Page 49 of Duke

I STEPPED OUT OF the shower with my face pressed to the window, watching him until he disappeared. The dust kicked up from the tires of his truck was the only trace he was even here. That he ever existed. Well, that and the scratches on the inside of my thighs where his short beard chaffed my sensitive skin.

I’m gonna miss that arrogant beast of a man. I never knew he even existed…but now that I do, I know my life will never be the same.

I swipe my tears. Crying won’t whittle away the time until he comes back, keeping myself busy and running my life like a boss is the only thing I can do.

Sighing, I get ready for another day without him.

This is goingto be awkward. I purposefully took my time getting to campus this morning to avoid chatting with Spence before our statistics class. I’m pretty good at math, but I need two coffees and a Red Bull to get through these lectures.

Silently, slipping into a seat in the back of the hall as our professor starts her lecture, I keep my head tucked down while my laptop boots up.

“Good morning. Today will be focusing on linear regression.”

Her words go in and out as my mind fills of him.

The first time our eyes met.

“A linear approach is looking at the relationship between a scalar dependent variable, ‘y’ and one or more explanatory variables denoted by an ‘x’…”

The way his tongue felt between my breasts as he licked his shot off my skin.

“If you have more than one explanatory variable we call that process multiple linear regression…”

My eyes are already rolling back in my head.

The way the air smelled the first time he took me home and left me in the grass.

I squirm in my seat clenching my thighs together—I’m never going to make it for seven months.

I need Duke.

It’s as simple as that.

I need the feel of his strong arms around me, his silky beard rubbing against my skin and the smell of him filling the air around me.

Maybe he’s right and what I feel is lust, but I also know that I love him, regardless of the bad blood between our fathers and how we clash. Because when we collide nothing feels more right.

“Linear regression can be used in lots of ways, one is forecasting… error reduction and are often fitted using the least squares approach…”

The way he breathed down my neck in the supply closet when I was on all fours and he slide up and down my wet folds…

There’s no point.

I’m so lost.

I might as well let my memories takeover because this morning’s lecture is going way over my head. I need to find a tutor or a study partner because none of what she’s saying is making any sense. Staring numbly at the screen of my laptop, I pretend to tap out notes. Instead, I write a love letter to Duke. I’ll probably never send it, but I need to get out everything I’m feeling.

Duke,

Twenty-three days. In the course of a lifetime, it’s nothing, and yet it was everything.

I hate you.

I love you.

I want you.

I’m addicted to your smell and the way your beard tickles my thighs.

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