Page 5 of Tenure

I almost laugh. But then I do a double-take and pick up the textbook. I glance down at her calculations, her formula laid out in tidy print with a little red question mark in the margin, and I feel my stomach drop out through my feet.

She’s fucking right.

It’s subtle. A typo in the formula. But . . .

“I’ll take it from your expression that I’m right,” she says wryly, snatching her notes back and stuffing them in her bag. She stands and walks around the desk, looking coolly down her nose at me.

“You wrote this one, didn’t you?”

“Co-wrote,” I grit out, trying to burn a hole through the page with my eyes.

“Mm. Well. We can’t all be perfect.”

And she walks out without it, leaving me and my aching cock—possibly for the first time in my life—feeling absolutely dumbfounded.

4

Kiernan

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I mumble to SJ.

“You canfuck right offwith that nonsense! Spill. Are the guys hot? Please tell me they’re hot. What colour is the men’s hockey team dressing room?”

His face was burned into my brain, and it was starting to irritate me. The inky black hair, the stubbled jaw, the cheekbones you could use as a cheese grater . . . If he hadn’t been such acolossalasshole, I’d have gone as far as saying he wasinhumanlygood looking. But the guy had clearly been marinading inpompous dickfor a decade or two. That sneer could make small children cry.

It almost made me cry.

Fuck, he was something. Just standing in his space was like being on one of those Gravitron rides at the fair. Felt like you were being sucked up off the ground and casually tossed against a padded wall. Guts? Missing. Survival? Not guaranteed.

“You met someone, Kier. I can tell.”

I sigh. “I got in an . . .argumentwith someone.”

She rolls her eyes and flops down on the bed. “You called the professor an idiot, didn’t you?”

“No!” I shout. “Well, not directly.”

“Goddamn, Kier, not even university professors are up to your standard?”

I chew my bottom lip, and she sits up, eyes narrowed.

“He’s hot, isn’t he?”

I shrug.

“Oh!” she squeals. “He’ssuperhot then! Okay what’s his name?”

I cross my arms, and she rolls her eyes again, snatching my class list from my desk and starts typing frantically on her phone. I know when she’s found a picture because her mouth drops open, and she stares at me.

“This?You got in a fight withthis?”She shoves her phone in my face, zoomed in tight on his faculty photo from the school site. She stares down at her phone again. “Holy shit. How many freshmen do you think he bangs a day? Five? Ten?”

I scowl. “None. Trust me, he’s not doing freshmen.”

SJ laughs. “There is literally zero percent chance that he does not have a naked freshman on his lap right now.”

“Naked woman, sure. But . . .” I pause and suck on my lip again. I’m not sure why, but I justverymuch got the impression that he has absolutely no patience for anyone my age. Not as students, or as. . . Girlfriends? Lovers?

My cheeks flush and SJ cackles, screenshotting his face. “For later,” she says with a wink.

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