Page 65 of The Professor's Wife

I wanted to bring her light. Watch her glow in the dark, if only to show her that life was still there, waiting for her to live it.

If I brought her into that light, if she glowed in the darkness and looked back at me with the same ache I carried for her, then I could admit that I wanted her in every possible way.

Not just for the road.

Not just until she decided where she was going.

I would follow her into the dark, not to find the light, but because she was mine.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE PAST

Oliver Black had a score of 4.88 on a professor-rating site that was popular at my school. There were more than seven hundred reviews from students gushing about his class and how inspirational he was. One student was so inspired, they wound up taking all his classes up until graduation.

I thought about that a lot. About being inspired by him. I’d already been on the receiving end of his generosity. He’d dropped me off at my apartment building several times, and during the frequent occasions we grabbed a cup of coffee last semester, he asked questions about my life and seemed genuinely interested when I gave him my answers. I couldn’t think of another time I’d held anyone’s attention like that.

I wanted to think we were friends, but that was probably a stretch. Friends actually spent time together. I was more of a charity case to the professor than a friend.

There was a lot about Oliver online. He had papers and popular books. The students at the school glowed when they spoke about him, joking that he carried the university on his back. His reputation and lectures drew students who wanted to major in philosophy from all over the world. I explored the forums discussing him. Found a few posted lectures where thespotlight was on him as he stood behind a podium atop a stage. There were a couple of lectures filmed inside his classroom, though they were several years old and amateurishly shot.

In one of the lectures, he leaned against the podium and said, “Philosophy isn’t about collecting answers. It’s about examining why we need certain answers to be true. Most people would rather live comfortably inside a lie than question the thing holding their world together.”

The room went completely silent. I tried to follow what he meant, but I was distracted by the way his mouth moved around the words. The confidence in his voice. The sharp line of his jaw beneath the stage lights. I replayed that part several times, though I couldn’t have said whether it was the philosophy or Oliver I was trying to understand.

He magnetized his classroom. The students were engaged and passionate. He cracked jokes that made everyone laugh. He had a wit about him that even I could dissect despite the fact the classes were obviously very senior and covered topics I had no clue about.

I envied those students.

I wondered what it would be like to see him a couple of times a week in a classroom setting. To be allowed to look at him shamelessly as he lectured and cracked jokes. I wondered how it would feel every time he glanced at me or asked me a question I would have to answer in front of everyone. I spent a lot of time fantasizing about it. About how our eyes would lock and linger.

Sometimes, I imagined what it would be like to have him look at me that way in bed. To have his body over mine while his eyes stayed locked on my face, as though he needed to watch every feeling he pulled from me. I imagined his hands being slow and careful, his mouth moving over my skin while he told me things that made me feel beautiful. Wanted. Like there was nowhere else he would rather be.

In my mind, being with Oliver was never hurried or clumsy. It was intimate, and intense, and almost reverent. I pictured us tangled together beneath his sheets, whispering in the dark, my fingers tracing the hard lines of his body while he looked at me as though I were something worth examining.

My crush on Oliver Black was growing a little out of control, and it didn’t help that I hadn’t had my fix of him over the summer. I was taking more adult-bridging classes, and he wasn’t as present. I assumed he didn’t teach over the summer, though he was still around every now and then.

I was classified as a mature student and freshly approved for student loans. I received a decent-sized sum in grant money that helped with groceries and bills at home, but I was still broke. Things were tight with money, and work still sucked, but I passed Biology 12 with an A- and Math 12 with a low B. I was working through anatomy next. Slowly, I was getting the prerequisites done for my nursing application.

I filled my schedule with classes, and because I had been admitted as a mature student, I was allowed to explore beyond the prerequisites. Without thinking, I did what I had been wanting to do for two semesters.

I enrolled in Oliver’s first-year philosophy class.

“I saw your name on my class list.”

My face flamed as I looked up at Oliver. He was doing that thing again, gripping the back of the chair tightly. He wore casual jeans and a polo shirt that hugged his biceps. When he squeezed the chair like that, the muscles bulged. I stared dumbly at them for a few moments before reminding myself to answer.

“I’ve heard so many good things about your class,” I said, smiling.

He looked troubled. “When I mentioned my class, I wasn’t pressuring you to enroll in it, was I? I said it out of humor.”

I shook my head quickly. “Not at all. I know you were teasing.”

His dark eyes drilled into mine, searching for some clue that I wasn’t being honest. “I know you’re interested in the sciences.”

“I think the arts are just as important,” I replied. “And I’m very interested in philosophy.”

He looked over my face. “Do you know what you’ve signed up for?”