The Boy Who Has No Faith (Soulless 5)

He finished the cheese and crackers.

“You know, I can have breakfast waiting for you every morning if you tell me what you like.”

“I don’t eat breakfast,” he said. “Already told you that.”

“But maybe you should. I mean, you do so much throughout the day—you need that nutrition.”

He shook his head. “I’m not hungry in the morning.”

Then I’d have to make sure we had lunch every day.

We headed back into the city and approached the university. Ronnie drove him to the street leading to the entrance of his classroom building, and we got out. Derek placed his satchel strap over his shoulder and walked to the front doors, about to teach a class in jeans and a t-shirt. He didn’t look like the professor type at all, not when he was so young and good-looking. I followed behind him, and we headed down the hallway until we reached double doors.

Derek went inside without waiting for me.

The students were already there, sitting in the seats that scaled up the farther back they went. It was dead quiet, the door loud as it shut behind us. Derek didn’t care about the sea of eyes on him and headed to the desk at the front of the room. He quickly pulled out his papers and his laptop.

His lesson plan was just a mess of papers, and he had to quickly organize them.

There were only twenty students in the class, and most of the seats in the room were empty. All of them looked at me—like I didn’t belong there.

To be fair, I didn’t.

I took a seat at the desk in the bottom corner and tried to disappear.

Derek didn’t greet his class at all. Didn’t even look at them. He grabbed his marker and approached the wall with large whiteboards that could be pushed around in all different ways; that way, he didn’t have to erase what he’d already written. “Autonomous unilateral propulsion systems.” He wrote in his scribbled handwriting then started to do equations, which totally looked like Egyptian hieroglyphics to me. “You’ve got to take into account math that takes place over three mediums.” He turned to the class and held up one finger. “Earth’s gravitational medium.” He wrote it down on the board before holding up two fingers. “Space flight once it hits the atmospheric drag equal to coefficient one.” He wrote it down then held up three fingers. “Then the state of no medium at all—space. There are traces of oxygen in the air, which is why the ISS needs to ignite its thrusters and recalibrate its position over the surface of the planet. It does create some degree of drag.” Then he flooded the board with more mathematical equations.

I looked over my shoulder at the students. They were all writing quickly, people who were nearly a decade younger than Derek. Did they understand what the hell was going on?

Because I sure didn’t.

When the one-hour lecture ended, Derek turned back to the class, his arms over his chest as he surveyed his notes. His fingers brushed along his jawline like he was thinking. When his arms were crossed like that, his muscles were more noticeable, and it was obvious he was ripped underneath that t-shirt. He was so busy that I wasn’t sure when he found the time to work out. Must be in the mornings before he started his day.

I’d never met anyone like Derek Hamilton, someone so remarkably intelligent that there were only a handful of people like him on this earth. It was a quality I’d never experienced before, and after watching him work in his lab and teach this class, I realized how sexy it was.

He had looks and brains.

But he was my boss, a playboy who went through hearts like parts of his rocket, and I couldn’t look at him like that.

Then a student broke the silence and asked a question.

Derek lifted his head and listened before he turned to the board and started to work out the problem addressed. He broke it down step by step and worked with the student to consider the aspects that were misunderstood and worked the math until it made sense.

That was when I realized the class was over. This was some kind of office hour session.

Every single student stayed.

The hour passed, and they worked out problems in their textbook. Derek was easily irritated, and he hated stupid questions. Well, at least questions he found to be stupid. But he was never irritated by any of his students. When he was in his element, it was obvious in the way he thrived, the way he turned into a mentor who was passionate about his discipline and not his paycheck.

At the end of the second hour, the students filed out.

One man stayed behind, thin with glasses.

Derek lifted his gaze and addressed him. “Yes, Mr. Wyatt?”