by Simply BWWM
“It’s something I’ve never experienced before, and now that we’ve shared it, I don’t know how to go back. I don’t know how to let go of it and live without it,” he said as his brow furrowed slightly. “I’ll figure it out, I guess, because I will not compromise you here, but I want you to know how precious you are to me, and how much every moment with you means to me.”
She felt her heart begin to ache and she leaned up and kissed him softly, and then looked into his jade green eyes as she combed her fingers though his sandy golden hair.
“Being with you is the most incredible thing that has ever happened to me. I mean, I felt so strongly about you before; admiring your work, and everything that you are as a person; your integrity and honesty, your ambition and dedication, your amazing mind and your kind and compassionate heart… there’s so much about you that I admire, and what we share together like this just amplifies all of it more than I ever knew that it could.” She pressed her forehead to his and then kissed him once more; a long lingering kiss that stopped the words between them.
He sighed and pushed himself up from her, sitting for a moment with his head in his hands. “I wish it could be different for us. I really do. This is so difficult. I don’t know how I’m ever going to make it through the rest of the year, seeing you in my classes and around the campus, and knowing that I can’t touch you or kiss you, knowing that I can’t have you at all.
“It’s already felt like one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do and we just got back.” He turned to look at her, running his finger along the lines of her cheek. “I hope that it’s not that difficult for you, too.” He spoke earnestly, looking at her with great concern.
She sat up and began to reach for her clothes and pull them back on. “It is that difficult for me as well, but we’re just going to have to get through it. I’m not going to compromise your job here, or your reputation, or any part of your career or life. You mean too much to me for you to get hurt, and I won’t be the one to do it.”
She dressed herself and then turned to look at him as he stood up and zipped his jeans closed.
“I do want you to know that every moment you are thinking of me, I am thinking of you too, and I want you just as much and just as often as you want me. I have no idea how I’m going to be able to sit through your classes and watch you teaching while I’m thinking of how it feels to make love with you.
“My focus will be split all year between what I need to learn and what I want with you, but I promise you that I will do my best to make it work.” She smiled at him and slipped the flash drive into her purse.
She walked toward the door and opened it, turning to look over her shoulder at him one last time before she walked out. He felt like his heart was going to burst out of his chest and he called her name.
“Cat!” He walked quickly to her and stopped when he reached her in the doorway. He lifted his hands to her face and held it, gazing into her eyes, searching for an answer to the fear in his heart.
“What is it?” she whispered as she looked up at him and reached her hand up to touch his as he held her cheek.
He hesitated a moment and then asked her in a strained voice, “Do you regret it? Are you sorry that you ever did any of it with me?”
She smiled at him widely and shook her head, reaching both of her arms around his chest as he enveloped her in his embrace.
“No, lover of mine, I don’t regret a single moment of it at all. Not any of it. I would do all of it again, except that I would have started it on the very first day I met you so that we could have had all of this time together. That’s the only thing that I would have changed,” she told him softly as she leaned her face up to his.
He was overwhelmed with his feelings for her, and he bent down and covered her mouth with his, kissing her passionately, tasting as much of her as he could while he held her tightly against him, one hand moving up into her hair to close his fingers in it, and the other hand sliding down to her ass, closing firmly around it as he pulled her hips to his and pressed her back up against the doorframe. He kissed her long and hard, and they finally parted breathlessly, gazing into each other’s eyes as they let each other go reluctantly.
She bit her lip and tried to stem the hot tears that stung her eyes as she stepped out of his embrace and his doorway. “I’ll see you around, Professor James.”
“See you, Miss Marshall.” He breathed painfully as she turned and walked away from him, her eyes blinded with the tears she could no longer hold back. She heard the door of his office close and she knew that it was the last time that they would ever touch that way again.
She had just reached the end of the corridor when she heard her name and turned around to look behind her. Reggie was walking up to her quickly, and from the furious look on his face, she knew that it wasn’t going to be good when he got to her.
She sighed and waited and when he got to her, he was so angry that she took a step back from him, keeping her eyes locked on his.
“What in the hell was that?” he asked, jerking his hand back down the hall toward Connor’s office.
She felt her heart skip a beat as panic hit her like a wave and her eyes grew wide. He couldn’t have seen her with Connor. There was no way that he had just seen her leaving Connor’s office.
“What are you talking about, Reggie?” she asked in feigned exasperation.
He leveled his gaze at her and shook his head. “Don’t you try and play games with me, Catalina Marshall. I saw you just now with that… that creepy old man, that lecherous jerk. I saw his hands all over you and him sucking on your face. What in the hell are you doing with him? I told you not to be with him! I told you just to leave him the hell alone!”
