The Filthy Series: The Complete Dark Erotic Serial Novel (40 page)

I stepped inside and smiled, glancing around briefly. “Sorry I’m late everyone.” Most of the students were present from what I could tell.

“We almost gave up on you,” a girl in the front row said.

I sat my bag down and smiled. “It’s a good thing you didn’t.” I pulled out my notebook and glanced over the day’s schedule. I typically had the employer who was in for the day, speak to the class first before I gave any sort of lecture. “Today, we have Colleen on the schedule with her employer…” I looked up from the list and glanced around for Colleen. She was a small blonde who sat near the back. But my eyes never found Colleen’s. They found someone else’s. Someone’s eyes I hadn’t seen in years. Six years.

“I don’t love you, Faye.”

The words the owner of those eyes spoke so long ago. They popped into my head, they swam around in the sadness I’d locked away.

Rhett Hale sat in my classroom at the back. He sat in one those rolling chairs, the black ones that all the students sat in. Except he seemed consume the chair, the space, the table in front of him. He was like a black hole that engulfed everything in his path. Except it wasn’t the darkness that consumed everything. It was green. The color of those eyes. Eyes I had loved. Eyes I had wanted to spend the rest of my life looking into. A black suit encased him. He looked bigger than I remembered, more muscular. A few days growth of beard covered his cheeks, and his dark blond hair was a little bit longer than he used to wear it.

But it was him. There was no doubting it. My heart sped up in my chest. The stupid organ—it pounded heavy, so loud I could practically feel it banging against my eardrums.

“Yes, I brought my boss, Rhett Hale,” Colleen said from next to Rhett, snapping my attention away from him and over to her.

“Your boss,” I repeated.

How is this possible?
My mind scurried a million miles a second. He wasn’t here. He couldn’t be here. I hadn’t seen him in years.

Years.

Six years.

“Do you want him to speak now, or at the end of class?”

“Hmm?” I glanced back to Colleen, careful to avoid looking at Rhett again.

“Do you want—”

“Oh, right.” My cheeks heated. “Now is good. I’ll lecture afterwards, like normal.” I started shuffling through the day’s lecture to avoid looking at the back of the room. I could see them moving in my peripheral vision. Colleen and Rhett. They were moving to the front of the room. I purposely walked around to the other end of the table to avoid bumping into them.

As I sat down to watch the presentation, I started to feel it. That itch just under my skin. It had been long time since I had felt that desperation, that need for hazy relief, more than once in a day. But now it was pounding under my skin, throbbing right along with the beat of my heart, demanding I escape. That I run. I was good at that. At running. I had done it my whole life, until now. Until I’d found my place, my happiness in the world where I was free.

“Faye, are you okay?”

I sucked in a breath at the sound of his voice. I hadn’t heard it in so long. It seemed surreal, that deep tenor that was solely his own. I glanced up and our gazes clashed. He stood at the podium now, concern etched into his features. The expression reminded me of how he used to look at me, with pity, worry, concern. They used to all blend together and I’d hated it. I’d fucking loathed it. But I wasn’t that girl anymore. I wasn’t the lonely, lost girl who everyone pitied. I was more than that. I was a successful woman. I wasn’t the broken child who wore her heart on her sleeve anymore. I was the woman who did what she wanted and didn’t let anything hurt her. I was someone different now, and Rhett couldn’t hurt me. Not again.

I used the mask I was so familiar with now, the one that smoothed my features with confidence. I smiled. “Yes, Mr. Hale.” I glanced at Colleen, who stood nervously next to Rhett. “Go ahead, Colleen.”

“I’m Mr. Hale’s assistant…” She started talking, but I shut down my thoughts, ignoring her. I didn’t pay attention to the things she said about him. I knew what he did for a living. I knew he hadn’t changed. His appearance was the same, albeit the laugh lines around his eyes were deeper, a little more weathered than before. I didn’t need for Colleen to tell me that he was a lawyer, that he was good at his job. I knew all of those things.

