Page 16 of You've Got a Place Here, Too
“I thought it best,” he says, closing a box and setting it on the table.
“So it was deliberate.” I throw my hands up, indignation making me forget the cool persona I was determined to project. “You skipped the last class because of me? Was I that awful? That embarrassing? That—”
“Remarkable.” He grasps one of my hands and steals my breath. “Wonderful. Beautiful.”
He strokes his thumb along the sensitive skin of my palm.
“Tempting.” He shakes his head, his expression rueful. “I was weak and trying to do the right thing. Afraid I wasn’t strong enough to resist what I’d been wanting all semester.”
I’m vaguely aware of people around us packing up their booths and gathering their materials. Of students filing out of the room. It’s all a blur, though, because my every molecule is tuned in to this man who is improbably standing in front of me after all this time.
“What?” I gulp, blinking up at him when he takes a step closer, my hand still in his. “So you were…you wanted—”
“Oh, I wanted.” He lifts my hand to his lips for a brief kiss that should feel creepy and inappropriate but feels old-world charm-y and sends ahe can get ittremble through my body. “Coffee? Dinner? I’d like to catch up.”
I slowly turn his hand over, conspicuously inspecting his ring finger for hardware or an adulterous tan line.
“And your wife?” I demand, my brows lifted. “Your fiancée? I believe you had one of those the last time we met.”
“There’s no one.”
“Divorced?”
“Nope. Never married.”
“Ahhh.” I tilt my head, curiosity only heightening the effecthis scent—still wild and heady like fresh rain—and the heat coming off him this close is having on my sensibilities. “I guess there’s a story there?”
“There’s definitely a story.” He smiles down at me and takes my other hand between his, squeezing with gentle, reassuring pressure. “Give me an hour of your time and I’ll tell you everything.”
That day comes rushing back to me. The humiliation. The shame and hurt. I was a student and he was my teacher. It should have been just a girlish crush, but it had felt more monumental than that.
Over the years, I’ve caught myself wondering how he was doing. If he and his wife had kids. The bio for his book never mentioned a partner and he was pretty nonexistent on social media. He’d always been somewhat reserved, private, which makes this bold salvo even more uncharacteristic.
God, he’s still fine as hell.
How can it be that no one else ever measured up to a man I never even had?
What do I have to lose? An hour? I’m a grown-ass woman whose head is screwed on straight now. He can’t hurt or humiliate me.
Yet echoes of the shame I felt that day in his class, the disappointment when he left without a word, indicate he held an inordinate amount of power over me once. Maybe he still could. Should I bother hearing him out? Is it even worth it?
I would brave the skies for you.
That idealistic, smitten girl with stars in her eyes and infatuation in her pen nudges me to take a chance. To investigate further and find out.
After all this time, don’t you want to know?
“One hour,” I finally say, rolling my eyes when his grin widens. “That’s all I can spare.”
“Whatever you’ll give, Ms. Wallace,” he says, looping his elbow through mine and smiling down at me, “I’ll take.”
Two Years Later
Zekiah
“Have you seen my blazer?” I shout, pushing several of them aside in my closet.
My fiancée enters our bedroom, a silk robe wrapped around her petite frame and big rollers in her hair.