Fury rose up in her and she took a step toward him, looking up at him with fire in her eyes. “You have no right to tell me what I can or can’t do, or what I should do! Who do you think you are? What I do with him is no one’s business but his and mine!”
He took a step closer to her and she held her ground, glaring up at him. “I’m your best friend! That’s who I am! Or did you forget? Did you forget that I’m supposed to be the one that you trust the most, the one that you are closest to in the world? Did you forget that you and I love each other and that you mean the whole world to me? Did you just throw all of that out so you could go get it on with your teacher?” He flung his words at her, demanding of her that she consider what it was that she was really doing.
She stopped short, her reply halted by the reality of what he had said to her. She shook her head. “It’s not like that, Reggie! Don’t twist things around and make them what they aren’t! That’s not what’s going on between you and me, or him and me! You were never supposed to see that! No one was supposed to see that!”
He gave her a disgusted look and shook his head. “Oh no, I’m not supposed to see it, but you expect me to sit there and listen to you tell me all about it, how the two of you had the best sex you’ve ever had in your life. That’s what you want me to do. Forget that I love you and just sit there and listen to you tell me all about you laying down with another man! Is that it?”
She felt her cheeks warm with embarrassment and she looked around her quickly to see if anyone else was listening to them. There was no one around, but Reggie’s raging eyes were burning into her.
“That’s not it at all!” she told him as tears threatened her eyes for the second time that morning. “Reggie, I love you too, as a friend. I didn’t even know that you had any kind of other feelings for me until you said it when I got back from the trip, so don’t you go accusing me of anything! You have never said a word to me about how you felt, and I’m sorry to have to remind you, but I don’t feel for you that way! I love you, but just as a friend, as my best friend, and that’s not going to change!”
He lifted his chin at her defensively and glared at her. “So you’re just going to keep screwing that old man behind closed doors and leave me out in the cold to wish it was me you were holdin
g. Is that what you’re going to do?”
Her eyes narrowed to razor thin slits. “What I do with him is none of your damn business, Reggie! Let it go!”
He shook his head. “I’m not going to let it go! Someone has to stop you before you wreck your school career and destroy your life!”
She turned around and walked away from him as he yelled after her. She walked as quickly as she could, hoping that the distance would silence him and that he would see that it was nothing they were ever going to agree on, and somehow let it go.
Catalina hurried toward her communications class, wishing that the beautiful time she had shared with Connor had not been so utterly marred by such a nasty fight with Reggie. She pushed them both from her mind as she opened the door to the classroom and sank miserably into a seat in the back row.
Chapter7
Catalina went home from school that afternoon and when she walked into the house, she saw her father sitting on a kitchen chair watching the door, and she knew in an instant that he had been sitting there waiting for her.
She could see his work boots sitting beside him, his feet covered by worn socks, one of which had a hole in the toe. His work shirt was dirty and wrinkled from his hard labor all that day. His old ripped jeans were covered in unidentifiable dark patches. His arm was resting on the kitchen table, and in his hand there was a cold beer. She saw the condensation running down the side of it, and one drop that seemed to be picking up speed and running faster than the others down the side of the bottle.
There was silence in the room, save for the old clock on the mantle. It had once belonged to her grandmother, and the rhythmic tick tock sound that it made seemed to be announcing an approaching storm.
She met her father’s eyes and saw his tousled dirty hair, and the smudges of sweat and dirt on his face and forearms. His eyes were steady on her and his mouth was set in a firm thin line.
100“Hi, Daddy,” she said quietly.
He stared at her and took a long pull off of his beer before he set it down on the table, his eyes never leaving her. He lifted his chin and looked at her seriously.
“Sit down, Catalina,” he told her in a solemn tone.
She drew in a breath and slowly lowered herself into the chair in the living room that faced him. He took another swig of his beer and set his bottle down firmly on the table, then he looked at her and she saw the embers of a glowing hot anger that had been burning in him for a little while. Her heart skipped a beat as she wondered what was going on. She hadn’t been in trouble in longer than she could remember, in fact, it hadn’t been since she was about sixteen years old, but she knew that look on his face, and she knew that things were not good.
“Are you sleeping with one of your professors at that school you’re going to?” he asked her point blank. Her father was not one to fool around.
She felt like someone had just yanked the whole world right out from underneath her. “What, Daddy? How… where did you hear that?” she tried to speak and found herself stumbling through the sentence.
He raised his voice a little. “Just answer my question! Are you having an affair with one of your professors?”
She couldn’t lie to him. She could not sit there in front of her father and lie to him, and she suddenly felt more ashamed than she ever had in her whole life. If there was one thing she would have wished to keep secret from him, it would have been her relationship with Connor.
