Wait, maybe passing out would help me avoid this conversation. Would it be too childish to hold my breath right now?
“What’re your plans then, Mr. Gamble?” I demanded, horrified to realize I couldn’t control how quickly my breathing had picked up. “Blackmail me? Threaten to tell the administration that I came onto you in my drunken state if I don’t give you an A?”
His mouth fell open. “Wow.” He let out a short hard laugh. “But...” Running his fingers through his hair, he barked out another cynical sound. “Wow. You honestly think I’m that big of an asshole, don’t you? I just came here to make sure you were okay.”
Immediately realizing I was wrong by the way his eyes glimmered with—what was that, pain?—I gulped down my shame. No way could he fake such emotion.
Lowering my gaze, I held my breath as the idea of hurting him ripped me open. “I don’t... That’s not... You aren’t...”
“Breathe,” he commanded softly.
Surprisingly, I did, sucking in air, my body unconsciously following his commands and easing the tightness in my muscles that had been there all day. When I looked up, I opened my mouth to apologize for my accusations, but nothing came out.
“So, I’m guessing you’re not,” he said, lifting his eyebrows, “okay, that is.”
“Of course I’m not okay!” I exploded with a harsh whisper before glancing toward the closed door. “I got totally wasted and hit on one of my students.” Flapping my hands to show him just how okay I wasn’t, I hissed, “I’m completely wigging out right now.”
Noel did the worst thing he could possibly do. He cracked a smile. “God, you’re cute when you wig out.”
“Noel!” I screeched, scandalized by how well he was taking this. His blasé attitude only unsettled me more.
“Right.” Turning serious, he nodded and cleared his throat before he blew out a deflated breath. “So, what’re we going to do?”
The way he said “we” stirred up an emotion that almost brought tears to my eyes. I don’t think anyone had ever used that word on me before. Not a parent, or friend, or...anyone. I’d always done everything on my own. Being part of a team, a pair—God, it was what I’d always wanted. But being a part of anything with him was wrong.
Blinking rapidly, I tried to control the racing of my heart by breathing deeply. Purposefully. “Well,” I said and took one more deep breath. “The right thing to do would be to confess. So, if you want to tell the dean of the English department what I did to you, so there are no secrets or lies, I...I’ll understand. I can go with you right now, if you’d like.”
“I don’t—” He dodged in front of me to block my way to the door as if he feared I’d dart past him to go talk to Frenetti without his approval. “I mean, whoa. Hey.” He gave a nervous laugh and lifted his hands. It reminded of me of an animal whisperer trying to calm a scared, cornered creature. “There’s no reason to do that. No one saw us. No one knows. And you certainly don’t need to get yourself fired because of this.” He squinted his eyes. “And you would, wouldn’t you?”
I nodded. “Yes.” My voice cracked when I tried to add, “I’d be...”
“Fired,” he repeated with a decisive nod.
When I managed a single stiff nod in return, his shoulders fell. “That’s what I was afraid of.” He sucked his bottom lip in between his teeth in a brooding gesture. It really was too bad he looked so yummy doing it. I just wanted to— Gah! I had to stop thinking that way.
“So, what do you think?” I found the courage to ask, since I really did like thinking in this collaborative “we” term.
He looked up, his eyes startled. “About what?”
I swallowed, flushing. “About what we should do.”
“Oh.” He exhaled softly. “Uh...” His gaze slid over me, heating as if he remembered how my skin had felt under his hands. The look he sent me said exactly what he wanted to do. The fervor that passed through me as his stare traveled down my form made my nipples bead up, tight and tingly.
“Are you insane?” I gasped, suddenly very breathless.
“Yeah.” He blew out a hard breath as he took a step back. “I think maybe I am. Just a little.” Then his gaze raked over me again. “Or maybe a lot. Jesus, I can see how hard your nipples are through that blouse.”
Slapping my arms around my chest to cover the girls, I glared at him, hissing, “We are not starting some illicit affair, Mr. Gamble.”
