Page 150 of The Other Side of Green

“So?”

“And here she turns up all these years later, just like you asked her to once upon a different lifetime. Jack I’d say you were pretty damn lucky even if you don’t know it.”

I nodded mulling over his observation. “So you and Eva, huh? Not your normal type of desperate, fake, and blonde.”

Alex bit his bottom lip before smiling. “She grew on me and what can I say, she’s kind of short. It’s cute.”

I blasted a laugh. “Jesus, Alex, don’t ever let her hear you calling her cute. She’d kick you in the balls so hard fertility would be a long distant memory.

Alex chuckled, shaking his head. “I know, that’s why she’s a cracker.” He’d changed so much the last few weeks. Maybe one day the Collins family would be a name worth mentioning again.

Or maybe he should change his name—probably that one.

Turning, I faced the gates. I motioned the folder to him in goodbye. “Thanks, bud.”

Greene answered my knock straightaway with a barked, “Enter.” I walked in pushing my shoulders back and lifting my chin. Until I saw the dean sat in the visitor chair.

So, it’s like that is it?

That’s fine. I like an audience too.

“Jack, sit.” Greene didn’t meet my eye. I’m guessing he’d already decided I no longer fitted as protégé material.

And again. Fine by me.

I sat in the chair while he shuffled some papers on his desk, a flash of color standing out against white sheets of printed documents. “We’ve had a serious complaint from a student about you.”

I nodded. Literally no point in acting surprised.

“Is it true you’ve been romantically involved with Lyra Lennox?”

Greene glanced down and moved the papers on his desk revealing the pictures of Lyra and I in full. I wanted to snatch them away—no one should see Lyra like that—but now wasn’t the time.

I sat a little straighter. “I’m sure you appreciate that the situation isn’t as clear cut as it initially sounds. I’ve known Lyra since she was a baby, a fact I’m sure she has already told you.”

Greene slammed his hands down onto the desk and the dean fidgeted in his seat, clearing his throat.

“That’s not the point, Jack.” Greene took a deep breath. “Lyra is under a lot of scrutiny. We’ve got major news stations wanting to interview her. We’ve had more interest in our Christmas performance this year than we’ve had in decades. Now there’s a very real chance she might be more famous as the student who fucked her teaching aide and not for her violin skills.”

I wanted to punch his dirty mouth for talking about Lyra like that, but I could see through him now.

“Oh, please, her violin? Do you even care?”

“Of course I care. She’s my student. She’s under my duty of care, same as she was under yours. You took advantage of that fact. What will people say when this gets out?”

For a moment, just one, I could almost believe he cared about Lyra, about her gift.

But now I knew otherwise.

“And if Lyra wasn’t rocketing to fame and wasn’t going to put you and your department on the map? If she hadn’t opened a giant can of fucking worms that you wanted sealed shut; then what would you be feeling?”

“Jack,” the dean interrupted. “It’s irrelevant. You’ve breached an unbreakable rule, you know that. If you and this Lyra knew each other from before, you should have just waited until you were no longer directly working with her. Once she’d left there would have been no rules to break.”

“And rules are everything, right?” I asked him directly, ignoring Greene.

“Yes, they are. They protect the student, the Staff, the college.”

“So what happens now?” I asked, searching inside for some sign of disappointment, dismay. Instead, all I could think of was Lyra. She was everything: every angle of love, every glimmer of the future, they were all entangled in her, they always had been. Loving her had once been a fool’s hope, but now I knew that was no longer the case.