Page 64 of The Love Interest

“Let me.”

He is unmovable. Stands with his legs apart, rubbing his forehead. Scrunching up his face.

“Emmett.”

He places a hand on my shoulder and says gently, “You need to go.”

“It hasn’t been half an hour yet… Has it?”

He shakes his head. “I have no idea. I lost my mind. I need to clear my head. I need to clean up this mess.”

Well, shit.

I zip and button up my jeans. I put my vest back on, adjust my bangs. I start to pick up the papers that are on the floor.

“Leave it. I’ll do it.” He picks up my bag and coat and hands them to me. He kisses me on the top of my head. “You really need to go now.”

“Can I see you later?”

He shakes his head. “That’s not a good idea.”

“Not seeing you later is also not a good idea.”

“We need to finish out the semester and then see where we’re at. Okay?”

“See where we’re at?” My face feels flushed and not from the orgasms. “So you don’t want to see me again until when? Winter break? May?”

“We have one more class together. You’re going home for Christmas, right?” He’s not asking because he’s trying to figure out when we can see each other. He’s trying to console me.

“Right… I’ll see you around, Professor.”

“Fiona.”

I open the door and walk out without looking back.

Screw this.

I am not going on this roller-coaster ride of emotions by myself.

I don’t even realize I just passed Veronica in the hall until I’ve almost reached the end of it. I turn to see that she’s looking at Emmett’s door. I have no idea if the window is still covered up or not.

Guess it’s a good thing I left when I did.

Guess I’m never going back.

30

EMMETT

Merry fucking Christmas to me.

This has always been the most difficult holiday to get through ever since Sophie. Things got better once my niece came along, but now it feels like there are two women missing from Christmas at my parents’ house—Sophie and Fiona. I wasn’t expecting to feel this way. I should know by now that all of my reactions to Fiona Walker are unexpected. Everything she says or does to me is a surprise.

I surprised myself by buying her a bunch of presents when I was online shopping, the night after she was in my office. The night after I’d tasted her—on my desk—and realized I was totally, irrevocably fucked. It scared me.

But it didn’t feel rightnotgiving her a Christmas gift. So I ordered her a bunch of my favorite pens and notebooks and a fucking MacBook. It has always made me nuts that she has such an old laptop. Also, I ordered her a bunch of padded bras as a joke. And a pair of fancy three-hundred-dollar panties from some French store. And a black lace corset—also as a joke. Because I’m hilarious and I have too much money. It made me happy, and I wanted to have them all delivered to her in a big package.

She didn’t look at me all through our last workshop class. I was impressed that she showed up at all. She’s strong, so strong willed, and impossible to ignore. The novel chapters she’s been turning in are better written than most of the other students’ work, and I have never once told her this. She was right. I’ve been overcompensating.