“Please don’t go. I can’t stand to be apart from you. Without you in my life, every day feels barren—empty. I can’t bear another hollow hour. I need you in my life, Wyatt. I’m begging you, don’t shut me out.” There. For once in my life I shed my feelings—easy as breeching a dam. Now if only he accepts what I had to say, we can finally move on. And that would be a miracle. Nothing ends well for me—ever. I’m not sure why I thought this might be the exception.
“Thank you for those words.” Wyatt rubs his thumb over my cheek with a pained look in his eyes as if he were trying to wipe away some incurable wound. “I needed to hear them. I think I’d better go and try to figure things out. How about we meet tomorrow afternoon? We can go for a hike near the Witch’s Cauldron?”
“Yes.” A flood of relief takes over as I exhale for the first time in weeks. “I would love that.” My arms cinch around his body ten times tighter than before. My lips demand to crash to his, but I hesitate. If I start I won’t know how to stop. I want to do everything right, and if that means waiting until tomorrow to lose myself in Wyatt then so be it.
He gives a careful nod as if agreeing before heading out into the night.
He’s back.
Wyatt is back in my life, and I’ll do whatever it takes to get to the bottom of the catastrophe that put a wedge between us—even if it means getting kicked out of Whitney Briggs.
* * *
“What good is another article going to do?” Annie keeps pace with Baya and me as we head to class. “And, I’m sorry to remind you, but they kicked you off the paper.”
“I know, I know. I just think I need to get my side of the story out there somehow. You know, balance the scales.”
“Yes, but how? And is balancing the scales really necessary? Does Wyatt care one way or another?”
“I care. I’m going to wallpaper this place with copies. One thing I don’t care about is if the Dean himself gives me the boot. It sucks that Wyatt’s good name—not to mention perfectly good and fully capable body—were waylaid into something so awful.”
“There she is!” Baya freaks out at the sight of Professor Nicholson. I made it clear that I felt the need to confront her.
“Here goes nothing.” I speed over just before she heads into class. “Excuse me?”
She turns abruptly, and the smile slides from her face once she spots me.
“Can I help you?” Her eyes sweep over my body from top to bottom. There’s an arrogance about her that would make it easy for me to hate her, but, knowing that Wyatt once loved her, I don’t have the heart to do it. I don’t need to imagine how much it hurts to lose him—I already know.
“Would you mind if we talked?”
“That’s what office hours are for.” She pushes on toward class, and I block her before she hits the door.
“I know you have a copy of a very sensitive legal document of mine in your home—without my permission or Wyatt’s.”
“Is that what this is about?” She huffs out a laugh as if it were a minute detail. “Listen, I was merely protecting a friend. You can call off the faux legal team.” Her gaze drips down my body with a look that says I’m better than you in so many ways. But she’s wrong because for one, I would never make copies of someone else’s sensitive information, and, two, it’s me who Wyatt is interested in, or at least he was. “Besides”—her expression sours—“I don’t have it anymore. He took it with him.”
“Did you have anything to do with the article that was published in the school paper?” I’m not sure why I went there other than the fact I feel the intense need to scratch all suspects off the list, and, up until last night, I had no idea she was a person of interest.
She blinks back in surprise as if I just coldcocked her. And, judging by her response, she didn’t have a thing to do with it. A part of me wishes she did so I could pin her self-righteous ass to the wall.
“How dare you accuse me of something so wretched,” she seethes out the words, corrosive as acid. “And how dare you use a wonderful man for your own advances. It’s despicable. Wyatt deserves someone so much better than that.”
“And that would be you?” A part of me wants to laugh in her face. I could never see Wyatt with someone so black-hearted, so jealous over a student that she’d use her authority to put her down.
“It was me once.” She looks past me into some unknowable world where she’s still with the man of my dreams. “It can be again.” Her eyes dart to mine. “It will be.” She heads into class, and I’m slow to follow.