Page 229 of The Professor's Wife

What chance did I have against a man like Oliver?

None. Absolutely none.

And yet… I couldn’t look away from her.

Because even from across the room, even with her sitting beside her fucking husband, even with the rage burning through me like wildfire—

I felt it.

That impossible, unexplainable truth pulsing through my chest:

I knew her.

And losing her—again—felt like a death I’d already lived.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

Oliver left early in the morning. He woke me to say he wouldn’t need me to cook breakfast.

“Rest, sweetheart,” he murmured into my hair before he left. “I’ll try my best to come home. If I don’t make it, the alarms are down. Your wallet is on the bench with your cards.”

Then he was out the door, and I lay there, feeling completely fine.

In case he was watching the cameras, I put on a show and raced to the bathroom to “vomit.” I went about my usual duties, but I did everything slowly.

In my nook, I tried to read to pass the time, but every minute stretched, and all I could think about was last night.

Tristan hadn’t left my mind.

He was a stranger, and I couldn’t stop thinking about him. He was younger than me. Not by much, but there was something restless in him.

He carried the kind of recklessness I imagined I might have possessed in another life—taking chances, living in the moment, making the best of whatever I had while I raised my little boy.

I’d had that once.

I should never have wished for a better life or hoped for someone else to make it better.

I could have made it better on my own.

And now the alarms were down, and Oliver might not return.

The alarms were down, and Oliver might not return. The money was waiting in the laundry room, enough to take me farther than I had ever gone.

But the moment I imagined running, something cold moved through me. Every road I pictured ended the same way: Oliver standing at the other end, as though he had arrived before I had even chosen it.

He had promised he would always find me.

Some buried part of me knew he would. Not believed it.Knewit. The certainty had no beginning I could find and no reason I could explain.

The worst part was, I never imagined him searching.

An open door was not freedom.

It only let me choose where he caught me.

It was past ten when I stepped out of the house.

It was such a strange feeling to be out in the heat and beneath the sun. I stood on the porch for several minutes, giving Oliver one last chance to appear, but the street was deserted.