side or not.
It was too complicated and she didn’t do that anymore even if her chest ached at the thought of never touching him again. “Grady—”
“Save it.” He stood, not bothering to throw a longing glance in her direction. “Don’t say my name like that if you don’t mean it. And you don’t.”
None of the solutions running through her head involved staying with him, believing he could fix it and make everything okay. She pushed from the table, still not willing to let him leave with that as his parting shot.
He threw on his shirt, punching his arms through the shirt’s holes. “Before you even say anything, remember our compromise? We agreed to stay low for a few weeks. Did you really think your sister would be happy with that?”
Her sister would only be happy if Eva fell for a nice accountant, got married and then had children. That was uncomplicated and nowhere near controversial. “No.”
“There are two more weeks left in this summer semester. Do you think you could get any decent classes for the fall, if you transferred out now?”
She shook her head, trembling but refusing to let the out-of-control sensation win. Not now. This was the absolutely worst time for her to lose it or even to remember she was broken as he walked out the door. That much was clear in his hard jawline—he was leaving her.
How did this get screwed up? Yes. She went back to the girl who just wanted to please, to make everyone happy. To avoid any trouble to begin with. She wasn’t brave. She didn’t run, but she hid, had become a pro at that. None of that meant he just got to leave without a backward glance.
“Then what’s your grand plan, Grady?” she tossed at him. “What would magically keep the wolves at bay? Going to your dad, a dad you don’t even like for a favor this big?”
He stormed over to her. She had to tilt her head back to meet his pissed off stare. “You,” he said simply. “Being with you would have kept the wolves at bay. Fuck a job. Fuck having to talk to my dad or my mom and make nice for an afternoon. Fuck anything else, anything if I don’t have my family.” He didn’t have to explain who he meant was his family. He’d taken her to meet them. He’d assumed, soon, she’d be a part of his family, too. Oh, God.
“Eva, if I died tomorrow the university would hire someone else. Maybe, maybe hold a toast in my name. But my family…”
He shook his head, disgust contorting his features. “That was my grand plan. You. Yeah. I could pull strings with the Dean. Squash whatever your sister said. But no matter what, it was going to be you and me, Eva.”
She staggered backward until her butt hit the table. Anger had forced her to ask. Hurt had made sure the words fell out. His answer hurt so much more because she could hear the truth in his voice.
Grady stepped into her face again. “But don’t worry, you can tell your sister we’re done.”
Another second passed and her front door slammed. She inhaled but her throat was closing up. Not from panic though. She’d fucked this up. Eva understood what being with him meant, but not in full color, just in theory. Wasn’t this exactly what had scared her the most? Things would go to shit and he’d leave. She’d break, again. That this time there wouldn’t be enough of her to put back together.
Grady had left. She stood in her kitchen, alone, still smelling of him and the sweet, woodsy scent of his aftershave. Monday morning she’d still have the love bites he’d left along her neck and the whisker burns on her breasts and thighs.
He’d left because she couldn’t really believe he’d meant it when he told her all in. He’d left. She was shattering.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Five days later a chorus of knocks damn near rocked Grady’s front door off the hinges. He had class earlier that morning and he had to pretend Eva wasn’t there in the back, dark circles bruising the skin beneath her eyes and pale as shit.
But whenever he failed, he’d remember all the things that pissed him off. She’d quit them because of her crazy ass sister. She hadn’t meant any of it. It being their relationship. So fuck it. It being anything he currently didn’t want to give two shits about. So, yeah, he could pretend pretty damn well in front of a classroom full of students.
But an invasion from his brother, and likely his friends, was a different story. He knew them though. They had knocked. Next would be
unlocking the door with their keys. So he kept playing his game, sinking deeper into his love seat.
Porter waltzed in first. He held six grocery bags in each hand. Today he was clean-shaven, dressed for a rough day at work based on the grease stains on his jeans and black T-shirt. All that aside, his friend grinned, happy to see him.
Grady should have changed his locks.
“Hey, man?” Porter’s attention swept over the messy living room. “What you doing?” His friend used his Barry-White-smooth-talk-a-crazy-off-a-bridge tone.
Grady knew just how worried Porter was. But he’d ripped a page out of Wade’s playbook and gave zero fucks. “Ignoring you and everyone else in the Goon Squad.”
“That’s just mean,” his friend said, his tone dripping with sarcasm. “You were playing Warfare without us.”
“Take your food and leave.”
“Sorry. Can’t.” Porter was already strolling toward the kitchen. “You’re the only one with a BBQ pit.”
Fuck my life.
Victor followed with a huge bag of charcoal and some lighter fluid. His eyes were a little bright as he stood soldier straight. “You look like shit, Grady.”
He felt like it. The past week he’d come home, played his game and ignored everything else. If he hadn’t needed to teach class and fulfill other requirements at the university, his ass just might have fused with the love seat.
Since the observation needed no reply, he said, “You look like you’re about to get off.”
Before switching to IT, Victor had been in the Army as an EOD Tech. In short, he worked with bombs. Sometimes that meant blowing shit to high heaven. When he’d come back after a few tours, he hadn’t been the same.
“I’m in charge of the fire,” Victor said. “Kind of am.”
Unease sank into his gut. His friend didn’t play with fire. “Let Porter do it.”
“Have you shaved and showered today?”
Grady let the uncomfortable emotion go. “I showered.”
