Permanently.
Putting things on pause until after the semester was over wasn’t good enough. Someone would connect the dots, especially if we ever stopped sneaking around. They woulddiscover that my boyfriend was a student, and it would be incredibly easy to trace back the fact that they were in one of my classes. Questions would be asked. The suspicion would be there. It would undermine my position as a professor.
The only alternative was to keep my relationships a secret indefinitely. And deep down, I knew I wasn’t willing to do that. It wasn’t what I wanted in a partner.
Which meant breaking up with them.
As that certainty sank in, a hole felt like it was forming in my stomach. I didn’t want to break up with any of them. I wanted to explore our relationships, to see where they would go. I wanted something long-term with them.
But it was becoming increasingly clear that wasn’t possible.
This was a wake-up call. If I got out of this, I would never be sloppy again.
The door opened, and a kid in a red Smokey Mountain State University sweatshirt stopped just inside the doorway. He adjusted the backpack on his shoulder, his gaze slowly sweeping across the room.
I held my breath until his eyes stopped on me. They widened for a moment, and then he approached my table.
Even though it didn’t help my situation at all, part of me was relieved that my accuser wasn’t another member of the faculty. I could handle the judgmental stare of a student more than a colleague.
“Are you him?” I asked.
“I’m him,” he said, sliding into my booth. He pulled back the hood of the sweatshirt. He wasn’t smiling in victory the way I had expected. He immediately started tapping his footnervously, and his eyes darted in all directions like he expected an ambush.
“I came alone,” I said, searching his face. “Which of my classes are you in?”
“None,” he replied. “You’re a Criminology professor, right? I’m a Psych major.”
I stared at him. “I don’t understand.”
“I don’t care,” he said. “I’ve got you, Lila.”
The way he used my first name stung. It made me feel more like a victim.
“How did you find out?” I asked.
He cocked his head to the side. “It was easy. You two have been sloppy. I’ve been watching you for weeks.”
Weeks. I thought about all the times Jace, Brock, and Cam had come to my house in the past month. Dozens of meetings.
I was screwed.
“It’s honestly kind of embarrassing,” he said, sneering at me. “A professor sleeping with one of her students? It’s so cliche. Like something you’d see on the news.”
There was something about his tone that was off. At first, I wasn’t sure what it was. Then it hit me.
A professor sleeping with one of her students.
Not three. Not several.One. That’s the word he’d used.
But if he had been watching me for weeks, he would have known about all three of them.
“What’s their name?” I asked.
The kid sneered at me. “Huh?”
“You’re accusing me of sleeping with a student. What’s their name?”
That nervous look returned to him, his eyes blowing wide. “I don’t…”
