Chapter1
I was in love with Billy Montrose for five years.
And then I met him.
“Ms. O’Brien and Ms. Winters,would you both please stay after for a moment?” Professor Montrose said to my suitemate Jane and me as our class was dismissing. For the final time. We were a day away from semester break.
He wasn’t really a professor. He was a guest instructor for this year only—the year I was a freshman at Bribury College. The elite, Ivy League Lite college that I’d busted my ass to get into with a scholarship.
I didn’t belong here, but I tried like hell not to let it show.
The rest of the class filed out, some looking back with curiosity, some just happy to begin their winter break.
Lily Spaulding, our third suitemate, gave us both a nod as she left, but she didn’t wait. Probably off to meet her boyfriend Lucas. They’d recently been reunited and Lily had basically been walking on a cloud ever since.
Besides the nod in both our directions, Lily’d given Jane a stern, warning look. I guessed she feared Jane would make a pass at Montrose while given the opportunity of a private audience.
I was afraid of that too, and not just because I’d be in the room to witness it.
I had basically held my breath all semester long hoping that Montrose wouldn’t succumb to Jane’s blatant innuendoes and outrageous flirting.
He hadn’t. But now, as of today actually, Jane was no longer his student. And if that had been the ethical barrier holding him back, it was now lifted.
“Ms. Winters, you first, please,” Montrose said, half-leaning, half-sitting against the side of his desk.
A perturbed look crossed Jane’s face. She knew what I’d just figured out—Montrose wouldn’t ask to speak with her first if he was going to relent to her pursuit. Not with me in the room.
Trying to give them some privacy, I stepped away from the seats we’d all vacated before he’d asked for Jane and me to stay. I walked to the other side of the room so I wouldn’t hear what they said, though I desperately wanted to. I moved to where I could see Jane’s face and Montrose’s back.
Even his back was gorgeous.
He wasn’t handsome in the traditional way, and certainly not pretty, like so many of the privileged Bribury boys. But there was just something about him that screamed sexy. His hair was dark brown and worn a little long, but not nearly as long as Lily’s Lucas wore his. Not down to his shoulders, but more like he’d missed his last two haircut appointments.
He always looked tired, and was almost always late for class even though it wasn’t a crack o’ dawn start time.
He wore jeans most of the time, occasionally khaki cargo pants. Even though he usually paired it with a sports coat and tie, he always looked a little disheveled and sometimes even disoriented.
But when he lectured, you could see, hear and feel the intelligence he possessed.
Though he taught Intro to Creative Writing, he almost always brought his favorite literature into each lecture. How Hemingway did this. How Wolfe did that. Or Woolf. He was keen on both.
Being a voracious reader since I’d been fourteen, I ate it all up, taking notes on his favorite, but obscure, authors. Knowing I’d be able to finally read for pleasure once the semester was over, I added them all to my growing To Be Read author list.
Montrose was twenty-eight, and had writtenGangster’s Folly,which had been touted as the Great American Novel, when he was twenty-three.
I don’t know if it truly wastheGreat American Novel.
But it was the novel that saved my life.
Now I watched Jane’s face and could tell he wasn’t hitting on her. Not by the look of “fuck you” that she was silently giving him. He reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder and I held my breath for a second until his hand dropped away from her.
Jane’s look softened. I barely heard the murmur of what he said next, not able to make out any of the words. He gestured to the paper she held in her hand. The paper we’d gotten back from Montrose today. Our final paper, weighted at half our grade. We were supposed to start with “The person I am today is…” then write.
I held my own in my hand—I’d been about to put it in my backpack when Montrose had asked us to stay.
I’d scored a ninety-seven on it and saw a bunch of comments, which I would read the second I was alone.
Jane looked at Montrose for a long while after he’d finished speaking, and then she gave a tiny nod of her head and just a hint of a smile.
