Beauty and the Professor (A Modern Fairy Tale Duet 1)

Do not let ambitions destroy small successes.

Someone you care about seeks reconciliation.

There were more.

The fortune cookies. She swallowed past the lump in her throat. He’d saved the messages inside them, each and every one from their nights together. She was mildly impressed that some of them had come true, but far more moved that he’d kept these little folded pieces of paper, little notes of nothingness marking their time together.

Clutching the fortunes in her hand, she pulled the undershirt over her head. It went down to mid-thigh, so she padded out into the dark living room.

Blake stood at the sliding glass windows looking out, his silhouette both intimidating and forlorn. In that moment, she saw the warrior he usually kept carefully banked. His shoulders were broad and carved with muscles, angling down along thick arms crossed in front of him. His back was lean, sloping into loose-slung jeans he’d put on. His feet were bare, but she didn’t discount his fierceness for one second like this. His deceptive casualness, his quiet intensity—he looked calm but ready to fight. Not murderous but capable of killing. She shivered.

The truth was that his time in the military wasn’t a reality she understood. Throwing yourself into danger. Fighting for your life. It was theoretical to her. She felt in awe of his service to his country but unknowing of the harsh realities—or aftereffects.

Why didn’t he sleep? She’d asked him that night in his study, but he’d never answered. She sensed the answer lay here, in the turmoil that rippled through the air unseen. He didn’t sleep because he couldn’t. He couldn’t rest because his heart was still at war.

In some ways, it was a far greater barrier to their happiness than her mistrust of men, than Melinda, his lover-come-lately. The pain inside him was an invisible enemy that invaded when they were most vulnerable, breathing desperation into their intimacy and inevitably into their sex. There were places inside him that she couldn’t reach, not with her words or her body. And if she could? She was a little afraid of what she would find.

He turned suddenly, though unsurprised. She got the impression he’d known she was there, probably heard her wake up, his senses finely honed, primed for a battle left behind.

“Are you okay?” she asked softly.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” he said, although it wasn’t really an answer, she realized.

He crossed the room and took her into his arms. Some of the tension left his body, and she felt grateful at least that she helped him that much. If she could only be his balm, then she would soothe and soothe him until she was spread thin.

She opened her palm, showing him what she’d found. Some of the papers dropped from her hand, twirling in the still air like dandelion leaves, wishes on the wind.

“They fell out,” she said. “You kept them.”

He spoke gruffly. “I thought if I saved up, then maybe I could have a future with you.”

Her yearning felt like a knife, slicing her into ribbons from the inside. A future, a together, a moment stretching out onto the horizon, never ending.

“Yes,” she breathed, revealing her want.

“Yes?” he repeated, and she wasn’t sure what he was asking for. A confirmation that they could have it, that they could last.

He’d told her he loved her on the first night they’d slept together. Never since, as if sensing how much she feared the undeniable pull of him, the sense that she could lose herself in him and never find her way out. With Doug it had been infatuation, but this was more—so much more. How much worse would it be to have him look at her with disgust? How much worse for him to pass her by on campus without even turning his head in her direction?

The memory of that winter break with Doug humiliated her, highlighting the worst parts of her life, how little she had to offer. She knew Blake didn’t judge her for being poor, but the fact remained that she paid her rent by cleaning his large, stately home. Her mother scrimped and saved from her own cleaning business to help pay for the rest of her tuition not covered by the scholarship and loans. She was in a different stratosphere, miles away even as he held her close.

“Do you think love is enough?” she whispered, staring into his fathomless eyes.

For a moment he was silent, and she thought he might not answer. He seemed thoughtful and…so far away she’d never reach him.

He bent to press a kiss to her lips. “You pulled me back from the brink. I don’t talk about it because I don’t like to think about how close I was, how weak I was then, but it’s true. And I never want you to feel beholden to me, stuck with me because I’d fall apart if you left. The fact is, losing you would hurt ten times worse than having half my face blown off, but I’d keep going. I’d go on living because I don’t know any other way.”

Her heart cracked a little then, an almost audible, tactile thing that filled her whole body with pain but also tenderness. A raw sort of hope, more jagged than love, more meaningful than all her fears.

“I love you, Blake.”

“God, I know,” he groaned against her forehead. “You can’t know how much that means. Do I think love is enough? It’s the only thing at all. The world is cold and hollow, but with

you, I feel alive again.”

A tear slipped down her cheek, meeting his bare skin, dampening the crinkly hair and muscled plane of his chest.

“Ah, don’t cry, Erin. I never meant to make you cry.”