by Piper Lawson
“That’s the plan.”
“Then why do you look as if it’s the last thing you want to do?”
Frustration rises up. “I’ll leave her thinking this meant nothing. She meant nothing. I know, you’re going to tell me I can’t feel anything for her.”
He turns to a picture of his wife, Andy only a baby in her arms. “Don’t turn your back on feelings. You don’t know how long you might have with someone.”
“Seriously? I was always the ‘leap first’ one, and you were the ‘don’t do that, you moron’ one.”
His neck flexes, the smile not quite reaching his eyes. “Sometimes I look at Andy, and I see his mom, and all I can think about are the ways I should’ve been better. But the next second I remember I still have him, and I’m grateful. Losing someone you love hurts. But stopping loving once you’ve started...that’s even harder.”
“She was your world. This is different.”
“You care about Olivia. You can bluster all you want but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s your feelings that have you running.”
I flinch. Everyone in my life has left, and she doesn’t owe me anything.
So why does her rejection feel as if someone’s digging under my skin with a blunt instrument?
Because every second I spent with her feels like a magic I never let myself believe in.
She’s sweet and innocent and smart and brave. I wanted to possess her, to prove there was more to life than she knew. But once I had her, I was the one possessed. Making excuses to see her, to spend time with her, to show her new things.
I shake my head to clear it. “Give me the saw or I’ll rent one.”
With a sigh, Daniel leads me out to the garage. “You gone through your dad’s things yet?”
“The realtor wanted the house cleaned out so she could take pictures. I’ve thrown stuff in boxes, and I’ll move those into the garage this week. Everything except his office.”
“That have something to do with it being his favorite place, the one with the most memories?”
“I’m not afraid of ghosts, or memories.”
“Right.” He gets the saw down off the wall. Instead of letting go when I reach for it, he holds on. “It’s an art, Sawyer. Figuring out how you feel. Telling the ones who matter before it’s too late.”
“Feelings are bullshit. We’re judged by our actions.”
But as I carry the saw back across the street, I cut a look up at the window of my dad’s office.
I head across campus to my office the next morning, twisting the ring on my finger and imagining I can still taste Olivia Barclay on my tongue.
After ripping the deck apart, I found a load of patio stones beneath. Preserved as if they were going to be used then forgotten.
Still thinking over Daniel’s comments about knowing what to say to a person after they’re gone, I went up to my dad’s office to look for a record of the order. I didn’t find that, but I found other things.
The receipt for his fish tank and fish.
The bill said to hold for Olivia.
What the hell?
It means nothing.
Except…they were closer than she let on.
She’s giving me shit for what happened back in New York, meanwhile she’s hiding how well she knew my dad.
There are no classes during fall break, but plenty of people remain on campus. Grad students are working on their projects, plus faculty catch up on research and marking.
Inside the doors of the engineering department, I head up the stairs to the second floor and spin my keys around my finger as I walk to my mailbox. On the way back toward my office, I notice the sign saying the elevator is out of order.
“People can take the stairs,” the dean boasts as I’m headed past.
I pull up, thinking of a student in my second-year class who uses a wheelchair to get around campus. “Not all people. Betty,” I call to the admin assistant who’s walking by. “What’s facilities doing on this? Tell them they’ll have a lawsuit on their hands.”
“Who’s going to report us?” the dean asks.
“I will.”
His expression transforms from dismissive to irate in a second. I don’t stick around to enjoy it.
“Professor Redmond,” he calls as I start back down the hall. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about a very serious matter. An indiscretion with one of your students.”
The hairs on my neck lift, but I force myself to keep walking to the door of my office.
“We were going through some records and security realized Professor Lancaster’s keycard was still walking around. Or rather a copy was,” he pants as he catches up. “We looked at surveillance of who was entering the building at the same time.”
“And?”
His eyes glint. “And it was Olivia Barclay.”
The name makes me angry, either because of the way he said it or because hearing it twists the knife in my gut deeper.
“She’s a good student. I’m sure it was some kind of error.”
I push my door in, but he doesn’t get the hint.
“Impossible, and it’s in violation of the rules. Don’t make excuses for her. Students are adults, capable of making their own decisions and suffering the consequences.”
Angry snippets of conversation from years past echo in my mind.
“This is your fault.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Then why do these results show you did?”
“Is that what happened five years ago?” I ask, rounding on him. “You made a decision and I suffered the consequences?”
His jaw clenches. “This is a place to learn, Professor.”
“I think I’ve learned all that Russell has to teach me.”
“I doubt that very much.”
He heads back down the hall without a backward glance.
I’m at the campus bookstore finishing placing a textbook order when awareness prickles my skin under my shirt and jacket.
I turn to spot her scouring the shelves a few feet away.