I just couldn’t fathom that he was here in my classroom. Part of me wanted to touch him to make sure he was real. There were some days that I imagined he had never really existed from the way he had dropped out of my life.

You ran away.

He pushed me away.
I corrected my mind angrily.

And then it left me, the excitement. The thrill of Rhett standing before me. It whooshed out of my lungs with a gush of air and was replaced with something else. Bitterness. It consumed me.
He made a choice six years ago. He didn’t choose me.

I’d given him the option, the chance. I’d given him my heart and he ripped to nothing. To fucking shreds and left me alone and broken. He was nothing to me. Just a man. A stranger.

“Thanks for the introduction, Colleen. Just like she said I work as a lawyer, I specialize in…” I didn’t stiffen at the sound of his voice this time. My skin didn’t tingle. I felt nothing and I liked it. I sat bone still, my eyes watching him, glaring as he spoke.

He was so calm and collected, moving his hands back and forth. As if I wasn’t sitting here before him. His sister, the one he fucked up against his car. It was as if I had never really existed and for a moment I questioned it again. If it had all really happened or if I was just a fucking delusional idiot.

I’m not. He’s real. What happened was fucking real.

I wished it wasn’t. I had wished for that so many times it was disgusting. The pain that used to plague me. That used to thrum through my veins day after day when I thought of it, of him.

I sat rigidly as he continued to talk, to drone on and on about the things he did at the firm, about how it related to class. My class. He didn’t look at me at all the entire time. But I couldn’t keep my eyes off him.

And then he was finished and the class was applauding. I couldn’t bring my hands together to perform the polite gesture. I could wear the mask on my face, but I couldn’t applaud him. I just couldn’t do it. He moved with Colleen away from podium and I breathed a small sigh of relief. He would leave now. I would give my lecture. Things would go back to normal. I could pretend like I never saw him.

But you did see him. He’s here.

I wanted to punch my subconscious for being such a bitch.

I took a deep breath as I moved back to the podium, but when I got there I realized that Rhett hadn’t made his way toward the door like most of my guest speakers. He had fixed himself back in the chair he sat in previously. His eyes were on me again, but I didn’t meet them. I couldn’t. Not again. Not here in front of the whole class. If I did, I didn’t know what I would do. Something had come to a raging boil inside me as he gave his speech. Something bitter, and angry. Something that wanted to fucking lash out at him and destroy him until he didn’t exist. Until he was just a figment of my broken imagination.

I opened my mouth to address the class. “We left off last time…” But I couldn’t finish my sentence. Those eyes. Those fucking green eyes. I could feel them. They were glued to me and I couldn’t shake them. I couldn’t focus. My mind splintered with rage.

Why the fuck is he here?

“Class dismissed,” I heard myself say. I blanched at the sound of my voice. It trembled like a nervous little girl.

“All right! Out early for spring break!” Two young guys high-fived on the back row while everyone else started to chatter and pack up. I never let them go early, but today was an exception apparently. I was off today—off my fucking life apparently. The things that happened with Casey this morning were only the beginning of everything. I couldn’t just stand up there and lecture with Rhett sitting in the back watching me.

I packed up my papers quickly. If I hurried I could get out of here.

Will he try to talk to me?

Panic flared inside me. I didn’t want to talk to him. I couldn’t. I just—

“Faye?”

My stone cold resolve that I’d found while he talked to the class had fractured somehow and I jumped, glancing over to where he stood. He was just a few feet away, his hands in his pockets, a look of indecision painted on his face.

“What?” My voice was still a little shaky, but I was proud of the poison that backed it.

He frowned. “I can’t believe it’s really you.”

I snorted. “As if you didn’t know this was my class you were coming to.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Of course you didn’t.” I shook my head. “You wouldn’t have come if you knew.” It had been six years. Six fucking years. He didn’t know that I was the teacher, because he would have stayed far away if he had.

“I would have come. I would have come a long time ago if I’d known.”