“We’re not,” he repeated, but he made it more like a question than a repetitive statement.
I flushed. “No! Oh, my God. It...it would be unethical, dangerous, sleazy, and...and...and besides. We’re completely not compatible.”
“What?” The last comment made him blink back to reality and scowl at me. “You think not? And here, I can’t help but remember how very well we fit together.”
“Will you stop that?” Heat suffused me from head to toe, knowing exactly what he meant.
He cocked his head to the side, looking confused. “Stop what?”
“Stop...stop the flirting and references to what happened. We’re forgetting it. Remember?”
But he only grinned. “If I’m supposed to forget, then how can I remember?”
“Oh my God, you’re impossible.”
“If you’d let me, I’d finish what we started right here. Right now. You’re not drunk any longer, and that was the only thing holding me back.” An ornery grin curved up the right side of his mouth. “Didn’t you tell me how you dreamed about me taking you on this very desk?”
Color leached from my face. “I did not.” But Christ, had I? What had I told him?
“Oh, but you did. In very colorful detail.” He looked too happy to report my horrendous behavior, and I wanted to smack him and then kiss him and then probably tackle him onto my desk so he could take me in colorful detail.
“We shouldn’t be talking about this.” I spun away, facing a wall of bookshelves. Holy God, there was nowhere to go. I’d have to shimmy around him if I wanted to escape through the only doorway. There was the window, but we were on the third floor.
Maybe I should try it anyway.
“So then...I guess that means we’re not going to do anything about it, huh?”
“You need to leave, Mr. Gamble. This conversation is...it’s wrong.”
“I don’t see how it’s any more wrong than you agreeing to go out with a guy who’s already engaged to be married.”
“What?” I twisted my torso to face him.
He cocked a challenging eyebrow. “Dr. Chaplain. Are you telling me you don’t know he already has a fiancée?”
My mouth fell open. “Excuse me? No, he most certainly does not.”
Oh, my God. Did he? No, he would’ve taken her to the scrimmage with him if he had. Wouldn’t he? Or was she one of those women who didn’t get into sports?
“He proposed to her in one of the classes I took from him last semester.” Noel’s voice shocked me back to the present.
Disappointment spiked through me. And Philip had seemed so promising. I didn’t care that he hadn’t interested me the way the irritating student in front of me did, but he’d been...nice, simple. Doable. Well, aside from the whole ditching me at a bar by myself thing. Oh, shit. He really was a bastard.
“But why...why would he ask me out if he was already engaged?”
Noel shrugged, something akin to regret flashing in his eyes, as if he felt like hell for enlightening me to the truth. “Maybe he thought you knew. And didn’t care.”
“Oh, God.” I whirled away again. Could someone really take me for that kind of person?
“Seriously, why do you keep spinning to face the bookshelf?”
Crap. Now Noel knew what a lunatic I was. “Because I’m looking for a book,” I ad-libbed at the last moment, surprised and proud of myself for thinking up that answer so fast. And you know, now that I thought of it, there was a book I’d needed to check. It was one of those second copies where I’d made notes in the margins. And i
f I remembered correctly, they’d been pretty damn good notes. Except, I was almost positive that particular book was tucked away in a box...on the top shelf.
Oh, well. I’d gone this far. Might as well keep on. I grabbed the chair sitting on the other side of my desk because it didn’t have rollers and would hold me firmly.
“What the hell are you doing?” Noel asked as I stepped up.
“I thought I asked you to leave.” Lifting my arms, I used the tips of my fingers to wiggle them under the box and draw it further out from the shelf.
“For God’s sake. Here. Let me get that before you hurt yourself.”
“I put it up here; I think I can take it down. And you’re supposed to be gone...like I asked.”
“You didn’t ask. You demanded and—Jesus, Aspen.” His voice filled with warning. “Don’t. You’re going to hurt yourself. I’m six three. I can reach it a hell of a lot easier than you.”
