Page 76 of Overeager
“No, sir.” Eli clasped his hands in his lap, straightening his spine. “We’re involved. Although we met outside of class. I didn’t know he was a student, not initially.”
Eli wasn’t going to make excuses, but he wasn’t going to throw himself further under the bus than he needed to either.
Tom glanced at a paper on his desk. “And you haven’t been personally involved with any of his grading.”
It wasn’t a question—he’d clearly looked into it himself. But Eli answered anyway, “No, sir. His grades have all been done by one of my TAs.”
Tom leaned back in his chair, folding his hands over his belly. There was a beat before he spoke again. “Do you know why we don’t have a written policy about professors getting involved with students?”
“Clerical oversight?” Eli offered up before he could help himself.
“Don’t be cute,” Tom chastised mildly. He cocked a brow. “You’ve never taken advantage of the university’s heat services, have you?”
Eli shook his head, cheeks heating a bit at this unexpected line of questioning. “No, I haven’t.”
From what Eli knew, the heat services consisted mostly of a roster of alphas and omegas trained and available to help someone through a heat or a rut, for those either unwilling or medically unable to use blockers and toys to get through on their own. It was all organized by the university’s Health Services, and was a standard offering at most places with any sort of medical benefits.
Eli had never had need for it. He honestly had never given it much thought.
Tom grunted. “Thought as much. It gets complicated on a college campus. Some students sign on as part of their work-study programs, particularly those studying anything related to pheromone health, for obvious reasons. And then, of course, sometimes professors or TAs end up needing the services themselves. We try to keep things separate, but pheromones don’t listen to reason, so occasionally things get … mixed.” He gave Eli a stern look. “But when that happens, the situation is monitored. Protections are put in place, for the teacher and the student.”
“So you’re saying I still …” Eli trailed off. He didn’t know how to finish his own sentence.
But Tom did. “Still fucked up massively? Yes.”
And here it was. The firing. Eli squared his shoulders, preparing himself for the inevitable.
“Lucky for you, I had a short meeting with Mr. Teller already. He confirmed your version of events. He was quite adamant that he was the pursuer in this situation.”
Eli had been aware Noah would have to tell his side. But he didn’t like the shifting of blame. He shook his head. “Still, I crossed the line. I—”
“You will wait until the end of the year,” Tom interjected, interrupting Eli’s attempts at self-recrimination, “before making any public appearances.”
It took Eli a moment to realize Tom was setting terms. He sat back, speechless.
“You will also be teaching whatever summer classes your department needs next semester. They’ve had a shortage of professors offering, and I don’t want to hear the complaints this time.” Tom pointed a finger at Eli. “And you willnotbe discussing this situation with your department head. If he’s made aware, I won’t stick my neck out to save you. So it starts and ends here. With me.”
“So I’mnotfired,” Eli said slowly, trying to help his brain catch up to Tom’s words.
“You’re not fired.”
Eli found himself wanting to argue. He’d been in the wrong. He knew that. The dean knew that. But for Noah’s sake …
Eli stood, almost overturning his chair in his haste. “Okay. Thank you, Tom. Really. I—um—thank you.”
As he hurried toward the door, Tom spoke again. “I never liked Richard much, you know. Good with the financial books, but kind of a dick otherwise. I was happy to hear you’d left him.”
Eli already had a hand on the doorknob, but he turned around anyway. There was a suspicion nagging at the back of his mind. “Sir … if the designations were reversed—if I was an alpha professor who’d been involved with an omega student—would you have made the same decision?”
Tom let him stew for a minute, and then he raised an eyebrow. “Is this the hill you want to die on, Professor Miller?”
“No, sir.” But it stung anyway, more than Eli might have thought. It was yet another confirmation of why Eli studied in the field he did. Why he taught the classes he did.
Richard wasn’t the only alpha out there with backward ideas about an omega’s role in the world.
But the dean was right about one thing—it wasn’t the hill Eli wanted to die on. He wasn’t going to sacrifice his relationship to make a point only he and the dean would know about. Maybe that made him weak or unprincipled, or maybe he was just too deep in love.
Either way, he walked out of there, nodding to Ashley dazedly on the way out as he went to hide away in his own office and lick his wounds.
