Lover (Court University 4)

“Isn’t there?” For the first time, emotion filled her words, no longer the educator and disciplinarian. This was a woman, a mom sitting in front of her son. Her jaw clenched at me. “Tell me, Brielle, did you know?” She leaned in. “Did you care if you did know? Or are you just another one of those women who takes advantage of a situation? Another professor taking advantage of her young students?”

The words popped the surface of an already heated and emotional conversation. I, personally, had been simply trying to keep up thus far.

But then she said this.

Ramses shot forward. “Mom, it is not like that, and you know it.”

“He’s gotten in trouble before with people like you,” she claimed. “Older women like you who prey and like to take advantage of young men.” She shook her head. “I know you’ve been through a lot of crap, Brielle. I feel for you. I felt for you. I got you this job.” Her voice cracked at the end. “I trusted you.”

I started to protest. I started to say something, anything, but her words locked me in place. The accusatory nature of them, yes, but the fact that I was losing.

Losing her.

And losing him.

I stared at Ramses, at a loss for words beside me. He seemed to just be trying to keep up too, but I read between the lines here. She was accusing me of something that clearly had already happened before. Something that happened involving her son.

Oh, God.

Feeling sick to my stomach, I swallowed.

A soft plead touched Ramses’s eyes, unsaid words parting his lips. I never gave them a chance to sound. Instead, I opted to face my friend. “Evie…”

“Please leave.” She covered her face. “Please go. I can’t…”

And I didn’t make her. Because if what she said was true, I got it.

As much as I hated it.

Rather than deal with any of it either, I got up. I left, embarrassed and feeling like a complete idiot. I rushed from her chairs, out of her office, but Ramses hooked my arm before I even made it out of the building.

“Bri, it is not what she says,” he urged right away. He wound me around to face him, a terror on his face I’d begun to connect with loss. The fear of losing something. Losing me. “What she said isn’t what it sounds like.”

“Am I fetish?”

“What?”

“Am I a fetish?” I backed out of his hands, his eyes twitching wide. “Is this a thing for you? Older women?” I had to ask the question.

I had to know.

Something told me this was the thing that happened to him at Brown. And though he hadn’t lied to me about that. He hadn’t told me about it either.

Would you have stayed if he had?

Probably not, enough odds stacked against us to not think I was also a fetish for him.

His brow launched up. “Of course not.”

“Why of course not?”

“Because it’s not true.”

“How can I believe you?”

“Because it’s me.” His hands cage my face, his brown eyes scanning mine. “It’s me. The man who is so fucking in love with you it fucking hurts. Who wouldn’t hurt you. I’d hurt first.”

My lips trembled, his firm hold guiding my gaze up to clash with his.