Before You Go

by St. James, Meredith

  "Hard to believe the infamous Isaac Gilmore has finally been brought to heel by a woman. Though, maybe not that hard to believe. After all, I did see what your girl looks like in bed."

  I grabbed the dark blue throw pillow from behind me and whacked him against the side of the head with it. I knew what picture he was talking about.

  Laurel had been trying to convince me to skip a faculty lunch. The afternoon sun had created a glow around her as she peeked up at me from the comfort of my bed. She'd been half-wrapped in the sheets, the other half of her exposed so that I saw just a tease of her white lingerie. She'd batted her eyelashes as she'd made all sorts of sexy promises about how we'd spend our time if I'd just climb back into the bed with her.

  I couldn't do it. I'd already known things between us were heading towards a dead end. Forcing myself to leave had seemed like a good idea to help put some much-needed space between us. I'd snapped the photo with my phone so quickly I wasn't even sure she'd realized I'd done it. I never wanted to forget what she looked like waiting for me. It had been almost enough for me to blurt out something stupid, something I surely would have regretted saying. I'd forced myself to leave, instead.

  The idea of Drew seeing evidence of such a private moment made my stomach churn.

  "You should invite her over. Or are you worried she'll ditch you for your better looking young nephew?" He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively as he dodged my second attempt to whack him.

  "Shut up," I growled.

  "You haven't had her over once since I moved in. That must be some case of blue balls you're suffering from." He just never knew when to fucking stop.

  "She's gone," I snapped.

  Drew's whole demeanor turned serious. "What do you mean gone?"

  My fingers skimmed over my keyboard, rounding out the explanation of grades on my syllabus as I tried to ignore his question. I flew through the syllabus, borrowing heavily from the one I'd done the previous year. As I finished up with a mere forty-five seconds to spare, I realized that Drew was still staring at me expectantly.

  I heaved a sigh. "She graduated. Probably moved to the city, or hell maybe she found a job on the West Coast. I don't know."

  "You don't know?" Drew's eyes bulged. "You didn't even bother to ask what her plans were?" The rest of my words sank in. "Wait, graduated? You were sleeping with a student?"

  "I didn't sleep with her while she was taking my class." Even to my own ears, I sounded too defensive.

  "Let me get this straight. You slept with a student that you—at some point—had in your class. It was serious enough for you to be snapping pics on your phone and doing this lovesick bullshit." He gestured to my laptop. "But now you have no idea where she is?"

  I stood up and tried to brush past him but it didn't do any good. He trailed after me down the hallway. It sounded even more fucked up than I thought when someone else said it so succinctly like that.

  "Why would you risk your career on some chick if you weren't even gonna keep her around?"

  He'd managed to follow me through the house to my bedroom. "Drew, back off. I'm serious." I stared him down. "You've got about twenty-seconds to leave before you get an eyeful."

  He heeded the warning. He didn't make any attempt to follow me the rest of the way. I stepped into the master bathroom and closed the door to shut him and his questions out.

  My head was spinning. Drew wasn't so far off. I lost Laurel, and since then the only way I found to make the days pass quickly was to drink them away. I messed up. There was no getting around that. I had a woman that was so near to perfect that it made my chest ache and I hadn't even tried to keep her. I twisted the shower knobs with far more force than was necessary.

  Drew's muffled voice spoke through the door just as I stepped under the warm water. "If you're done with her, maybe I could track her down. I wouldn't mind—"

  "Finish that sentence and you'll be looking for a new place to live," I snapped.

  His laughter pissed me off even more. I was rubbing my skin raw as I rushed through my shower. I didn't want to think about Laurel and him. Hell, I didn't want to think about her with any man that wasn't me. I wasn't so obtuse to think that she wouldn't move on, but the least I could hope for was that she'd be as far from Kelley, New York as possible when it happened.

  "Hey, Isaac?"

  It irked me that Drew was still talking to me through the door as I stepped out of the shower. "What?"

  "You're too old to have regrets." The little shit. "You should call her and just fix it."

  I scrubbed my hands against the rough hairs coating my jaw. I didn't want to admit how pathetic I was. I had called… only the number was no longer in service. It was sort of like she'd gotten the last word.

  Laurel

  I held my breath as I passed the closed office door. Every nerve in my body was lit up from the moment I stepped foot into the building. It felt a bit like I was tempting fate by even being there. I could see the light sneaking out from under the door, but that didn't tell me much. He was awful at remembering to cut off the lights when he left a room.

  Even if I ran into the man I was so nervous about, he probably wouldn't even recognize me. My hair was colored darker, closer to my natural color than the lighter shade I kept up through college. The dress I was wearing—something I would never have picked out on my own—was a gift from Ivy. The lightweight material stretched all the way to floor in a swirl of grays. It fell somewhere on the spectrum between professional and bohemian, which made sense considering my goal.

  "Focus," I murmured to myself.

  I was lucky to get the meeting with Henrik Wade—the namesake of Kelley's business school. He was friends with the father of one of my former classmates. Thanks to a mutual friend, that former classmate reached out to him for me. It was a major favor considering the man ran a huge, insanely busy tech empire. He didn't often make it to campus, despite the amount of money he donated over the years.

