I thought back to the professor’s reaction when I mentioned Charlie’s name and also when I told him I knew who she was. Armed with the knowledge that he thought they were mates, his reactions fit into the category of “spurned lover.”
Oh ewww, I didn’t want to associate the professor with being a lover. No, no, get that image out of my head.
“I wonder if she agreed and then reneged or if she’d refused him outright.” I’d never get the answer from Professor Shaw but perhaps some of the other professors might know. Or Mrs. Ardilla or Coach.
“I don’t suppose we could ask Atticus’s uncle? He was part of their friend group.”
Phelan told me he could dig around and advised me not to say anything to Atticus.
“You know how he is. He’ll either pester me for details or conjure up some conspiracy.”
I didn’t need Atticus on my ass, so I agreed.
FOURTEEN
RAWLING
I couldn’t stop thinking about my conversation with Phelan yesterday. I tried everything, from classwork, eating, a crappy movie, even a blow job. Nothing came close to pushing it out of my head where it was currently living rent-free. I hated it.
Once again, it felt like I answered one question and 50,000 more appeared. It wasn’t like I could let this go. It wasn’t about some random person in history. It was about me. How? That was the answer I so desperately needed.
I lay in bed that night, going over the conversation on repeat, focusing on each detail as if it would magically reveal knowledge to me all of a sudden. It never did.
It was near one in the morning when Phelan rolled over and wrapped his arm around me, his eyes open. He apologized, thinking he was waking me up. I didn’t correct him. He didn’t need to know that I was losing sleep over this. He worried about me enough as it was.
The next morning, when he got up, I had already made breakfast. It was nothing fancy, just toast and scrambled eggs, but it gave me an excuse to be awake so he wouldn’t realize that I’d been up all night, catching a few minutes here or there, never hitting REM. I should have known he’d see through it. Inthe time we’d been together, he’d grown to know me better than anyone else ever had, even Rawlins.
I put the plates down at our spots and started to take my seat, but he wrapped an arm behind me, stopping me. He rested his hands on my belly and kissed my neck. “You didn’t sleep at all, did you?”
“What makes you say that?” I wasn’t going to lie to him, but confessing my insomnia didn’t seem like the best idea either. Not if I didn’t have to.
“Because your eyes are sunken. Your voice is scratchy. And all three times I opened my eyes last night, you were already awake.”
“You woke up that many times?” I’d known about the first, but he didn’t say a word about the other two.
“Yeah,” he said and kissed my shoulder again. “I have a lot on my mind and didn’t sleep well.”
Same.
I couldn’t get yesterday’s conversation out of my head, especially the weirdness of Professor Shaw’s letter. He really thought Charlie was his mate, to the point of deceiving Rawlins into thinking they were friends. How creepy do you have to be to become part of someone’s circle just so you can have access to that person?
I got chills thinking about it, and I wasn’t the object of his obsession.
“Me neither. I kept thinking about that letter and how ewww Professor Shaw was.” I leaned my head back, twisting it enough to give him the hint I wanted a cheek kiss. He got the hint. This wasn’t the kind of affection I’d ever longed for before, but either the mating bond or the pregnancy or both had me needing it.
The one thing that kept gnawing at me, first as a flicker and then more steadily as a possibility, was the quesion—what if that meant the professor was my father and Charlie was my mother?But I had pics of my mother and a couple with my dad, though none where I was in the photo. My mind was racing. Could the professor have slept with Charlie and… and… and…
Part of me wanted to ask Phelan his thoughts on it. A larger part of me wanted to forget I ever got the spark of an idea.
“Hey, please try not to stress too much. Because when you’re stressed, our little one is too.”
I pushed his hand away. “That’s not helping.” Immediately feeling guilty for shoving him, I turned around to hug him as best I could, “I don’t want to be stressed either. Thank you for always looking out for me.”
And before he could respond, I kissed him until we both forgot our own names.
He mentioned that next week I was going to have to attend my midterms in person. I smiled and nodded, but the truth was, I wasn’t ready for that. There would be too many eyes on me, too many comments under people’s breaths, and too many students actively avoiding me.
I was pregnant, and that alone would have me standing out and not fitting in. But also, deep down, I knew I didn’t belong here, which only amplified my anxiety.
