Page 16 of Unapologetic Obsession

“Shit!” Amelie’s voice snapped me back to reality. “I think I fucked up.”

What?

I shook my head to break out of my haze and glanced at the tube in Amelie’s hands. My eyes rounded. It seemed she had plunged the dropper into the wrong solvent jar. I pried the dropper out of her fingers and held it up to inspect it. Just as I did so, another voice cut through the chatter.

“What the hell are you doing?” Professor Maxwell’s voice boomed from across the room.

My heart skipped a beat, then started beating erratically. Hope whispered its siren song in my quiet world, and I listened, daring to believe that maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t speaking to me.

To my dismay, he strode toward us purposefully. His footsteps sounded aggressively loud since everyone else had piped down, scared to breathe in case it redirected his wrath toward them instead. “Did you just mix PMU with methanol?” Icy blue eyes zeroed in on me—accusing, unforgiving.

Amelie opened her mouth to say it was her mistake, but I kicked her in the shin before she could admit to it. She was on a scholarship, one she would lose if she got kicked out of this class. Better me than her, though the knowledge didn’t make it any easier to shoulder Professor Maxwell’s wrath.

“Do you know how rare PMU is?” he barked. “It’s impossible to find.”

My mind came up with a flurry of excuses, but they remained caged behind lips that refused to part. Words were like butterflies inside me—beautiful but impossible to catch when needed. I murmured an apology in my head, the words catching in my throat.

Amelie opened her mouth again, and I pinched her under the table.

“Ow,” she hissed, rubbing her swollen side. This time, she looked pissed enough at the physical assault to let me take the fall.

I glared at her, too, silently telling her to keep her mouth shut. If she lost her scholarship, she wouldn’t be able to finish her senior year. Her family was relying on her future income, and she had a lot more to lose than me.

I caught a glimpse of Professor Maxwell, wondering if he could hear my heart drumming franticly. My palms were sweaty, and I felt faint.

He was furious. He slammed his hand on the counter before him, and the rest of the class jumped at the impact. “You put us back by at least a week,” he shouted, then faced the rest of the class. “This isn’t your daddy’s office, where you can play pretend and someone else will clean up your mess. Your mistakes here matter.” Professor Maxwell returned his attention to me. There was a flicker of something—surprise, perhaps—before his expression settled into ire, and he roared, punishing everyone for my mistake. “I’ve had enough of this charade. None of you is fit to be taught. Get out of my lab, all of you!”

Chapter

Seven

CADEN

My brow furrowedas I watched Rose. Student chatter was a dull hum in the background. Most of them thought I was an asshole for yelling at poor, harmless Rose Ambani. I had lost my temper, and it bothered me, not because I cared about her feelings, but because her subsequent reaction was unexpected.

Most students would have either crumbled or shot back a retort. She was shy, so I expected her to fall to the ground after I punished the entire class for her mistake.

Sure, she looked scared, but it was because I had drawn attention to her. She feared the spotlight, not me. She didn’t shed a single tear or run out of the room with her tail tucked between her legs. It starkly contrasted with the humiliation that should be swirling around her.

What an unsatisfactory outcome.

Why didn’t my words shatter her? Female students generally burst into tears when I reprimanded them. The spoiled ones would say, “Do you know who my dad is?”The braver souls hit on me to “fix” things.

Imbeciles.

Rose’s reaction was a first, and it had me at a loss for words. She didn’t cry or threaten me with her family’s status. Herquietness threw me for a loop. It was a void, neither absorbing nor reflecting any emotion I threw at it.

Perhaps she’d try to seduce me if she got me alone.

I hope not.

For the first time, I was caught off guard by someone’s reaction—or lack thereof. I secretly wanted one student to set themselves apart from the rest of the gullible idiots and prove me wrong about this university being filled with entitled snobs.

I leaned against my desk, arms crossed. Her annoying friend gave her a long look while Rose packed a book I recognized as my own. The administrators recommended the textbook I wrote. The intelligent thing to do with a difficult professor was to study the recommended reading list, yet no one else thought of it since it wasn’t mandatory.

As I said, they were idiots.

Just when I thought I might’ve chased away my one sensible student, Rose languidly continued cleaning the rest of the beakers.