  And I was about to ask him to donate more.

  "Ms. Barrett," he greeted me the second I turned the corner into the conference room. My eyes immediately darted to the clock on the wall behind him. He chuckled gently. "I like to make sure I'm always the first to arrive."

  "So do I… usually." I returned his smile. I showed up fifteen minutes early and he'd still beat me. "It's nice to meet you, Mr. Wade." I offered him my palm.

  His eyes perused over me slowly as he took my hand. He was sizing me up in a way that didn't quite feel professional, immediately making me glad I was at least semi-covered up. I wasn't a floozy or a gold digger and I didn't intend to be treated like one. I pulled my hand away and took a seat, waiting patiently for him to follow suit.

  "Thanks for meeting with me. I've brought some documents I thought might interest you." I slid the half-inch binder across the table to him.

  "I like to donate my money where it counts." He leaned back in his seat, not bothering with the binder I put in front of him.

  "I'm afraid you'll have to clarify that for me, sir."

  "Art is nice but it's not what I do." His grin was patronizing. "I like to invest in education where it suits me. Business students? Those I can employ. Doodlers? Not so much."

  He'd given me the perfect opening and he didn't even know it. "If you'll turn to page six." I motioned to the untouched binder.

  Mr. Wade hesitated for a moment, and then seemed to decide it was worth humoring me. He flicked through the pages until he got to the sixth. The grin fell from his face as his eyes scanned the page.

  "Sir, with all due respect, you can't build software without visuals. Of course, you know that, which is exactly why your company hired six of this year's art grads."

  "Four of those are interns."

  "Paid interns," I reminded him, though I was pretty sure I didn't need to. Henrik Wade wasn't the sort of man who didn't know what was going on in his own company.

  He glanced at me briefly before returning his attention to my binder. I watched with bate
d breath as his fingers toyed with the edges of the papers. I swallowed hard on the cheer that nearly escaped me when he flipped back to the first page and began reading. All the research I'd done hadn't been for nothing. He moved quickly through the pages, but I could tell from the way his eyes moved over them that he was genuinely taking it all in.

  "This is what you're asking for?" His brow furrowed as he pointed at something near the back of the binder. "There's no way this is enough to save the program."

  "I'm not asking for a donation from you to save the program. That would be entirely unrealistic. I'm asking for a donation that would allow the art school to keep me on for one full year. I think we can turn things around without hemorrhaging money to do it."

  My entire summer revolved around the art school. Razor Hall, the building that housed the art program, was just a semi-forgotten piece of property in a back corner of campus. It wasn't fancy, or impressive, or even particularly important—but it became like home.

  I was on a small salary, working seven days a week as I did my best to save the program that so many other people gave up on. I needed something to fix when I couldn't fix myself, and Kelley's art program had delivered. I rebranded the program and ran outreach programs until I could barely hold my eyes open. Even so, the progress I made was only a drop in the bucket. I needed a full year to pull things back from the brink. One year, and I was certain I could save the program for the foreseeable fortune.

  I didn't need Henrik Wade to save the program—I just needed him to make it possible for me to stick around long enough to do it myself.

  "You seem oddly passionate about this considering you never took a single art class during your tenure as a student here."

  I cleared my throat. "I don't need to be an artist to understand why art is important." It wasn't a real answer. It was a challenge.

  "I want to make a different offer." My eyes narrowed as he pushed the binder further away from himself. "There's a position opening in my marketing department. I think you'd be a good fit. The work you did this summer more than proves that you're ready to rise to a challenge and—"

  "No, thank you," I interrupted.

  I moved to my feet, studiously avoiding the man's gaze as I gathered my binder and handbag. I already had one man in my life that didn't care to hear what I had to say—my father. I didn't need another. Besides, I felt a little weirded out that the man obviously either looked at my transcript or asked around about me. Otherwise, there was no way for him to have known I hadn't taken art courses. Maybe he just assumed that was why I really asked for the meeting, to try to finagle a job from him.

  "You're quick to say no considering you're an unemployed young woman with only an undergrad degree in her arsenal."

  "I'm not unemployed until Tuesday," I responded with a tight smile.

  "I stand corrected." He surveyed me a second time, though without the uncomfortable undertone that existed the first time. Instead, it felt like he was sizing me up. "You really think you can make a difference in only a year?"

  I considered his question carefully. "I think that the program has good bones, but people are put off because it comes off as too pretentious. It just needs a chance to build a new legacy, to be what it should have been all along."

  And the art school wasn't the only one suffering from that problem. I needed re-branding as much as the program did.

  He nodded appreciatively. "A new legacy," he repeated softly. "I'll admit I know how it feels to want that." He reached out and yanked the binder back from me. It was incredibly rude, but I wasn't going to dare say a word.

  I watched in confusion as he laid the binder on the table so he could rip one of the sheets out. My inner control freak was horrified that he didn't just unclip the sheet but I continued to keep my mouth shut. He folded the sheet and slid it into the pocket of his khaki pants. He traded the sheet for his wallet, which he opened to retrieve a sleek black business card. Hope blossomed in my chest as he handed it to me.

