Page 19 of Speak

I swivel the chair side to side, lost in thought of the way her big brown eyes had widened when I told her to drop my class. In fact, I practically implored her to drop my class.

I close my laptop as the new students start pouring in, yet none of them are the one that’s caught my interest. No, I can’t go there. She’s a student. A very beautiful, alluring, brave, student. Butstill, a student. The words ‘OFF’ and ‘LIMITS’ blare in my brain like a neon red light and my cock inflates.

I decide to resume my research during my lunch hour.

_______

“Harrington, what brings you by?” Dean Whitmore asks from across his desk.

“It seems you’ve given me a silent student, Thad.”

His dark eyebrows shoot up to his forehead. “Miss Monroe is in your class, I presume.”

I sit in the hard chair opposite of him. It isn’t a chair meant for comfort. It’s a chair for you to state your business and leave. “This seems to have surprised you.”

He nods, putting his elbows on the arm rests of his very comfortable cushioned chair and steeples his cocoa fingers, resting his chin on them. “It does. Raven was a music major with a very promising future. She brought her cello after all. After surviving - after everything that happened, it became known that she was going to audition and possibly transfer to Julliard. I suppose, after her accident, she may no longer play.”

Thaddeus Whitmore I is by all intents and purposes a good man. I spy the framed picture behind him on his bookshelf of him as a former student here before he became a tenured professor for twenty-five years and is now the dean. I also spy the picture of his son Thaddeus II, almost a younger mirror image of the man sitting before me. Except his son has a lighter complexion and light eyes due to his Caucasian mother, Vivian.

“It was a sad thing that happened to that girl.”

“Yes, I read quite a few interesting articles on conspiracy theories surrounding this campus. That she was a virgin sacrifice for an elite brotherhood. Something called The Syndicate.”

Something flashes behind Whitmore’s chocolate eyes, before he begins to laugh. A laugh that sounds a little too forced in the last three years I’ve known him as his employee. “Yes, the rumor mills turned when she survived.”

There it goes again.Survived. Second time he’s used that word. “You were a professor here, when that happened, weren’t you?”

“I was.” But he doesn’t give me a chance to ask anything else because he asks, “Is there a reason Miss Monroe’s presence in your lectures is bothering you?”

“She can’t be in my class, Thad. She can’t speak or won’t, I’m not sure. Christ’s sake, she almost had a panic attack when I asked for her name while taking attendance. How is she going to do the debates? She refuses to hire an interpreter or even sign.”

“Can she turn them in on paper? I’d ask if another student could read them out loud for her, but from the whispers I’ve been hearing… I’m not sure anyone would be willing.”

“How are we certain she can’t speak?”

“You think she’s faking it?”

“I’m thinking ‘why is she willing to come back to the university at twenty-four as a sophomore, no less, where she was attacked so brutally it altered her entire life knowing she probably wouldn’t make much progress if she refuses to communicate?’”

Whitmore's eyes shift awkwardly around the room as if my questions agitate him. “And yet she still hasn’t said anything.” He shakes his head, light glinting off his polished bald head.

What another strange thing to say.

“There is one student that seems rather fond of her.”

“Oh?” He hands go to his desk.

“Jonas Anderson. It seems as though he’s in tune with her.”

His eyebrows hike back up to his hairline and he twists his mouth to the side. “The Anderson boy.” He sighs wearily. “Keep your eye on him, as well. The boy has certain…issues.”

Fan-fucking-tastic. “You don’t pay me the salary you do to be a glorified babysitter, Thad.” I huff and run my fingers through my hair. “I mean, what kind of school is this?”

Thaddeus shakes his head and then looks out the window onto the campus. “A lot has changed since I was a professor. But you’re right. You aren’t a babysitter. Forget I said that. A lot of these students have a fair number of issues. Thanks to social media all they do is talk about them. The Monroe’s are good friends of mineand I promised them I would watch out for the girl. If you could just find a way -”

“I don’t cut corners, Thad.”

“I’m not asking you to lessen her workload, Maverick. I’m asking you to workwithher. Her presence is a surprise to all of us. Students and faculty. I never thought a Monroe would ever walk these halls again and the name means something here.”

---