“Oh.” Martin’s shoulders slumped.
“I mean, I can’t imagine we’re a step up from wherever you were before.”
“Mount Garner College.”
Seb paused. “Mount Garner? That’s a good school.”
“Pretty good.”
“But you left?”
Martin studied him, and Seb stared right back, taking a second to really examine him. Brown hair, gray eyes, a nose that didn’t quite sit straight. Or maybe his jaw was a little askew, making everything else appear crooked. There was a scar on his chin, an old one by the looks of it. If he weren’t so nervous all the time, he would probably have been handsome, with full lips and a sharp edge to his jaw.
Martin plucked at the zipper of his hoodie. “There weremitigating factors.”
“What? Were you deflowering underclassmen during office hours?” He laughed at the idea of Martin playing Naughty Professor with some twinky student.
Or maybe it was Martin on his knees while a more senior colleague…
There was a choking sound across the table. Martin’s face had turned bright red, and his eyes were wide. His cheeks ballooned as he struggled to swallow whatever was in his mouth. In the end, he discreetly turned his head and spat it into a paper napkin.
“No.” His voice was hoarse. “It wasn’t about me. I was unlucky.” He picked at his food some more but wouldn’t meet Seb’s eyes. Whatever had happened was clearly a sensitive topic, so Seb backed up.
“What’s your PhD in?”
Instead of launching into the minutia of whatever his specialty was, though, Martin hesitated, like he was trying to decide if the answer could be used against him. What made him so allergic to disclosing any kind of personal information?
“German history.”
Seb stomped on the instinct to bristle. With someone else—with his dad—the two word answer would have been an implication that Seb wasn’t sophisticated or important enough to understand. But Martin didn’t seem to be like that. Seb did his best to keep his voice light as he said, “All of it? It goes on for a while.”
“It’s really specific.” Martin pushed the plate away. “Most people aren’t all that interested.”
“Trust me. My dad was a professor.” That was the kindest thing Seb had said about Philip Stevenson in years. “I know the drill.”
“Your dad’s a professor?” Martin perked up. Of course he did. They knew how to sniff out their kind. “Where does he teach?”
“He’s retired. What was your thesis about?”
“The persecution of gay Germans in the lead up to World War II. I wrote my thesis on the life and work of Werner Bergmann.”
“That must have been fun.”
Martin’s jaw tightened—a small reaction, but an important one. Seb knew how to spot the little signs when he’d stepped on a nerve and had learned how to take advantage of them a long time ago. It was a matter of survival with his family. The twitch in Martin’s jaw was the same kind of gesture as the tip of his chin while he’d defended his position about Seb’s work the last time. Whatever he was keeping to himself, Martin was willing to stand up for this.
“It was important work,” he said, his voice dropping. “Bergmann was a poet and a political activist. They didn’t even know he existed until the late nineties when someone found a box of his drafts in a secondhand store.”
Seb grinned as Martin appeared to come to life. “How is that possible?”
“He died in a concentration camp, and most of his work was burned.”
Wow. Seb blew out a breath. What would being so completely erased from the record that you disappeared for more than forty years mean?
“Is that why you freaked out about my work?” he asked.
“I didn’t freak out.” Martin’s eyes narrowed, and Seb’s heart beat faster. Finding something Martin would push back on was sending little sparks up and down his veins.
“You practically accused me of censorship!” He laughed. “Over an agricultural manual.”