  "This is my direct office line. My assistant picks it up but I'll let her know I've cleared your calls. I want to be kept in the loop. I'm very interested to see what you're capable of, Ms. Barrett."

  "You won't regret it," I vowed.

  He nodded, seeming pleased with my certainty. "I hope when the school year is up that you might reconsider my offer."

  "I hope that when the school year is up that I'll have proven I still deserve the offer," I answered with a gracious smile.

  "I have no doubts about that, my dear. Now, I wouldn't be much of a gentleman if I didn't insist on walking you out." He picked my binder back up and stuck it snugly under his arm.

  He kept a polite distance as we stepped out into the hallway together. Whatever he was thinking when he first checked me out, he seemed to have moved right past that and into professional territory. We chatted about the work I did over the summer as we made our way towards the bank of elevators at the end of the hall.

  For just a moment, I allowed myself to feel invincible. The feeling, unfortunately for me, was incredibly short-lived.

  Isaac

  "Any questions?"

  I surveyed the crowded lecture hall. Business 101 was a notoriously large class. It was my job to weed out the students that wouldn't last in Kelley's competitive business program. A murmur rippled through the room and I braced myself for whatever stupid question would come next. It never failed.

  "Is it true Travis Olson modeled underwear for his final last year?"

  I couldn't help the way my lips curled upward. That particular project had certainly become infamous around campus. It didn't hurt that Olson had become the football team's starting quarterback. I was pretty sure those photos were still floating around, too.

  "He certainly did. I'll advise anyone who's thinking of following suit to consider waxing first," I joked.

  Raucous laughter broke out through the room. I felt some of the tension I'd been carrying in my shoulders relax. My personal life wasn't looking so hot, but at least I could rely on knowing what to expect in the classroom.

  "Alright. You guys are free to go. Come ready to work on Wednesday." I barely got the words out before people started shuffling out of the double doors at the top of the hall.

  Oh, the joys of underclassman.

  My eyes shifted over a particular seat in the center of the front row. Four years earlier, it was the spot where I first saw Laurel. Another eighteen-year-old young woman sitting in my classroom, it would have been easy for me to gloss over her presence. It was when she spoke for the first time that I felt the uncomfortable stirrings of interest. Intelligent and well-spoken, Laurel was nothing like other college freshmen.

  Love of my job won out, and I kept my distance that whole semester. It was once that first semester ended that I started seeing her everywhere. She wasn't my student anymore, but she was a near-constant figure in the business building. She never even gave me a second look. It was the summer between her junior and senior years when we ran into each other off-campus for the first time.

  I forced myself to shake off those old memories and head for the door. What was done was done, and the sooner I started accepting that the better.

  The shiny risers creaked under me as I headed for the door. Mentally, I ran through the list of things I could work on in my office until it was time for the afternoon class I was teaching. Technically, I was holding office hours, but students typically didn't show up to those until we were far enough into the semester for their grades to be in jeopardy.

  A feminine voice caught my attention. "Yeah, it's just right behind Razor. The rent is much cheaper on that side of campus."

  "Excuse me," someone said from behind me.

  I realized I had frozen right in the doorway, blocking the rest of my students from leaving. "Sorry," I muttered as I stepped out of the way. I blinked hard as I tried to make sense of the scene in front of me.

  My new vantage point offered a clear view of Laurel standing near the front door fac
ing an older gentleman. I could only see the back of him, but his suit screamed money. Laurel looked… relaxed. Her head tilted back as she laughed, the sound filling the hallway so thoroughly that I noticed a few students turned to look in her direction. She looked even better than the picture in my imagination. She also looked happy, and I hated that she was sharing that wide smile with someone who wasn't me.

  A sharp pang of jealousy slammed through my chest.

  As if she'd sensed me watching, her eyes met mine over the other man's shoulder. Her smile dropped as her lips formed a straight line. Her companion turned around. What the hell was Laurel doing with Henrik Wade?

  "Professor Gilmore! Good to see you," Henrik greeted with much more volume than was necessary.

  I wasn't far enough away to pretend not to hear. I swallowed my pride and crossed to his side of the hallway. Laurel was looking right in my direction as I approached, but there was no emotion in her eyes. Painfully, I realized she was looking through me more than looking at me.

  "Nice to see you again, Henrik." I shook the older man's hand even though the last thing I wanted to do was be polite.

  My mind was distracted. Why was Laurel at Kelley? Why was she talking to Henrik like they were old friends? And why the hell did she look so freaking good?

  "Do you know Ms. Barrett?" he asked.

  I opened my mouth to give a resounding yes but she beat me to the punch. "No, I don't think we've met." She stared at me, daring me to contradict her. Laurel focused all of her attention on Henrik. "I've got a meeting with Dean Warren this afternoon, I really should head that way. Thank you again, Mr. Wade. I look forward to speaking with you soon about my work."

  I watched bewildered as the two of them shook hands in a manner that fell somewhere between professional and friendly. Henrik was a familiar face around the business school and known for being a tough nut to crack. Laurel didn't seem to be having any issues with that. He looked completely enamored with her. Jealousy flared back up within me.