Page 27 of Bone to Pick
But when I was no longer a Hannabury student, I would do my best to make him remember in a way he’d never, ever forget again…
I had a bone to pick with fate… and I was going to win.
ChapterEight
THEO
I was a liar.
After telling Porter I would only sleep with him once, I continued to use his body for my pleasure over and over for the next forty-eight hours. When the tree workers finally cleared my driveway Monday morning, it was time to take Porter home.
It felt like I was dropping off a part of me and watching it walk away forever.
Worse. Watching it walk away so it could linger at the periphery of my consciousness for the next few months, tormenting me with what I wouldn’t let myself have.
Never had I played it so cool. If my students thought I was stoic in class, that was nothing compared to the overly casual way I said goodbye to Porter Sunday.
“So. Good luck with everything,” I said as he opened the passenger door, letting in a blast of arctic air.
He stared at me. “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?”
I couldn’t get enough air in my lungs, and my stomach felt like it was full of restless vipers. I clamped my back teeth against the impulse to tell him to stay, to close the door and come home with me where he belonged.
“I mean it. I wish you all the happiness in the world.” I hesitated. “You deserve it.”
He let out a long exhale before meeting my eyes. “Let me make one thing clear,Professor. I care about you. There is a spark here, a fucking fantastic one, and we both know it. This could be something incredible. Hell, it already has been. Don’t… don’t screw it up because of your jacked-up ethics nonsense.”
“My job security isn’t nonsense,” I said, losing the warm glow I’d had a split second before. “Neither is your degree.”
Porter reached out to take my hand, but when a group of students walked across the street ahead of us, he changed his mind and pulled his hand back. “I know. And I respect that. But there are only seven weeks left until I’m no longer a student.”
I opened my mouth to tell him I couldn’t make him any promises until then, but he stopped me with a quick kiss to my cheek after making sure the students had passed. “See you in seven weeks and one day, Professor,” he whispered. “And that’s a promise.”
He was out of the vehicle, hands in his hoodie pocket, sneakers squeaking across the snow, before I could say another word. I watched him as he walked up the path, as he jogged up the stairs, as he disappeared into the house.
Fuck, I was so screwed.
We’d talked about his temporary living situation. Finding a place to live for only one semester hadn’t been easy for him, and he was due to move out by New Year’s. He’d told me if he didn’t have a job lined up already, he’d need to move back in with his family in Little Pippin Hollow.
I didn’t want that to happen. Hell, I didn’t want Porter leaving Hannabury—leavingme—at all. But neither did I want to hold him here with promises made when circumstances had thrown us together in a single bed. I didn’t believe for a minute that a corporate job in the big city was right for him, but it wasn’t my choice to make.
I backed the car out of the drive and made my way to campus to prepare for the following day’s classes. Thankfully, Monday classes had been canceled also, due to the residual power outages and downed trees around town, so I had time to recover my equilibrium.
Assuming such a thing was possible.
Once in my office, I threw myself into work to force my brain to get over its little fairy-tale weekend. This was the real world—my career, my never-ending list of papers to grade, the textbook I was co-writing with the head of the gender studies department on gender roles in Renaissance literature, the final exam that needed to be finished up.
Surely if I threw myself into the ocean of busywork, it would drown out the fire Porter Sunday had lit in my blood.
* * *
Five days later, I could say for sure that the flame of Porter Sunday was still blazing merrily inside me. The man seemed to be everywhere on campus. When I grabbed a salad between classes at the campus deli, he was at a table in the corner typing on his laptop, and I wanted so badly to know what he was working on. When I knocked on Jim Burton’s door to ask him about a scheduling issue, Porter Sunday was in there for his office hours, and I had to bite back a sarcastic tease about how he’d managed to locate the English faculty offices at long last. And when I drove by the Hub one afternoon, planning to drop off some soccer balls I’d found on deep discount, Porter was outside with the kids, hanging handmade snowflake ornaments in the tree in front of the rec building.
Every time I saw him, he was ten times more beautiful than the last… which was saying something, considering how fucking beautiful I’d already known he was. After being with him intimately, I was more aware of his body, his movement, the way his lips curled up in amusement. Every inch of him made me squirm with a restlessness I couldn’t shake.
When I returned to my office after my lunch break, Jim Burton popped his head into my office. “Got a minute?”
“Sure,” I said, trying to get a handle on my dark mood. “What’s up?”
