“He prefers Alexander,” I leaned forward to say, making my words honey sweet.
Professor Charbonneau smiled at me, and Alexander looked ready to toss me through a window. The professor covered the bottom of the handset and nodded toward the door. “You can go, Yukio. Stay out of trouble.”
“Of course, sir. Absolutely, sir. Thank you, sir.” I clutched my books in one hand, slung my bag over my left shoulder, and backed away toward the door with Alexander glaring at me out of the corner of his eye the whole time. As the door closed, I snickered, but a shiny, intriguing thought hit me.
What kind of douchebag created that asshat?
Biting the inside of my bottom lip, I glanced down the hall. There were a couple of students waiting outside of Mrs. Forsythe’s room for office hours—she taught macroeconomics, and the class was awful. I casually strolled over to join them. The girls smiled at me and went back to staring at their phones, and no one asked what I was doing, so I leaned against the wall and waited. I had to satisfy my curiosity.
All knowledge was useful in a war like this.
About ten minutes went by and I began to get antsy, but I held myself together, flipping open my Business Admin book to pretend I was doing something other than staring at the hallway. I glanced up from the page and my stomach warmed at the sight of a tall man with honey brown curls strolling along, glancing at some papers in his hand as he went. His face was drawn in concern, so I figured he must be Alexander’s father, and the height was a giveaway, too.
When he glanced up at me with wide, sad eyes, our gazes clashed, and my breath caught. He had smoky gray eyes like Alexander, but on this man they were soul piercing, and they went well with the dip in his chin and his soft rounded cheeks. Instantly, I felt bad because he really looked worried.
Professor Charbonneau had called him Micah. I liked that name.
Micah blinked and seemed to realize I was staring at him. He stumbled and caught himself on the wall, and a blush washed across his cheeks, but unlike his son, the expression was cute on him. I’d gotten this type of reaction out of guys who found me attractive in the past. He flashed me a tiny grin and a shrug before he opened the door to Professor Charbonneau’s office and went inside. A delicious heat had settled into my stomach during the interaction.
Fuck, he was hot and adorable, if you appreciated geeky guys—which I did. And best of all, he didn’t seem anything like his son. My gut dropped. Ugh,Alexanderprobably walked all over that man.
Snapping my book closed, I had an epiphany that made me feel like I should be able to lift directly off the ground and fly away. My dick tingled and I was feeling pretty good about life. Wouldn’t it be funny if Alexander walked out of his bedroom for breakfast some morning soon and saw me kissing his dad over coffee?
Or better yet, fucking him on the table. A small moan slipped out of me.
That would be the type of revenge money couldn’t buy.
It would be flawless.
Humming, I waved goodbye to the girls, who gave me warm smiles in return, then walked out of the building. I had some planning to do.
2
DR. MICAH CARRINGTON, PHD IN ANCIENT GREEK HISTORY
I wasat a complete and utter loss about what to do next.
Alex, my son, was my opposite. While I preferred books and quiet afternoons, he liked sports and cruising through life with adrenaline pumping through his veins. He reminded me of everything I wasn’t and everything I’d once wanted to be—like my brother, Phillip. It was as though we were two beings existing on different planets, not even revolving around the same sun, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.
Sometimes I thought it might’ve been easier to be a father during the ancient times in Greece. At the age of three, a Greek child—a son—was given his first sip of wine during the festival of Dionysus, and at age six he was sent away to school where he learned how to read, write, do math, play sports, and master a musical instrument. All of this was to make him a well-rounded young man in society, something I’d failed to produce with Alex, who I’d named after the most famous Greek of them all. I’d sent him to a military school, hoping to give him the best education I could, while also receiving knowledge about other attributes like leadership and friendship. Instead of helping him, I’d ignited an anger toward me that I didn’t understand.
“There you fucking go again!” Alex’s furious tone dragged me out of my thoughts, and I glanced at him, confused. He stood beside me in the hall outside of Cass’s office, his eyes alight with the kind of rage I was used to seeing in my own father’s gaze when he glared at me. Alex looked like Dad, too, becauseIhad Dad’s brown curls and gray eyes, and when I stared at him, I felt the familiar stirrings of fear that clenched low in my abdomen. But this wasn’t Dad, it was Alex, myson.
“What?” I blinked at him.
Alex laughed, but not in amusement, and he threw his hands up in frustration. “You go off in your little fantasyland and forget I’m right here in front of you.”
Did I? What were we talking about before I got lost in my thoughts?Right.We’d only left Cass’s office after he’d informed me of the fight Alex had found himself in. Cass had let him off with a warning, then lectured him some more, and during the entire meeting, Alex hadn’t looked at me once.
Different.
It was the only word to explain our personalities. Sometimes I wondered if he was mine, and that maybe.... Maybe Candy had slept with my brother instead. At least then the dissimilarities could be explained. Alex and Phillip had always gotten along well because they were into the same hobbies.
“Dad!” Alex’s sharp, angry tone brought me out of my thoughts again, and I blinked at him. A pair of young women walked past us, and they glanced between us with a giggle. I’d been told more than once that I looked more like Alex’s brother than his father. When he was born, I was seventeen. Too young. I was barely mature at that age, but I’d been hellbent on proving something to my own father.
Alex stared at me with furrowed eyebrows, cheeks flushed red in anger, and that expression was the same one Dad gave me when he got annoyed.
“Are you stupid, boy?”he’d asked on more than one occasion.