“Well, I’m five four. What’s your point? I can reach it just...fine.” Crap. My fingertips barely touched the surface. I hiked myself up onto my tiptoes and tried again.
“No, you can’t. Just let me... Aspen!”
“Stop calling me by my first name. It’s not proper.”
“Damn it, woman. Get down!” He grasped my hips and yanked me back just as I grasped the edges of the box. It came flying off the shelf at my sudden heave backward and tipped forward with all its contents raining down on both of us.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
"I suspect the most we can hope for, and it's no small hope, is that we never give up, that we never stop giving ourselves permission to try to love and receive love." - Elizabeth Strout
~NOEL~
I tapped my fingers against my knee as I pressed my phone to my ear, waiting for someone to answer.
Pick took his sweet time before giving a sleepy greeting as if I’d just roused him from bed at four thirty in the afternoon. “Yeah?”
“Hey, can you cover my shift tonight?”
“Fuck, you have the worst timing ever, Gamble. Why can’t you work it?”
“Long story.” I glanced over at Aspen laid out on the bed next to me, her arms resting placidly at her sides while her feet stretched out toward the end of the mattress. I suspected she was awake even though her eyes were closed. “I’m at the hospital...with a friend.”
“Everything okay?” The concern in Pick’s voice made me smile. He could act like a thug all he liked, but the guy’s heart was as soft as a kitten’s. He’d cut off his own leg to help a friend in need.
“Nothing a couple stitches can’t fix.” My gaze found the gauze patch at the top of her arm almost to the curve of her shoulder. Fifteen stitches to be exact.
“Okay, fine. But you owe me.”
“Thanks, man.” I hung up and lowered my phone just as Aspen’s lashes flickered open. The pain medicine they’d given her must’ve kicked in because her green gaze looked glassy and incoherent.
“You don’t have to stay. Really. I’m fine. If you need to go to work, go to work. They’re probably going to release me pretty soon anyway.”
“And you’re going to need someone to drive you home once they do,” I argued in a soft, reasonable tone.
I felt like shit for getting her hurt. But who knew corners of cardboard boxes could slice open such deep, nasty gashes? Jesus, I should’ve let her pull the damn thing down off the shelf by herself. She’d no doubt be uninjured right now if I had. And I know it had hurt, a lot. She’d let me drive her to the hospital without a word of resistance.
“I can drive just fine. I have a small nick. It’s not like they cut off my whole arm.” But as soon as she spoke, color seeped from her face. Her eyes went sallow and lost as if her own words had elicited a painful memory. Slamming her lashes closed, she let out a regretful whimper. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
I tilted my head to the side, confused. “Why not?”
She blinked me back into focus. “Because...” She didn’t answer, just stared at me with wide eyes. “My dad,” she finally added, but that was all she said.
From her purse, a phone started to ring. Since it sat on the cart next to me, and I didn’t want her to move, I reached into it without asking for permission and snapped open the top clasp. Her phone rested near the top. As I pulled it out, I saw the call was from Parents.
“Here.” I handed it over, but she just stared at me. You’d have thought I was handing her a poisoned apple or something. So I tried to be helpful as I said, “It’s your folks.”
“Oh, God.” If she’d been pale before, she was sheet white now. “It’s karma.”
I grinned, glad to know I wasn’t the only person who blamed all my bad shit on karma. “Why would karma use your parents’ phone to call?”
I was trying to be cute enough to make her smile. It didn’t work. If anything, she looked even sicker. “If you only knew.”
For some reason, I did want to know. “So tell me.”
Aspen stared at me, her expression startled. The phone continued to ring between us. She blinked and shook her head before taking it with shaking fingers.
“Hel...hello?” Her voice sounded so young and afraid. I didn’t like that. I thought I hated it in class when her pitch turned professor-ish. But right now, I would’ve given anything to hear her powerhouse, self-confident tone again.
From where I sat, I heard a muffled woman’s voice tell Aspen her father was in the hospital. Hmm. What a coincidence. Must run in the family to visit a hospital today. National Kavanagh Hospital Day. I waited for her to explain she was in one too. But she didn’t.
