Accusations I shouldn’t have cast.
But I was having a harder and harder time making any sense of what I was feeling.
The outright protectiveness over a child that had long since crossed over the line of prudent. Beyond a student/teacher relationship.
How I felt tied up and bound to his father.
His father who stared at me from where he whipped open his car door, the man so tall and ominous and intimidating.
But those fierce eyes were filled with something I’d never witnessed before—hurt.
Hurt disguised as rage.
I’d hurt him with my assumptions because his protectiveness was wrapped up in his son, too.
Regret clamped down on my heart, and I hugged myself tighter as Trent slipped into the driver’s side and started the car. The engine was loud and powerful and filling the quiet with the chaos that he was.
Those wicked eyes watched me through the glass, glinting daggers that destroyed and decimated.
Regret slipped down my spine like a block of ice.
Cold.
I had to force myself to stand still. Force myself to remain in the spot instead of rushing out to beg him to stop so I could try to explain.
Explain I was believing too much. Seeing too much. Wanting too much.
That I was scared.
That I was broken.
That I was terrified he might be the only one who might be able to heal some of that.
God. I was terrified of it all. That it was wrong. A sin. That I was asking for the pain a man like Trent Lawson would bring.
His tires squealed as he jerked from the curb, like he needed to get away from me as desperately as I needed to get away from him.
Because I could feel myself stumbling in a direction I shouldn’t.
Dangerously close to tumbling over an edge and into an abyss that I knew nothing about. No idea of what I would find there. No idea what awaited at the bottom.
Hope or heartache.
And if it was the latter? I wasn’t sure I would survive that kind of fall. I had no solid piece remaining that could withstand that sort of breaking. I swore, I was barely holding it together as it was, these healing fractures more fragile than I wanted to admit.
There was no looking away when the car whipped out onto the street and accelerated. The white car disappeared long before the sound of the engine did, so I found myself standing there staring into the nothingness where they had been for far too long.
Long enough that I jolted like a lunatic when a voice suddenly shouted, “Boo,” close to my ear.
My heart leapt out of my chest, and I whirled around with my arms flailing.
Tessa, my so-called best friend, cracked up, bent in two and holding her stomach. “Oh my god, you are too easy, Eden Jasmine.”
I shook myself off, straightening my dress and the mess of emotions jumbled inside. “Ha, ha, ha, you’re hysterical.” I rolled my eyes at her.
She laughed harder. “You jumped like five feet in the air.”
“I did not.”
“Um…yes…you did, you know, since you were standing out here staring after your boss’s car for fifteen straight minutes after it disappeared, mouth watering like someone was dangling a piece of chocolate obsession cake in front of you and you couldn’t quite reach it. You were all grabby hands.”
Her hands grasped for thin air.
I grumbled a sound of denial. “I was just making sure my student got safely on his way home.”
Disbelief shot from her mouth. “Are you really gonna stand there and try to pull that off? Act like your belly isn’t growling for a little of that cake?”
“He’s a man, not food.”
She jostled her shoulder into mine. “So, you’re saying you want him.”
“I didn’t say that at all.”
“You don’t need to when it’s written all over you. Your eyes are hungry, Eden. Real hungry. Like crazy hungry. Ravenous. Clearly, you’ve gone without for far too long. I’m actually concerned you might devour that poor boy.”
It was an all-out tease.
I scowled at her. She was worried for him? Had she seen him? No doubt, it was me who was in danger.
Her smile softened, her gaze taking me in, expression turning knowing. “You like him,” she prodded gently.
My lips pursed in a thin line, not sure how to respond.
“There’s no shame in that, Eden.”
A frown pinched my brow. “Isn’t there?”
I didn’t know why I thought it prudent to ask. What answer I wanted. I wasn’t even sure there was a correct one.
Tessa scoffed. “Um…half the population would be guilty if it were a sin. The man is stupid hot.”
I cringed.
With a wry grin, she nudged me again. “But you want him for more than all that delicious cake.”
I did my best to hold back my amusement, and my teeth clamped down on my bottom lip. “I have no idea what I want,” I admitted.