She’s wearing a cashmere sweater a shade lighter than her skin. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail. The way she’s bent at the waist means her skirt rides halfway up her thighs, but it’s her profile I’m fixated on—dark lashes, flushed cheeks, parted lips as she searches for whatever prize she’s seeking.
She looks new in this light.
“Miss Barclay.”
Her head whips around, the ponytail catching her in the face as she straightens. “Sawyer. I mean, Professor.”
She’s a student.
She’s not a woman, not a temptation, not the cause of my fucking heartbeat in my chest.
“I didn’t realize you were spending the week on campus.” I lower my voice, but there’s no mistaking my words.
They’re code for “you haven’t responded to a single one of my messages.”
“After regionals, I don’t think we have anything to talk about.”
Like hell we don’t.
“The dean would disagree with you. You have my father’s keycard.”
Her eyes widen as if she’s not sure if I’m warning her or accusing her.
That makes two of us.
“I had a copy of his keycard. With better permissions. He let me make it.”
“Why?”
She doesn’t answer.
I pull the receipt from my bag and close the distance between us so I can hand it over, not so I can inhale her scent. “I found this in his office. It has your name written on it.”
Once she takes it and reads, there’s recognition but no guilt.
“It was my idea to get the fish. I thought he’d like having something in his house to take care of.”
If I expect that to make me feel better, it doesn’t. My teeth grind.
“You didn’t tell me you were close,” I say under my breath. “How much time did you spend together?”
“Some.” She holds out the receipt. “Why are
you so angry?”
Another faculty member walks past me, and I nod at him.
“Because you act like I’m the one keeping secrets,” I murmur once we have some space again, grabbing the slip of paper and wadding it in my fist. “But you’re the one who lied.”
I head back to the engineering building, leaving her and her surprised look.
I never let myself care about anyone and this is why—because they don’t stick around when things get hard.
“Maintenance is on the way over to fix the elevator,” Betty says at the top of the stairs.
“Good,” I grit out.
“Hi, Betty,” says a voice behind me.
“Hi, Livvy.”
I whirl to see Olivia behind me.
“There is something we need to discuss. Five minutes—Professor,” she says.
The hallway feels too short as I head to my office and yank open the door.
She follows me in and shuts the door.
Olivia told me weeks ago that this was my office now. But I’m acutely aware that it’s not—it’s his.
I walk around his desk. Gingerly, I pull open the biggest drawer, as if I’ll find some clue about their relationship inside.
Of course, there’s nothing.
“Yes, I talked to Madison. Thanks for asking,” she says tightly.
“About what?”
“What she saw!”
“She saw nothing. Whatever she thinks she saw, she was mistaken. You and I are the only ones who know what happened, and she’s not about to render her hard work redundant on an impulse.”
There’s a locked drawer above, but no key.
“Are you kidding?” Her voice rips my attention away. “We’re this close to being found out, to you losing this teaching job, another job”—I flinch—“but you’re angry because your dad gave me his keycard? Because I told him he needed a pet?”
I grip the edge of the desktop. She doesn’t understand. “Yes.”
“Why do people think it’s impossible to have something in common with a person because they’re from another generation?” Her brows drag together. “What connects us is shared experience, but it’s not as if our lives overlap. It can be a moment—a victory, a hope, a regret. Or a shared emotion. Like a bell ringing that vibrates on a wavelength only certain people can hear. Life is lonely enough, Sawyer. Are you supposed to pretend you don’t hear the same bell?”
I’ve built the wall around my heart one brick at a time until it’s high enough to keep everyone out.
Her words slip beneath it.
“How did he make you feel?”
She crosses to his degrees on the wall, studying each as if she’s looking at the man himself and not the ink and crests and signatures he worked for. “Like I had a chance to become something.”
I want to punch the desk.
“And how did I make you feel?”
Her huff of breath could be humor or frustration or longing. “Like I already was something.”
My chest expands.
I’m not my father. Maybe we can get past what happened in New York.
Her gaze drifts to the JENGA set on the corner of my desk. She pokes at one of the bricks near the bottom, causing the entire thing to waver. “But I’m not, at least not to you.”
After all the noise and chaos in my head, the silence stretches out painfully.
“When you heard that rumor, how long did it take you to decide it was true?”
Olivia stiffens. “It all made sense. The reason you left New York was some big secret. Add to that the way you pursued me, even after you found out who I was…A lot of men have a thing for younger women.”
“Why do you think that is?”
She frowns. “A status symbol? Or if it’s secret, I suppose it’s a thrill. A reminder of their youth.”
“You know what my youth was like. Yet you think I want to be reminded of it.”
She folds her arms. “When I asked you in the hallway, you didn’t deny the rumor.”
Asking. Is that what that was?
It felt like a sentence, handed down from some jury I never met.
My hands form fists behind my back. I want to tell her the truth, but that would make this situation even more dangerous.
“Give me your phone,” I say softly.
