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

Her eyes widened, nostrils flared. At least he’d finally made his point.

“Fine,” she ground out. “I was only doing this to be nice. You’re pathetic anyway, walking around campus with no shame. Don’t you realize everyone is staring at you?”

Unfortunately, he did. “We’re done here.”

She gave him a sly smile. “What am I even talking about? No one would date you now unless you paid them. I’m only here because your mother called me, worried about her little boy.”

Jesus. Dear old mom had never given up on him like his father had.

“Are you finished?”

“I’ll see you at the faculty ball. You wouldn’t miss it, would you?” Her smirk made it clear she expected him to hide.

“Of course not.”

The gleam in her eyes was bloodthirsty. “I look forward to it.”

“As do I.”

After she left, he let his eyes shut, a small release of his frustration. At least that part was over. The side of his face burned with the familiar, daily pain—and a small but real dose of humiliation. Walking around campus with no shame.

Footsteps approached. It was too late to back down now. Hell, it had already been too late. With a sinking feeling, he stepped back as two students burst in. They were clearly in the middle of a conversation, one animating her words with her hands, the other with his head down, looking at his phone as he walked. The girl saw him first. She stopped. And gawked. The boy glanced at her first, mouth open mid-sentence. Then he saw Blake and his mouth gaped open.

Blake tried to clear the air. “I’m Professor Morris. I’ll be teaching this course. Grab a seat, we’ll get started in a minute.”

He found a smile, the one that used to put people at ease. His world had been divided into before and after. Before, he could charm anyone with that smile. Now, he knew, it looked more like a grimace. The boy seemed to recover better. He brushed it off with a nod of greeting before hitching his backpack and grabbing a seat. The girl took it a little harder, peering at his face as if it were a puzzle for her to solve. Blake forced the smile to stay in place and gritted his teeth. She finally turned to take a seat beside her friend when Erin walked in.

All the air sucked out of the room, like it always did when Erin was near. The explosion had brought him low, but it was nothing compared to what she did to him. The scars were a frustration, the constant pain a prolonged sort of torture. But the pain she could deliver would devastate him.

And she wasn’t looking at him.

Her head was down as she passed him, leaving only the sweet Erin scent in her wake. She took the seat farthest in the back, though the room was small enough that they were still close. Even as she unpacked a notebook and pen, she consistently avoided eye contact.

He frowned. They’d agreed not to give away their relationship, but this was extreme. It probably hinted at inappropriate behavior more than outright flirting would have done. No, it was more than circumspection. Something was wrong. And he’d have to sit through a whole class before he could ask her what it was.

Erin

Erin focused on lining up her pens beside the notebook.

She flipped the page open to a fresh one. Wrote her name in careful script.

Okay, she was stalling. Because Blake was looking at her curiously and she couldn’t face him at this exact moment, not with the other students between them. His stare was a force pulling her toward him, a question she felt compelled to answer. Finally a new student entered, and he turned his attention away. She felt a corresponding chill at the loss.

She’d practically sprinted from meeting with her advisor, hoping she could make it here before anyone else and wish Blake luck. She’d skidded to a halt, out of breath, when she heard Professor Jenkins’s voice inside with him. It had sounded, in that smattering of words, as if she’d asked him to the faculty ball. And he’d accepted.

Even though she knew he wouldn’t do that to her.

Finding them together, she’d flashed back to that night she’d seen the woman at Blake’s house. And gotten a resurgence of that same old anger. Even after Professor Jenkins had stormed out, looking pretty angry in her own right, Erin had remained in the hallway. She didn’t want him to see her this way. She trusted that when she heard the full story, everything would be fine. But in the meantime, all she felt was sad.

Only when two other students went inside had she been able to stroll inside and pretend indifference.

Someone took the seat next to her. She glanced up. A smiling face.

“I didn’t know you’d be here,” he said. “Good to see a familiar face, though.”

She smiled. “Jeremy. Didn’t I see you outside Dr. Miller’s office?”

“I meant to catch you after, but you left so quickly.”