“Well, you were something, and now you’re not. So how the hell did you escape? Because she’s threatening to tell my brother if I don’t sleep with her again, except I’d rather pull out all my teeth than go back into that bedroom because, holy shit, man… Do you know what she made me do?”
I winced, not wanting to know even a little of what they’d done. Lifting my hand to stop him when he opened his mouth as if he wanted to actually tell me, I said, “Look. I’m sorry you got yourself into this situation, but—”
“Ted would disown me if he found out I fucked her. He and Patricia are supposed to get married next week.”
“Holy shit,” I blurted. “That’s who your brother is. Wow.” I started to tell him how douchey he was for doing such a thing to his own blood, but then a question I’d been dying to get answered since I had learned she was engaged spilled out of me with, “Why in God’s name would anyone want to marry her, though?”
“Because she owns all the best development land in the county,” Ted’s brother said. “Now can you give me some pointers of how to shake loose of her or not?”
I merely shook my head. “I can’t believe you slept with your brother’s fiancée. Dude, that’s hard core.”
He scowled. “She got me drunk; I had no idea what I was doing.”
“Look,” I said. “Just come clean to your brother. Trust me, that’s the absolute best path you could take.”
Ted’s brother chewed on his lip thoughtfully. “But he’ll never talk to me again if I do.”
I made a face. “The guy’s your brother. He’ll get over it and forgive you…eventually, and hey, he might even thank you if he ends up not marrying her because of it, because he’ll have dodged a major bullet. You both should get as far away from her as possible. The woman is a viper, a bloodthirsty, blackmailing viper.”
Gripping his blond hair, the guy made an uncertain face. “Man, I don’t know. It’s such a risk.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “It is. But that’s how I did it. She kept holding things over my head and forcing me to do what she wanted, month after month, until finally I just couldn’t take it anymore. I had to risk everything. It was scary as shit, but…” I lifted my hands. “I made it through to the other side, didn’t I?” When I saw a woman walk past the hall we were talking in, only to pause and back up to glance at us, I sighed. “And…you just got made.”
The Malfoy wannabe glanced at me confused. I pointed toward Dr. Janison just as she disappeared again. “That was Monica, Patricia’s sidekick, right there. And she just saw you talking to me. They’re going to know something’s up.”
“Shit,” he hissed. “Maybe I can talk to her, ask her not to tell Patricia that she saw me anywhere around you?”
As he started away from me, in full pursuit of the English professor, I just shook my head. “Yeah, good luck with that,” I called, hoping he didn’t turn out to be quite as stupid as I’d been.
It had taken me way too damn long to learn my lesson.
Suddenly, I brightened, because hey, I really must’ve learned my lesson, and I was free of Patricia now, wasn’t I? Ted’s brother seemed to think I was, and she’d told him her last toy was broken. Did that mean she was done messing with me? God, the mere idea left me lightheaded with hope. And double perk: he hadn’t been Reese’s psycho ex, either, which gave me even more faith that maybe things were going to be okay.
Reese and I could be together with no more worries haunting us from either of our pasts.
Malfoy had taken up most of the time I would’ve used to meet with Reese before class, so I went ahead and headed to sociology without seeking her out. The hour dragged by; I swear I glanced at the time once every thirty seconds. And politics seemed to go even slower than sociology. Speech wasn’t so bad, but that was only because the shyest girl to ever walk the planet was scheduled to give her talk in front of the class. The poor thing had been able to fumble out maybe five stuttering words, sweat pouring down her bright red face, before she passed out cold on the floor. I felt awful for her, but at least she’d kept my attention.
After that was calculus, and I hurried that way, hoping to bump into Reese as she was leaving. Felt like I had a million and one things to tell her, from fainting shy girls to guys sleeping with their older brother’s fiancées.
So when I actually caught sight of her up ahead, I shifted my messenger bag on my shoulder, excitement leaping in my stomach. I winked at her when her gaze caught mine.
Her eyes widened as if she’d never seen me before. Then she threw herself forward, stumbling to a stop in front of me. At the same moment I noticed she was as white as a ghost and shaking like crazy, she wheezed, “Professor McGonagall! Thank God I ran into you.”
Uh…okay.
If this was some kind of kinky foreplay, I was so down.
She slipped her backpack off her shoulder and fumbled to unzip it, needing about four tries to get it open.
“I know it was due last Friday,” she told me, “but I finished my paper and I would really appreciate it if you’d reconsider accepting it late.”
She thrust forward an already graded essay with a bright red A at the top and notes in the margins, then bit her lip expectantly when she met my gaze.
Not really sure what I was supposed to say, I played along as best I could, narrowing my eyes like the stern teacher I was supposed to be. I mean, I guess stern was my role, right? I wouldn’t get to bend her over her desk like the naughty student she was being and punish her with a good paddling unless I was the stern type. A guy had to stay in character, after all.
“I told you no late assignments, Miss Randall.”
She got a little too deep into her own role when tears glistened in her eyes. “But I worked on it all weekend.” Damn, she even managed to put a worried tremor in her voice. How did she get that to sound so real?