“I...um, how long has he been there?” She nodded as a muted answer came through the receiver. “And his leg?” she asked next. “Is this going to affect that at all? He still has it, right? They haven’t amputated anything yet?”
Oh, so that was why lost-limb jokes were taboo in her book. Good to know.
When she closed her eyes and crossed her fingers, I experienced this unavoidable urge to reach out and clasp that hand, or at least cross my fingers right along with her.
She looked so alone and small on that bed, her fingers crossed with hopeful, childlike anxiety. It made me uncomfortable to watch her this way, mostly because I couldn’t do anything to help her, or more accurately because I shouldn’t.
Thinking screw it, she needs this, I reached out and took her hand. Her fingers were cold and gave a startled jerk under my grip. But I didn’t let go. Her eyes flashed open to peer up at me, but I just nodded, letting her know I was there. When her fingers finally squeezed back, I swear I felt the grip tighten around my heart instead of my palm.
“Well, that’s good,” she said into the phone only to wince as if she knew that was the wrong thing to say. But it must not have gotten the response she feared because she let out a relieved breath a second later. “Okay, then. Thank you for calling.”
And that was that. I glanced around the room before turning back to her. “Is that all?” I asked. “Why didn’t you tell them you were in the hospital, too?”
She flushed and handed the phone back to me. I regretfully let go of her fingers to take it. “I...” She shook her head and waved her bad arm. “This isn’t a big deal. She only would’ve derided me for being clumsy.”
“But you weren’t clumsy. It was my fault you got hurt.”
“No...” She sighed as if exhausted. “It wasn’t your fault. And even so, she would’ve somehow found a way to blame me.”
I frowned, which only caused her to glance away. Her fingers fidgeted with the blankets.
From listening to her drunken rumblings on Saturday, I already thought her parents were complete assholes. But now, I really didn’t like them. I didn’t like the way they affected her, making her stammer and turn placating. This was not the woman I’d seen lead a class for the last few months. And it certainly wasn’t the woman I’d held in my arms all Saturday night.
“After everything they’ve done to you, I’m surprised you still
talk to them at all,” I blurted out before I could stop myself.
“What?” Her face once again leached of color. “How do you know—I mean, what’re you talking about? You don’t know anything about my relationship with my parents.”
I winched. “Yeah, and you obviously don’t remember everything you told me Saturday.”
“Oh, God.” Her eyes looked too large for her head as she gaped in horror. “What did I say?”
No way could I repeat what she’d told me. My mouth opened, but no words came.
“Noel?”
My first name on her lips slayed me. It made me want things, like hurting her parents or that other asshole football player who’d hurt her. It made me want to reach for her hand again or lean down and kiss away all the pain in her eyes by touching my lips to her brow.
Yeah, I definitely loved how she said my name. But before I could make a fool of myself and react to it, the door opened, and a nurse walked in.
“Okay, Miss Kavanagh. You’re free to go.”
“It’s doctor,” I said before Aspen could, not that she looked as if she was going to correct the nurse. Both women blinked at me. “She’s a doctor, not a miss. She’s...” Crap, now I felt like a pretentious ass for making a big deal about her fucking title. But Aspen deserved the respect of such an address. She’d worked her ass off through school to earn it. “A literature professor,” I finished lamely.
The nurse flushed. “Oh, I...excuse me, Dr. Kavanagh.” She turned to Aspen apologetically, but Aspen waved it away before sending me a strange look.
I shrugged, not caring if I’d sounded prissy. Right now, I wanted everyone she encountered to worship her and treat her as if she was the only thing that mattered.
It took a few minutes after that for us to leave the hospital. When I drew her car keys from my pocket, she zeroed in on them.
“I can drive, you know.”
“Oh, really?” Flipping her off, I asked, “How many fingers?”
Instead of getting offended and telling me to behave, she squinted and leaned toward me, stepping off balance and nearly falling into me. I caught her around the waist, keeping her upright.