She hesitates but does.
I hit a few keystrokes, finding what I’m looking for. The breath sticks in my chest as my thumb hovers over the button before I press it.
Warning: This action cannot be undone flashes across the screen.
Confirm.
I pass the device back.
“What did you...” She scrolls through, her jaw dropping. “You erased all of our conversations.”
By the time accusing eyes lift to mine, there’s no vulnerability. Only anger.
I can see the moment she hates me. The look of loathing is familiar, even if I never expected to see it from her.
“I’m glad he didn’t see you like this. You’re a judgmental asshole, Sawyer Redmond.”
I watch her from the window as she leaves, her high heels clicking down the steps and along the path. It’s a reminder of how far out of my reach she is. But I can’t stop watching until she disappears.
It’s better this way.
The words are less comforting than I expect.
3
Olivia
“If you glare at that phone any harder, it’s gonna combust.”
I look up at Jules from where I’m stretching, one leg extended across the back of the couch, the phone resting on the side table at the end.
“Not glaring. Just…staring. It’s all about intent.”
“Well, you intend for it to give you back the baby it stole from you. Or something similarly evil,” she finishes at my raised eyebrow.
I switch legs and directions, bending over my knee.
He erased our messages.
The conversations starting that first night outside Velvet when he appeared out of nowhere and stole my breath.
The thinly veiled exchanges while we tried to keep our attraction under control.
Then the heat that blossomed after Fall Ball when we stopped denying that he was the man whose face I saw every time I closed my eyes, the man whose touch I dreamed about.
They’re all gone, and a part of me is gone with them.
I should erase him from my memories and go back to only being worried about labs and grades and extracurriculars and friends.
After this past weekend in New York, I didn’t think I could feel worse.
Except the look on Sawyer’s face when he pointed out that I was closer to his dad than I let on wasn’t only accusatory, but betrayed.
Maybe I downplayed my interactions with Lancaster because Sawyer knew a different man than I did.
“When you heard the rumor, how long did it take you to decide it was true?”
I want to believe him, because that would make it possible that what we found in stolen moments between classes, in the margins of our life, in the places we were never supposed to meet, was real. That in my flaws and insecurities, he saw not only possibility, but treasure.
A tiny piece of my bruised heart clings to that possibility. I want to be that—real. Ready for the world.
The way he asked the question, as if he’s hiding something still, haunts me.
Not that it matters.
He deleted our messages, our entire history, like it meant nothing. He doesn’t trust me to keep our secret. He wants to tie up every loose end.
Kat comes out of the bathroom, a hot pink towel wrapped around her. “I have something to help, hang on. I’m working on some new crafts.” She starts toward the kitchen, where there’s now an entire cooling drawer for sex toys.
“Thanks, but I don’t need a distraction. I’m already heading home tonight.”
“Since when?”
“Since I realized I left some textbooks there I need for when school starts up again next week.”
> My phone vibrates on the table.
“You can’t stop answering phones,” Jules contends. “It’s going to be a long, difficult life.”
So I reach for it.
“Olivia Barclay please,” the woman says.
“This is her,” I say.
“We’ve been trying to reach you but evidently had the wrong contact information. I’m not sure if you’re aware, but Albert Lancaster passed a month ago. And he included you in his will.”
I press a hand to the vein in my forehead. “You’re joking.”
“Not a joke.”
My hand tightens on the phone, my gaze flying to my roommates.
What? Kat mouths.
“I can’t do this right now. I’m sorry,” I say, wrapping my sweater around me as I pace the room.
“But—”
I hang up.
“What the hell was that?” Kat asks.
I round to the couch. “Lancaster left me something in his will. I don’t know what it is.” I picture the shelves of books lining his office. Maybe he wanted me to have some of the volumes he liked pointing to.
“I had a great aunt I never met leave me money,” Jules goes on. “It was weird, but she survived a stroke and two husbands and eventually died loaded at ninety-seven surrounded by chihuahuas. I’m not gonna tell her what to do after she’s dead.”
Kat leans in. “If it’s his collection of mothballs, you say a nice prayer for him and toss them in the trash. If it’s something good… there are no strings attached.”
“But there are strings,” I say, flopping onto the couch. “Sawyer won’t understand.”
Right after I insisted to him we weren’t close, it turns out his dad left me something. He’ll take it as confirmation that I lied about my relationship with his dad.
I drop the phone on the floor beside me and Jules appears over me, arms folded.
“But if your hot-for-teacher thing is done, why does it matter what he thinks?”
The thought of staring at him three hours a week in class starting Monday, knowing I’ll never touch him or kiss him or have him call me Cherry in that tight rasp, is a fresh hell.
“You’re right. He doesn’t care about me. I was a girl he couldn’t have, and a convenient way to get off.”
Kat chuckles, and I cut her a look. “What’s funny?”
