Page 60 of Craving Cooper

He nods his head. “And what happened on this evening you were telling me about?”

“I got to work at the usual time, only to find the restaurant was closed. There was a power outage, and everyone was sent home again. I stopped off at the grocery store to get something for dinner, and then went home, thinking I’d surprise Jonah… only it was me who got the surprise when I found him in bed with another woman.”

“Oh, shit…” he murmurs, letting out a sigh.

“It gets worse.”

“How?”

“Because the other woman was one of his lecturers. She was old enough to be his mother.”

“Seriously? Surely that kind of thing is frowned upon isn’t it? Lecturers sleeping with their students, I mean. Not your ex being an idiot and cheating on you with a cougar.”

I can’t help smiling. “Yes, it is. And the fall-out was horrendous. Jonah left the college as a result of it, blaming me entirely for everything that happened.”

“Blaming you? Why? Did you tell the authorities?”

“No. I didn’t tell a soul. He just needed someone to blame.”

“And he didn’t think to look in the mirror?”

I chuckle. “Clearly not.”

“What happened to the lecturer?”

“That’s where it got really messy. They dismissed her, but tried to keep quiet about the reasons. Except it seemed she knew about two male lecturers who were sleeping with female students and threatened to go public with what she knew if they didn’t give her a massive payout.”

“Even though that would have meant revealing her own part in all of it?”

“Yeah. She’d clearly decided she was being treated unfairly, and if she was going down, she was taking them all with her.”

“Was she being treated unfairly, though? I mean, did the authorities know about the two men who were doing the same thing?”

“I don’t know. At the time, I didn’t care enough to find out. All I know is, they paid her off in the end.”

“And the two male lecturers?”

I shrug my shoulders, finishing the last of my asparagus, and taking another sip of wine, surprised to discover the glass is almost empty. “They were never named, so I don’t know what happened to them. I just know a lot of the people on the college staff blamed me.”

“But it wasn’t your fault.”

“Maybe not. But they assumed I’d reported the incident and caused the issue in the first place.”

He shakes his head, pushing his empty plate to one side, so he can reach out and take my hand again, which feels nice.

“If Jonah left, where did you end up living?”

“I couldn’t find anywhere else that I could afford, so I moved back into the halls of residence. The college authorities weren’t happy about it. Like I said, they blamed me for what had happened, so they kept moving me around, and they only let me stay on the basis that they had to review my status every month. They’d go through my grades, check my finances, ensure there were no complaints against me, and basically look for any excuse they could find to throw me out altogether. They never found anything, but…”

“You lived from month to month, not knowing whether you’d still have a roof over your head?”

“Yes. It was terrifying, and made it really tough to get through to the end of my degree. Not only were people looking at me, talking about me, laughing about me… but I had no sense of security.”

The waitress returns, and Cooper pulls his hand away from mine, just at the moment when I need him most.

“Was everything okay, sir?” she says, simpering at him.

“Yes, thanks. Although I think we could use some more wine, if that’s okay?”

---