Page 248 of The Professor's Wife

He waved my words off with a lazy hand as he strode to the minifridge and removed another bottle of whiskey. His muscled back to me, he rasped, “Great, yeah.”

“Tristan…”

“When you want another revenge fuck, Daze, you know where to find me, yeah?”

He refused to look at me as he took a large swig from the bottle. I didn’t move for a few moments, torn.

When it was clear we were done, I reluctantly opened the hotel door and stepped out.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

Oliver returned that night, agitated and unresponsive. I was already tucked into bed, reading by the lamplight, when he meandered into the room, his steps slow and tired. I hid my shaky hands under the covers and watched him closely.

“Oliver?” I said cautiously. “Where’ve you been?”

He didn’t look back at me as he switched the bathroom light on, grumbling, “Stayed back at work.”

He didn’t ask me how my appointment went. He didn’t even look at me as he stripped his clothes off and entered the shower stall. What if he got out and did ask about my appointment? What if he was quiet and unnerving because he already knew what I’d done?

Anxiety swirled inside me as I waited for what felt like ages for him to finish. By the time he was out, I’d turned the lamp off and had the covers up to my chin, like it would somehow stop him from doing the worst if I was buried beneath the fabric.

He lay down, and I had a feeling he was staring at the ceiling. I pictured his dead eyes, his still form, the vacancy in his expression. What went on inside his mind? I always pictured blackness like tar. Imagined if I ventured into it, I’d walk out covered in it.

“How did the appointment go?” he finally asked.

I didn’t let my body tense. I let the question run over me like water as I breathed calmly, normally, answering, “The clinic was full. They told me to come back tomorrow.”

“Figures,” he scoffed. “The damn system has been fucked for years now.”

Oliver hardly swore. When he did, it usually meant that he was either going to lock me up in his lesson room or he was pissed about something. I thought of how flustered he’d been lately. Not for the first time, I thought of him coming home that night, covered in dirt. Thought of the leaf in the pocket of his pants. Thought of Lucy and the detective. A cold feeling washed over me. I didn’t like that my back was turned to him. I felt exposed and vulnerable.

Oliver was unnervingly still—no movement, no sound, not even the whisper of breath. Yet his presence filled the room, dense and inescapable. At times, it felt as if he could see through me, as if he knew everything. Even my thoughts felt loud under his gaze. What I’d done in that hotel room with Tristan. My betrayal. It echoed in the silence. The first chance I had to run, and I ended up in the arms of a heartbroken musician.

I barely put up a fight.

I fell so willingly and easily into his bed. And yet it didn’t feel like a mistake. There was no guilt in my chest. I didn’t feel disgusted with myself. On the contrary, my disdain was in how I left things. Cold and abrupt, I fled from that room and made him feel cheap. I shouldn’t have done that. I could have calmed the fuck down and been a big girl about it.

I burrowed deeper under my covers, silencing my thoughts the moment I felt the heat of Oliver’s stare against my back.

The alarms and camera recordings were still down, and Oliver was gone by the time I opened my eyes the next morning.

The house was quiet—too quiet. Like it had been emptied of sound on purpose. I sat up slowly, the sheets clinging to my skin, damp with sweat. The sun was already high, pouring through the windows like molten gold. It was going to be a scorcher.

But the heat wasn’t what made my chest tight.

It was the silence. The absence. The way Oliver had vanished without a trace, leaving behind a house that felt more like a trap than a home. I knew better than to trust the quiet. It was his favorite kind of control: subtle, suffocating.

I tried to shake it off. Tried to focus on anything else. But my thoughts kept circling back to Tristan. His voice. His hands. The way he looked at me…

I hated that I wanted to see him again.

I hated that I didn’t care.

The uncertainties were there. I knew he might not want to see me again. That I could have very well been a notch on his bedpost, but my heart didn’t believe that. The doubt was drowned out by something louder. This…desire, maybe. Or desperation. A need to feel something that wasn’t fear.

So, I got up. No shower. No breakfast. Just a white dress clinging to my skin and sandals that slapped against the pavement as I stepped outside.

The sun was brutal. It baked the sidewalk, shimmered off car hoods, turned the air into something thick and humid. I walked fast, ignoring the burn on my shoulders, the sweat trickling down my spine. Every step felt like rebellion. Dazed, I kept moving.