“What do you mean ‘that’s it’?”
“You’re not going to go on about how wonderful she is, how she’s the love of your life? You talk about Hamish that way all the time.”
I shouldn’t be so floored by how blunt she is, but I am. Or maybe it’s not that she’s blunt. It’s because I don’t have the nerve to tell her the whole truth.
Because Miranda isn’t the love of my life.
She’s just the mother of my child.
And a roommate I’ve been living with for eleven long years.
“No,” I say simply. Even the partial truth is freeing. “I’m not.”
She cocks her head, taking a drag. Studying me still, like she’s trying to read words written on my face. I wonder what they say. Finally, she just nods and says, “Sorry. I don’t mean to pry.”
Yes, you do, I think. And that’s what I…
Bloody hell. I can’t even finish my own thoughts without scaring myself.
“It’s not a problem,” I tell her and start walking again. “As for my parents, they’re lovely. Really. My brother and I have more of a strained relationship though. He’s adopted, came into my life just after I left high school and put our family through hell. He was a right bastard actually, and I hated him for a long time.”
“Why?”
“Well, it seems trite now, but I saw how my parents were with him, giving him the life he never had, and he didn’t react well to it. He was a teenager, which didn’t help, and eventually he was stealing from them, even me, doing everything he could to get money for crack, meth, whatever it was. Eventually my parents had to kick him out and he was living on the streets. I can’t tell you how hard it was to be walking through this city sometimes and see him panhandling. Skinny. On what always seemed to be his last legs. He may have been adopted, but he was still my brother.”
“That sounds horrible,” she says, shaking her head.
“It was horrible,” I say with a sigh, remembering the sorrow and pain Lachlan had caused me like it was yesterday. “But eventually he cleaned himself up, and now he’s a lot better. Still drinks too much, and sometimes I wonder if he’s abusing some other kinds of drugs. Doesn’t talk much.”
“Sounds familiar,” she says under her breath.
“I swear you’d think we were related in some ways. But now he’s starting up an animal rescue shelter and he’s a successful rugby player.”
“Oh, really?” Her eyes sparkle. “Rugby players are hot. You guys must make quite the sight together.”
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. The tattooed beast of a rugby player and the nutty professor. No contest there.
“I’ve always like the nerds, anyway,” she says, passing the cigar back to me, and this time she stops and holds on to it. “There’s always more to them underneath.”
Shit.
My heart climbs into my throat.
I flash her an awkward smile, trying to play it off. “Are you calling me a nerd?”
She still won’t let go of the cigar. Her expression becomes completely serious.
“I’m saying there’s a lot more to you underneath.”
Her eyes are fixed on mine, and they pull at me, tease me, tempt me, transitioning from want to fear to adoration and back again in a cycle. I’m caught in it, completely mesmerized. Every part of me feels heavier, from my lungs to my legs, like I’m staked to the ground.
This is going to ruin me, isn’t it?
The sudden ring of a bicycle bell shatters the heady air between us.
We both break apart in time to see a drunken bicyclist weaving toward us right down the middle, hollering, “Get off the bloody bike path, you wankers!”
I look down to see we were both indeed on the cyclist path.
And now I’m breathless, exhilarated, my pulse running wild at our exchange.
The cigar is in my hand.
I have to do the right thing.
“We should head back,” I tell her. “It’s getting late and the bicyclists are rampant tonight.”
She nods, drawing her lip between her teeth. I really wish she wouldn’t do that.
“Okay,” she says softly.
Together we turn and head back to the university, back to my office.
I start cleaning up the mess we left with our food and our beers while she slowly puts her laptop and books away.
We work in silence. The vibe of the room has completely changed. Before it was easy and free, and now it’s laced with things both said and unsaid, the mahogany bookshelves and dim lighting seeming to push us together.
I keep coming back to that look in her eyes.
The look that said she wanted me.
And whatever I am underneath.
She leaves my office with a small smile and a wave, and I know she feels it too.
The change.
She shuts the door behind her.
I sit back down at my desk.
Finish the Scotch.
And pretend for a moment that I’m not completely screwed.
CHAPTER SIX
Natasha
London
Present Day
I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t stand there and talk to him, look at him, breathe the same air as him.
The moment that Brigs turned around and headed back into the classroom, I did the only thing I knew how to do.
I ran.
I ran down the hall, feeling wild and breathless and aimless, like a trapped animal being set free. I didn’t know where to go, only that I couldn’t be there with him.