Page 51 of Misadventures with a Professor
“I should have told you. But it’s hard to talk about for me, and for you…for you, I only wanted you to look forward to your future. Not be stuck with me in a painful past.”
“But what do I do now?” I ask tearfully. “What comes next?”
“That, my brave girl, only you can answer. But I will say that I believe fear is part of the process. It’s what makes the joy all the more precious in the end.”
“That’s very wise,” I say, sniffling as I pull back.
“Go easy on Oliver,” Dad says gently. “Men like us sometimes need longer to become as brave as you and your mom were. He’ll find his way.”
I shake my head. “He was willing to do so much for me, but it felt all wrong. It felt like he was forcing himself, and I decided at the beginning of the summer that I wouldn’t be that girl. That clingy girl who grabbed on to any promise of a future, no matter how emotionally coerced it was.”
“So noble,” Dad says. “But did you ever consider it’s the other way around? That he’s trying to cling on to you and just doesn’t know how?”
I frown. “It didn’t feel like that.”
“He’s lost someone before, and it sounds to me like the first thing he wanted to make sure of was that he didn’t lose you too. Think about it, pumpkin.” And with that, Dad drops a kiss on my forehead and leaves me to my thoughts.
Could he be right?
Was Oliver trying to hold on to me, as opposed to grimly shouldering me like some kind of burden?
Did he…want me?
And the baby?
And even if he did, would he ever forgive me for running away?
Chapter Sixteen
Oliver
I thought I already lived through the worst day of my life. I thought what happened with Rosie was the worst thing I would ever go through, but as I walk through the house calling Zandy’s name and realizing with cold, encroaching horror that she is gone, I know I was wrong.
This is the worst day of my life.
This is having my heart broken.
And the shitty thing? I absolutely know why. I know I deserve it.
I walk back into the study where I had her pinned to the wall not an hour before, where I held her curled and crying in my lap.
God, what a fuckup I am. I should have held her until night fell. I should have dropped to my knees and worshiped her. I should have cradled her and murmured how happy I was, how much I loved her, how I would take care of her as long as she’d let me. I should have been honest. I should have just talked.
But my God, how could she have expected me to respond right away? Wasn’t a man allowed some time to process news like this?
Even as I think a bitter apparently not, raking my hand through my hair, I know it doesn’t matter. I didn’t even ask her to marry me, I just told her that we’d do it—God, no wonder she left. I fucked up. Something that becomes more and more apparent as she refuses to answer my calls.
Shit. Where could she have gone? Where does she have to go? I’m the only person she knows here. My cottage is the only place she has that’s not in America—
Oh fuck.
The flight from Birmingham. Of course, she even told me about it, but somehow I wasn’t able to connect that with her absence now, because, pathetically, I suppose I’ve been holding out hope that she wouldn’t do something so drastic, so…real.
What else is she supposed to do? Stay in a country that’s not her own while she carries the child of a man who was grimly planning an emergency wedding?
Good God, I’ve become my own Victorian morality narrative.
Fuck.
