Page 20 of Drown Like Heaven
She knew my entire reason for picking this school wasbecause of the scholarship money I’d been offered, but we sometimes liked to pretend I’d just been following her here like an obsessed stalker. It was part of our friendship flirting routine.
Mila :Somebody was talking about something and his name came up. His name is kinda hot too. Micah Killshaw. Like what? Anyway, tell me if it’s true
Me :Of course. I hope you’re right. Maybe it’ll make this class bearable
I took a deep breath, flipping my phone over so the cracked screen was touching the table, then plucked out my earbuds and neatly bundled them up.
And that moment was when the man himself decided to make an appearance.
Micah Killshaw.DoctorKillshaw.
He strode into the classroom, wearing charcoal-gray slacks that fit him perfectly, a crisp white button-up with the sleeves rolled back to expose his strong forearms. He ran a large hand through his dark blond hair, pushing it back off his forehead.
Shit.Mila was right again.
I couldn’t stop staring at his broad shoulders, the way they tapered into a narrow waist. The perfect, tailored cut of his trousers. Dr. Killshaw was a far cry from every engineering professor I’d had thus far.
My heartbeat stuttered as his eyes flicked up to the back of the classroom, and connected instantly with mine. Some look passed through his gaze, but it was gone too quickly for me to identify it, his eyes already scanning over the rest of the classroom.
The class was Unit Operations, one of a few left for me to take to meet my graduation requirements—technically this was Unit OpsII; I’d taken the first one last semester. It hadn’tbeen a horrible class the previous semester, and I knew I could expect more of the same from this class. Which was somewhat reassuring.
Dr. Killshaw opened his laptop and got it plugged into the projector while students chattered around me. I recognized a lot of the faces in the room; since we’d all been doing the same degree for four years, we’d all been taking similar classes. Not that I’d really become friends with any of them…but the familiarity was nice. I saw the three other people who’d been in my lab group for Unit Ops I, but none of them were sitting together either.
Once the introductory slideshow was up on the projector screen, everyone quieted down, watching our professor stand again to his full height and turn his attention back on the room.
“Hello, everyone,” he started. “I’m Dr. Killshaw, and this is Unit Operations 5776.”
A few people shifted in their seats. I ran a strand of long hair over my fingers, looping it then letting it fall free.
The longer I looked at my professor, the more familiar he felt—which was weird because I was one-hundred percent confident I’d never seen him before in my life. Maybe on some faculty website at some point? I wasn’t sure. I flattened my palm on the top of my closed laptop, wrapping my fingers around the edge as he started the slideshow.
His introductory slide was short, with very little personal information—save for a picture of him hiking, standing in front of Mount Rainier—and then we moved into the basic class structure. He explained when office hours would be held, gave us all the major dates for labs and exams, and briefly went over the general topics that would be covered over the course of the semester.
I was listening to him explain a slide about PPE when I realized why he was so familiar to me.
He looked like Mason.
Well, he didn’t physically look like him much at all. Dr. Killshaw’s hair was dark blond, where Mason’s was brown, and I couldn’t see the color of his eyes from here but they looked light—nothing like the deep brown of Mason’s irises.
But it was that same intangible thing I’d sensed about Mason on the only day we’d met. Whatever that thing was, it existed in my professor too. Or maybe I was losing my mind.
A shiver cascaded down my spine.
Memories of all the things Mason did to me in the backseat of his car filled my skull. Every place on my body he’d put his tongue, the way he’d made me black out. My knife on his throat. Him not listening to me.
I hugged my arms around myself, my eyes skimming to the side to look out the window. Dark boughs of pine swayed in the ever-present breeze, misty rain clinging to the air stubbornly and forming tiny jewels of water on the tips of the pine needles. The sky was as cloudy as ever, looming over everything like a shadow.
At the time, I’d never wanted to see him again. I’d wanted to get out of his car and go home. I’d wanted to be alone.Safe.
I’d felt better knowing he would never really know me. Because as dangerous as it’d been with him like that, it would only be worse the more secrets he learned about me.
But now there was thiscravingin my blood. A craving for that type of violence.
It’d always been there, lurking, but he’d woken it up. Woken up that awful fantasy.Because he could actually give it to me.
And it wasn’t like he gave me his phone number, or his last name, oranyother way to find him again. He’d messed me up then disappeared into the fog, leaving me isolated in the uneasy aftermath.
I was trying not to think about it. I’d gotten out of his car of my own free will, after all.
