Page 40 of Fall From Grace
Hmm. Was that a bit too much? Laying it on too thick? Too flirty?
She smiles softly and reaches to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear as she says, “Thank you for your time, Professor.”
“Reese,” I tell her. “Seriously, Reese is fine. Calling meProfessormakes me sound like I’m fifty years old or something.”
Wren blushes, but she doesn’t say anything else. She stands, and I stand with her. She is slow to walk toward the door, so slow that I manage to beat her to the door. I set a hand on the knob, about to open it for her, when I stop and angle my head down.
Standing here, we’re side-by-side. Alone. It makes every nerve inside my body go haywire, to the point where it becomes painful for me to resist the urge I have to touch her, to take her… to make her run for me.
Take her to the woods, away from the hustle and bustle of the college and surrounding city, and tell her to run as fast as she can. We wouldn’t even need a maze with a choice at the end. All we’d need is the crisp, clear night air and the quietness that comes only with nature.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t give you what you wanted,” I say. It’s a good thing I have the chilly doorknob to focus on, otherwise I might be tempted to do something I most definitely shouldn’t—at least not while here, in this building. Not while I’m pretending to be Professor Scott.
Because that’s what I do: pretend. I’m not this nice, gentle professor. The real me is wilder, rougher, much more of an animal. Vicious and bloodthirsty, some might say. It’s in my blood, my very DNA.
“It’s okay,” she whispers. “I knew it was a long-shot, but I still wanted to try.” She gives me a soft smile after that, and that smile, gentle as it is, has the power to knock me clean off my feet if I’m not careful. I don’t know that anyone has ever given me a smile quite like that before.
I want to say more, I want to do anything I can to keep her here with me longer, but I know I can’t rush things. I can’t overstep, not yet. Not until I know more about her, not until I know how she’ll react, whether she’ll be receptive to the darkness within me.
“Well, like I said, if you need anything, I’m here.” I open the door for her and lean against it with my back, so she’ll have to walk by me to get out. A weird move, maybe, but I can’t pull myself away just yet. “And remember, I need your group’s topic by the end of the week.”
“I know,” she says—and I bet she does. I bet she never forgets anything like that. This girl doesn’t need a scheduling planner; she keeps it all in her head, tucked away. A rare breed these days. Wren steps past me, into the hall, and when she does, she looks back at me. “Have a good day.”
She pauses, like she’s mentally weighing something. It’s only after a few seconds that she adds my name, “Reese.” And then she walks away like she didn’t just give me a treat by calling me that.
“You too,” I say, watching as she hurries down the hall, away from me.
As I watch her go, I have to wrestle with my inner demon. It’s that demon that wants to immediately give chase, to run after her, catch her, and then… do something new. Something I can’t say I’ve ever wanted to do before.
Claim. Take. Mark. Do whatever I have to so the world will know.
She’s mine.
Chapter Eighteen – Wren
Sloane was sympathetic to my plight when I got back, but I didn’t want to talk too much about it. The more I talked about it, the more I thought about the reason why I want to work by myself to begin with: Logan. And, obviously, the more I think about Logan, the more confused I become.
I don’t like him. He’s not my type.
Yet…
The rest of the night I spend trying to figure out what I want to do the group project on, but I keep finding my thoughts either circle back to Logan or land on the professor of said class, the professor who told me to call him Reese.
I shouldn’t have. Calling him by his first name, even if he wasn’t that much older than me, felt wrong. Like I was trying to make us both on the same level when we are clearly not. He’s at least five to ten years older than me, and he’s a professor here. He is completely untouchable.
Besides, having a crush on a cute professor is so cliché.
Then again, so is having a crush on a bad boy like Logan.
Ugh. I never thought I was one of those girls. Then again, up until recently, I never saw myself with anyone except Mike. Mike was it for me for the longest time, and now… now it feels like I threw everything I thought I was out the same time I realized our relationship was done.
People who have been hurt do crazy things, I guess. I never really understood that until now.
In the end, my mind can’t focus, so I give up trying to think up a topic to work on and crawl into bed early. I spend some time scrolling through videos, hashtags I would have religiously followed back when Mike and I were together.
Bands on stage. Acoustic singing. Mike got me into some bands I originally never paid much attention to. Used to be a pop girlie, now I lean more toward rock and metalcore. I should unfollow these hashtags, but I can’t quite seem to do it. I’m not there yet. Maybe I won’t ever be.
Or maybe my taste in music has changed for good and there’s no going back. That’s a possibility, too—and that means Mike will have left an everlasting impact on me, which I don’t particularly like.