She took a deep breath and nodded her head, speaking quietly. “Yes, Daddy.” She wanted to add so many things to that statement. She wanted to tell him what a wonderful man Connor was, and that it was not just a tawdry affair. She wanted to tell him how much Connor meant to her and to help him understand what a wonderful thing she had found with him, but she knew that she shouldn’t say much more than whatever the basic answer to his question was, at least while he was so angry.
He shook his head slowly at her and pressed his lips together in a tight line. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing having an affair with some older man who is one of your professors? Huh?”
She felt her heart pound and her body tremble as she sucked in a breath to try to answer him. “Daddy, it isn’t really like that, it’s more like-“
He cut her off. “Don’t you dare say love, young woman. Don’t you dare. What you are doing right now is messing up your life! You are making one of the biggest mistakes that you are ever likely to make! I can’t believe you’re doing that! I can’t believe that my own daughter is sneaking around the campus having an affair with one of her professors!
“I raised you better than that! That’s something that some cheap little tramp might do, but not you! Not my daughter! I’m so disappointed in you right now! You’re letting me down, and you’re letting yourself down!”
Harold had never hit Catalina, but his words just then felt like a wrecking ball to the stomach and she could barely stand to look at him, knowing how upset with her he was. Disappointing her father was about the worst punishment she could imagine. Nothing he could do to her could ever make her feel as bad as him being disappointed in her or ashamed of her, and she could see clearly that he was both, just then. It devastated her.
He took another long pull off of his beer and rose up to his full height of six and a half feet. He was a big man; strong and full bodied, but not heavy. He worked far too hard to be overweight.
Harold began walking toward her and he stopped when he was a few feet away from her, looking down at her in outrage. “I can’t believe you’re doing this!” He waved his hand at her.
“I never had the chance that you have! No one ever did anything for me like I am doing for you, working my fingers to the bone every single day so you can have the money you need to go to school and make something of yourself; make something of your life!”
She felt guilt begin to ball up and build in her heart and stomach. He began to pace in front of her, looking down at her.
“I never got any kind of opportunity like you have! I’m not jealous that you have it, and I don’t begrudge it at all, you know that, I always wanted better for you than I had!” He raised his voice a little and she dropped her eyes to the floor.
“I know that, daddy,” she said quietly.
“I didn’t go to work and just about kill myself, spending my life toiling so that you can pull some kind of stupid stunt like this!” He kept walking back and forth in front of her, never taking his eyes off her. “I’m not about to sit here and watch you throw away the chance at a good life just so some despicable old man can lure you into his bed! You deserve more than that! You deserve better than that!” He raised his voice again and she did not look up from the floor, but instead just watched his sock-covered feet moving back and forth in front of her.
His arm went sweeping in an arc and he continued. “He probably has all kinds of young innocent girls that he coerces into sleeping with him, and you probably think that you’re special to him! Well, you’re not! You’re not anything to him! You’re nothing more than the next girl he’s screwing, and that’s all. You don’t mean anything at all to him! You think you matter to him? You don’t! He’s just using you, and I’m not about to put up with anybody using my baby, especially like that!”
Catalina didn’t want to defy her father, but she had to defend Connor. She looked up at him then and shook her head. “No, daddy, it isn’t like that! I don’t know why you think it is, but he is really special to me, and I’m special to him! There are professors who have reputations for having affairs with all kinds of students every semester, but he isn’t one of them.
“In fact, I’ve been taking his class for four years now, and he’s never had an affair with a student. It’s just not how he is!” She hoped that her defense would ease her father’s anger and help him to see that there was another side to it altogether.
Her defense of Connor only fueled the anger in her father more. “You think you’re special to him? You’re not! Has he come by here? Has he met me and stood in m
y house and shook my hand and introduced himself? Has he asked me if he could see you? Has he acted with any kind of honor or respect at all? No! No he has not.
“What has he done? He has sneaked around with you behind everybody’s back and had a secret affair with you. No good and honorable man who has a sincere interest in a woman is going to act that way! You just can’t see it because you’re too wrapped up in him for any kind of common sense to get through to you! Well, I’ll tell you right now, I’m not having it anymore! Do you hear me?” he demanded, stopping his pacing and looking down at her furiously.
She sighed and stood up, getting to her feet right in front of him, and then looking up at him.
“Daddy, I’m telling you that it’s not like that with him. He does care about me and he is one of the best men I have ever known!”
Harold stood stock still and his eyes grew wide with anger. He looked directly at her and raised his voice.
“I am not about to stand here and listen to my own daughter standing before me talking to me like that, sticking up for some low life, scum bag who is only using her for her body! I’m not having it!” he demanded.