Page 82 of Lady and the Hitman
“Dr. Talbot just accepted a fall sabbatical. The chair asked me to reach out to see if you’d be interested in picking up one of her sections—Intro to U.S. Women’s Movements. Monday and Wednesday mornings.”
My heart sank.
More hours. More eyes. More obligation. More pretending I wasn’t unraveling behind the podium.
But I couldn’t say no. Not without reason. Not when I was already under scrutiny from every angle of my life.
“Can I think about it?” I asked, voice tight.
“Of course,” she said, chipper. “Just let us knowwithin a few days. We have to fill the slot as soon as possible.”
“Thanks,” I murmured, and hung up.
Then I stared out the window again, past the hanging moss and the bright bloom of crepe myrtles, to the quiet street that had always felt like safety.
Now it felt like a stage.
Like every step I took would echo. Every word I wrote might bury me.
And somewhere—tonight—he would be waiting. Ronan Hale. My secret. My sin.
My body wanted to run to him.
My career begged me not to.
And I?—
I didn’t know who I was without both.
The cursor blinked again.
Still waiting. Still demanding.
I took a breath.
And finally started to type.
But the words didn’t come easy.
Because for the first time in my career, I wasn’t writing what I believed.
I was writing what they needed me to believe, which was its own kind of betrayal.
Each sentence I managed to type felt like treason.
I strung together all the expected ideas—wrote about Senator Garrett’s history of thinly veiled misogyny, cited past examples of conservative outrage aimed at women’s autonomy, and quoted just enough from Foucault and Friedan to lend the piece academic weight. I did the job. But the words were sterile. Lifeless. Like I’d scrubbed every drop of truth from them just to meet a deadline.
Because the truth?
The truth was a man with rough hands and a privatejet who looked at me like I was the answer to a question he hadn’t known he was asking.
The truth was that I didn’t feel exploited.
I felt wanted.
I felt alive.
Soon, I’d hopefully feel devoured, in the best possible way.
