Her eyes widen as they instantly meet mine.
“You and I started out with more secrets than I think we knew how to handle. I’d like for that to only be our origin story. Not the rest of it.”
“So you’re here now,” she says, watching me move closer. I take another step so that the two of us are at the center of this space.
“I’m here now.” I swallow, knowing this is coming on strong, but I’m too old and too caught up in this with her to play casual. “What we did the other night, even if you ignore how much I wanted it, I know that whatever your grandmother and mother spoke with you about, you needed to react, to be in control of something afterwards...” I take one more step until I’m right in front of her, and her gaze follows to look up at me. “I’m glad I was the one there to be of service.”
“Who knew you were so selfless?” she teases, finally letting a smirk play out along her pretty lips.
I take a moment to appreciate how fucking beautiful she looks in this skirt and blouse. “This is a good look on you.” My eyes make their way down her body.
“I’m assuming you’re referring to my clothes and not the whole ‘flustered when you’re around me’ vibe I’m putting off?” she says, laughing at herself.
“I was referring to both, actually, now that you mention it.” My eyes roam down her body again, and I can’t help but step closer when I see her touch along her wrist in the same place she had been wearing my leather cuff.
“Your sisters seem to know you pretty well, and they had some interesting things to share,” I say to her. “I learned that Geminis and Sagittariuses are great matches.”
She sniffs out a laugh as she starts packing things into her bag, holding on to a small notebook with one hand, and with the other, she holds her open laptop by the screen with two fingers.Starting to move toward the stairs, she stops and turns toward me. “What else did my sisters say to you?”
“Just a little bit about you, talked about Jo’s art, ate some oranges, a few veiled threats, nothing too concerning to worry about,” I tease.”
She pauses on the step in front of me, working through what I’ve just said. When she leans closer, her concern breaks away and in exchange she sounds amused as she says, “Careful, Julian. If they end up liking you too much, they’ll make it their mission to make sure you never end up leaving.”
That didn’t scare me, if anything, every warning I hear from the Crowne family has the opposite effect on me. It makes me want it more—her more.
Walking ahead of me and up the stairs, she heads toward her office. Her perfectly shaped ass clings to the skirt that flows just below her knees, the deep burgundy color matching the heels of her shoes. She stays quiet as we reach the hall, a few students lingering and looking at posting on the bulletin boards, but none of them are waiting to speak with her.
“What made you want to be a professor?” I ask, looking at the laptop and then around to the few things displayed along the walls that lead to the suite of offices at the end of the hall.
Unlocking her office door, she flips the lights on.
I follow, unaffected by the silence as I wait for her to answer. She drops her notebook on the oak desk, squaring off her stance. With her hands on her hips, she looks at me, and I take a step closer, placing her laptop and bag down around her. When I perch my ass on the corner edge of the desk, she doesn’t budge.
“It was the polar opposite of what my family did,” she admits. “But then I got passionate about it, dug in, worked really fucking hard to get here.” She shakes her head with a sarcastic smile when she looks around her office space. “I never thought I’d be here right now. But...”
“But?” I dip my head to find those green eyes of hers.
She lets out a long exhale. “It’s what I’m supposed to do,” she says, staring at me like she’s trying to work something out. “But so much has happened since the last time I taught a science lab or gave a lecture.” She glances around the room, where boxes are still packed with framed certificates not hung up. White boards behind her display scribbled shapes with letters and numbers that were on the screen in her class. “And I thought maybe it’s just having a routine or feeling a bit rusty working through a syllabus I haven’t seen in ages.” More quietly, she adds, “It feels all wrong now.”
“I know a little something about that.” I sniff a laugh to myself. “And now that you know things you didn’t before, your life looks completely different somehow, but you’re supposed to be the same, do the same that you’ve always done.”
She smiles at me, softening slightly. “So you’ve been there then?”
“Been there and in it now,” I say on a sigh. I realize that this is partly why I wanted to come and see her. I wanted to talk to her.Shit.I tilt my head back for a moment, realizing this is already more for me. I’m not the kind of person to overshare, not the man that’ll tell anyone much about anything. But this woman has a way of making it okay to do it. Like she’ll allow the weight of what I’m navigating to land easy.
“My dad,” I share, clearing my throat, “left for a job.” I shake my head. “He hadn’t been making jewelry for a long while—he relied on me to do most of it,” I say with a smile. “Always told me I was more talented, but he was really fucking good. I think he just lost some inspiration.” I look up at her, eyes already on me, waiting. “Sometimes he’d stop after a job and buy materials for me for upcoming pieces—precious gems that could be bought directly from mines or collectors.” Running my hand behind my neck, I pinch at the base to relieve some of the tension thatthinking about this brings. “I just assumed he was traveling to a few spots, but then a couple weeks went by without hearing from him. I didn’t talk to him every day, but a couple times a week was normal for us.”
I swallow the bitter taste of knowing now that my father had been dead, and I wasn’t even looking for him. “He always came back, and he’d tell me about where he’d been. Until very recently, I thought I knew everything there was to know about him.” I hurriedly blink back the blur of my eyes watering.
Her eyebrows pinch as she lets the quiet linger, listening without interjecting.
“It took my father dying for me to realize that the family legacies that had become my entire existence look different without him in my life, so much so, that it made me question why I would want to do something that couldn’t be talked about or shared, with almost everyone,” I say cautiously, as if I’m disappointing him for even thinking about it.
When I finally look up from toying with the leather cuff on my wrist, she’s looking at where my fingers run along the worn edges, and I realize I’m doing the same thing she does. Nervous energy working its way out, maybe.
She lets out a laugh, tilting her head, fingers grazing along her wrist, where she had been wearing my other leather cuff. “You said that my family’s job was your last. Seems like you’re already making changes for what you want.”
I don’t tell her that I don’t know if that choice feels right either, or if I’ve just lived so long doing what I was told I should do that I don’t know how it’s supposed to feel when I’m doing something my own way.
