Page 45 of My Forbidden Professor

Jacob’s throat works convulsively before he gives me the smallest of nods, expression still carefully impassive as he steps back to let me enter the office. But I don’t miss the reflexive way his gaze darts up and down the corridor first in both directions, checking for any potential observers. “Of course, Miss Smith. I have a few minutes.”

The sight is a vice around my heart, constricting until I can scarcely breathe. I know he’s simply reverting to our old patterns of discretion and caution, the ingrained habits drilled into us by necessity. This time, the gesture feels less pragmatic, more...shame-laden somehow. Like he’s putting up those boundaries to protect whatever tattered shreds of propriety he can salvage between us.

My vision blurs with a film of scalding moisture. Because this visceral, devastating ache lancing through me is a death knell—the beginning of our inevitable, irrevocable end.

Daniel’s reach has corroded more of my life.

The tears slip free as Jacob closes the door firmly behind me, sealing us into the sanctuary that’s about to shatter into a million jagged pieces.

“Steph...” His low rasp wraps around the syllables of my name like a caress, sending traitorous little tendrils of wanting shivering through me despite everything. Jacob’s gaze bores into me with scorching intensity. That familiar heat I used to crave now feels like being pinned beneath a searing spotlight.

“You paid him.” The accusation slips out in a tremulous rasp before I can stop it. “Daniel. You paid him off.”

Jacob doesn’t flinch or try to deny the ugly reality. He merely gives me a solemn nod, jaw tightening almost imperceptibly. “I did what I had to in order to protect you, Steph. To protect us.”

Anger and bewilderment war within me in a volatile cyclone. “Protect me? From what, exactly? The guy’s been blackmailing me for years!”

“Years?” He steps toward me, arms reaching for me but stops when I step away. He can’t touch me. “I…didn’t know that.”

I’ve already said too much. Given away more than I wanted to. “You don’t know a lot of things.”

He swallows hard, his gaze flitting over my face. “I did it for you.”

“And you thought paying the degenerate would make him just... give up and go away? That’s incredibly naïve, Jacob.”

Using his name with no pretense feels like picking at a healing scab—unnecessary and pointed. But I’m hurting and lashing out is currently my only salve, even if deep down I know it’s only delaying the inevitable.

Because Daniel will never stop. That hideous truth is one of the few certainties left in this rapidly deteriorating situation. He made that abundantly clear, his threats about those ‘other photos’ lingering like a cancerous shadow over everything we are...everything we were.

My chest constricts hard enough to steal the breath from my lungs. “Tell me you didn’t think throwing a few thousand his way would be the end of it.”

Jacob releases a harsh exhalation, sounding every bit as pained and cornered as I feel. “Of course I knew it was only a temporary solution. That’s why I warned him in no uncertain terms that it would be the one and only time.”

One stark disbelieving look from me seems to drain all the fight from his broad shoulders, because he knows the truth just as acutely as I do. There is no ‘one and only time’ when it comes to someone like Daniel.

“Five thousand dollars though?” The words slip out. “Where did you even get that kind of money?”

Jacob shifts almost imperceptibly, gaze skittering away from mine like he can’t quite meet my eye anymore. He’s keeping something from me, another gut-punch of a secret just waiting to detonate.

“That’s...not important right now,” he deflects in a tight rasp. “What is important is those photos of you on the internet at the wedding. Your father...your father is David Chandler. Was that...was that Daniel’s doing too?”

Bile burns at the back of my throat. He’s seen them. He’s seen the photo of me. But of course he has. It’s hot news. Gossip no one could resist.

“I...”

“Why didn’t you tell me the truth about who you really are?” His gruff voice pulls me from my tailspin, laced with an undertone of something that sounds perilously close to reproach. “If you’re David Chandler’s daughter, surely that means you have access to resources, connections to put a stop to someone like Daniel, once and for all.”

The statement detonates like a grenade between us, reawakening the smothered embers of resentment and hurt burning in my chest. “Are you kidding me right now?” I practically spit out the words.

Jacob blinks, clearly taken aback by my venom. But I can’t find it in me to care or moderate my response anymore. Not when every inch of my soul has already been carved open and laid bare.

“You think I’d ever stoop to asking my father for bail-out money to coddle some sleazy no-one’s depravity?” I demand. “Give me a little credit, Jacob. Or did you think that’s the sort of entitled, spoiled brat you’ve been tangling with this whole time?”

He has the good grace to look sufficiently chastised, even shaking his head slowly as hurt flickers through those soulful eyes. “No, Steph, I didn’t mean—”

“Because if so, you’ve been deluding yourself into seeing only what you wanted all along.” I barrel onward, needing to unleash this scathing torrent before it consumes me from the inside out. “The sweet, coddled poor little rich girl who’s oblivious to the shady inner-workings of her family’s empire rather than—”

“Steph.” Jacob’s voice washes over me, grounding and gentle despite the razor-sharp anguish surely etched into my features right now. “You’re not like that. I know you. I see you. The real you. I would never think any less of you for anything.”

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