Page 76 of The Professor's Wife

I was going to come.

“Give me your eyes,” I pleaded.

My heart was beating wildly. It was going to burst out of my fucking chest.

The second her eyes flicked to mine, that aching tether between us followed like a zap of awareness.

I felt her stare in every part of my being.

“Daze…”

I came.

Hard.

And she accepted it down her throat almost greedily.

My vision spun, and I lay there spent and panting, my eyes unfocused as I stared at the dark sky above.

Dazed.

Fucking dazed.

Not for the first time, the questions slammed into me, and I swallowed them down.

Where did you come from, Daisy?

What is your story?

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE PAST

Four months had passed since that afternoon at the coffee shop, and Oliver had spent every one of them showing me parts of life I thought belonged to other people. Whenever June could watch Rowe, he took me somewhere new: restaurants with white tablecloths and dishes I was afraid to pronounce, a small theater where he bought me a dress because I said I had nothing to wear, and a gallery where he asked what I thought and listened as though I couldn’t give a wrong answer.

He rememberedeverything.

That I hated raw onion. That I loved old bookstores. That I checked the price before ordering and worried whenever he spent money on me. He asked about Rowe on every date, remembered when he had a cold or a bad tantrum that made me late, and he never made me feel like being a mother was something he merely tolerated. I had spent years arranging my life around work, school, bills, and my boy. With Oliver, I was still a mother, but I was also a woman being taken somewhere beautiful. By the time he asked to meet Rowe, I had stopped feeling like a visitor in his life. I wanted to believe I belonged there.

“You’re nervous,” Oliver said.

I wrung my hands together. “I’m excited.”

“Promise?”

I nodded. “I do. I promise.”

“Then why haven’t you said anything, Daisy?”

“Because it’s the first time I’ve ever brought a man over to meet Rowe, and I just want it to go perfectly.”

He nodded. “That’s a normal reaction.”

I watched him as he slid the suit off his body one layer at a time, neatly depositing them in the laundry hamper. “Come shower with me.”

I glanced at the window and at the falling snow. It was still morning. I’d barely been out of the classroom ten minutes when he picked me up. “I showered this morning.”

He approached me and wrapped his large arms around me, bringing me close. I was very aware of how naked he was, and I felt a blush in my cheeks as I looked up at him and into his deep brown eyes. He pressed a kiss against my mouth. “Sweetheart, it’s to calm your nerves. You just wrote a big exam and now you’re about to take me around to meet your boy on his birthday. I want to hold you.”