Page 117 of Tempted Hearts
He’d always called me by my Italian name. But now, it just reminded me of Cole, who was the only other person, besides my parents, who didn’t call me Jules.
Emilio smiled—not amused, not surprised. Just certain.
I felt the familiar instinct to deflect rise up. I let it pass.
“I did.”
He didn’t react the way people usually did when you said something like that. No commentary. No knowing nod meant to guide me somewhere. He just looked at me for a long moment, as if committing something to memory.
“He’s in New York,” I said.
“Yes,” Emilio replied.
The quiet stretched—not awkward, not heavy. Just there.
A customer came in then, the bell above the door chiming softly. Emilio straightened, already turning back to the counter.
I stepped away without another word, the admission still settling in my chest—not asking anything of me yet, but no longer something I could pretend I didn’t know.
45
COLE
Dr. Whitman set her glasses on top of the folder between them and leaned back in her chair. “All right,” she said, “let’s look ahead. Next year’s schedule is nearly locked, but there’s some flexibility in the upper-level seminars.”
She slid a single sheet toward me. Clean, efficient, already half annotated in blue ink.
“We’d like you to keep the Renaissance seminar in the spring. It fills immediately every year, and frankly, no one else teaches it the way you do.”
I glanced down at the draft syllabus.
HIST 642: Power, Patronage, and the Self in Renaissance Europe
Below it, my familiar structure:
Petrarch, Castiglione, Machiavelli, identity as performance, intellect as currency, ambition as survival.
“I was thinking of revising the final unit,” I said. “Less political theory, more lived experience. Letters. Marginalia. How scholars understood themselves, not just how they were remembered.”
Whitman smiled. “That’s exactly why students fight to get into your courses.” She paused, tapping her pen once. “It also dovetails nicely with your research.”
She flipped to another page. “Your manuscript, the Renaissance scholar in exile. Still on track?”
“Yes,” I said automatically. Too automatically. “I’m expanding the chapter on self-imposed exile. The cost of choosing work over place. Over people.”
She looked up then, her expression thoughtful rather than evaluative. “That tension is what makes it interesting,” she said. “And timely.”
She made another note. “We’d also like you to take on the junior colloquium next fall. Once tenure is finalized, it makes sense for you to have a stronger mentoring role.”
Once tenure is finalized.
The phrase landed heavier than it should have.
Whitman continued, unhurried. “Nothing you need to decide today. Just review the assignments and let me know if you have concerns.”
Concerns? Yeah. A lot of them.
She gathered the papers, her movements precise, practiced. The faint citrus scent of her hand lotion reached me as I stood. It was a similar, clean understated scent Juliette used. The thought caught me off guard, sharp enough that I looked away.
