Page 49 of The Other Side
18
At eight in the morning, on a Saturday, I was abruptly woken up by a sharp knock at my door.
Too tired to think straight after a fitful night of sleep, I tumbled out of bed, stomping to the door to answer it in nothing but a tank top, sans bra, and my pajama pants, one leg still stuck around my knee from all the tossing and turning the previous night.
I looked like a complete mess.
“Hi,” Chance greeted me with a cheerful smile. A cup of coffee in one hand and a bag of what I presumed was some sort of breakfast food in the other. He shoved the items into my hold and waltzed right past me into my room.
“I have…”—I looked around, panicked— “...knives in here,” I sputtered.
“Really?” He chuckled, looking inexplicably dapper in his regular uniform of slacks, a sweater, shiny wingtips, and his wool coat, having likely come directly from outside. I wasn’t sure where he had procured the food, as it definitely wasn’t from the dining hall. “That’s what you’re going to go with? Knives?”
“Shut up, Chance,” I barked. “You can’t just barge into people’s rooms without asking.” I set the coffee and bag of what I could see were actually pastries on the kitchen counter, trying to ignore the lovely smell that wafted from both items, setting my senses alight.
“I knocked.” He shrugged, taking a seat at the small table next to my kitchen.
“What do you want?” My fingers twitched with the impulse to straighten my hair, or at least wipe the sleep from my eyes, but instead I folded them over my chest in a poor attempt to hide his view of my nipples through the thin material of my tank top.
“I want to finish our conversation from last night, and I want an answer from you.” He folded an ankle over the opposite knee. He had no right to look so casual and yet so goddamned attractive at my kitchen table, uninvited.
“What answer?”
“If you’ll help me find out what happened to Daniel,” he said. “You cared about him. I can tell. So help me.”
His tone was so sincere…his argument so simple, it caught me off guard. I slumped against the counter, giving in and grabbing the cup of coffee, relaxing slightly as the sweet liquid warmed my throat.
Would it really hurt to hear him out?
I glared at him in realization. “How do you know how I take my coffee?”
He rolled his eyes. “It’s hard to miss you spending an hour pouring so much sugar into it that there’s none left for anyone else.”
I scoffed.
But he wasn’t wrong.
“What did he mean to you?” he asked cautiously.
“I didn’t know him that well, but all the students take a class with me each year.” I took another sip.
He waited, knowing there was more.
“He reminded me of myself, I suppose—he was determined and scrappy, and never let his circumstances get him down.” I frowned, worried I’d given too much away about my own insecurities.
So much wasted potential. Both he and Claire were gone, their lives snuffed out too soon. And for what?
“He mentioned you once.” Chance’s eyes were trained on the ground.
“He did?”
“He liked your Greek mythology class.”
I blushed, tickled by the idea that anything I taught mattered to my students. So many of them seem disaffected, but it was all worth it, if it mattered to even a single one.
“What do you know about the article he was writing?” I turned to pull two plates from the kitchen cabinet.
“Only that it was something big. He wouldn’t even tell Claire about it because he was worried she’d get caught up in it.”