I flinched at his words, glancing around the classroom to see that last person exit the room. “What are—”

“Are you okay?” He took a step toward me and I flinched. I fucking flinched, like a scared child. The click of the door closing behind the last student made the moment real. I was alone in the room. Alone with him. Rhett.

I blinked at the absurdity of it all.

“Why are you here?”

He swallowed. “I came with Colleen. To give the speech.”

“Right. Great job.” I slung my bag over my shoulder.

“Can we talk?” he asked. And I did what I didn’t want to do. I looked into his eyes again and the scalding anger I’d felt just before I dismissed class came rushing back.

“About what?” There. The poison was back. The anger. I clung to it, funneling it with everything I had. I didn’t want him to see my weakness. He’d seen enough of it when I begged him to stay, when I begged him to love me all those years ago.

“I—”

“How’s Sarah?” The words were off my lips, interrupting him. I hadn’t spoken her name since the day I left. I hadn’t wanted to. I hated to think that she got to spend the rest of her life with him, and that I didn’t. That I was just the pathetic whore step-sister he left behind. The love I had in my heart for her had long since brewed into hate. Not only because she got to have what I wanted, but more than anything because she didn’t try to find me. All the love she had claimed to have for me had meant nothing. I hadn’t heard a word from her either.

Rhett clasped his hands together, his thumb swiping quickly over the other.

He’s nervous.

I would have smiled if I wasn’t so nervous myself. I braced myself for the answer. He and Sarah probably had three kids by now, a big house, a big life. I didn’t want to hear about it, but I didn’t stop him. I didn’t just walk out of the classroom like I so desperately wanted to do. I stood there like a criminal with a noose around my neck, waiting for the floor to drop beneath me.

“I don’t know.”

A burst of air I didn’t know I’d been holding left my lips. “What?”

He shrugged, but he looked anything but nonchalant. He watched me closely, following my every move. “I don’t know.”

“But—”

“We aren’t together.”

“What?” But that couldn’t be. He
chose
her.

“I see her around on Facebook. She seems to be okay, I suppose. But no. We aren’t together.”

“Facebook?” The word sounded ridiculous. “You see her on Facebook?” I almost laughed. I almost fell on the floor in my stupid uncomfortable heels and sweaty shirt and laughed my ass off at the ridiculousness of this. Of him.

Rhett Hale is standing in my classroom.

I didn’t laugh though, instead I stood stock still, my face a mask of civility and my heart beating like a drum in my chest. “You’re not married to her?”

He shook his head. “No. Not to her—or anyone else,” he added. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Are you married?”

Part of me wanted to tell him yes, that I was, that I had married the man of my dreams. That our love was perfect and untouchable. “What difference does it make?”

He clutched his hands hard in front of him, his thumb still swiping. It was just simple move, that twitch he clung to when he was nervous or upset, but it did something to me now as I stood there. “Are you?”

“That’s none of your business.” I didn’t feel the poison in my voice anymore, but it was there and I was thankful. “Thanks for speaking to the class.” I looked away from him. I needed to get out of there and far away from Rhett before I lost my mind.

“Look, Faye. Can we talk?”

I blinked. “We are talking.”

“Not here. Somewhere else.” He took a step toward me. “Dinner.”

“No.” I didn’t even let the idea permeate my ears before the answer was off my lips.

“Is it because you’re with someone else?” He took a step toward me.

“Maybe I am.” I wanted to hurt him. I wanted rip his heart into a million pieces and stomp on it.

There was an ache in his eyes, a desperation I was familiar with. “Are you in love with him?”

I blinked. His lips were set in a firm line. Lips I had kissed numerous times. Lips that had made me feel alive and real for the first time in my life all those years ago.

“Faye?”

“I have to go.” I hurried away from him. He was close enough to touch. Too close. Too real.

“Did he sweep you off your feet?” he asked just as I closed my hand around the door knob. I should have kept walking. I should have jerked that door open and stormed out. But I paused. I lingered. My fingers shook against the brass surface.

“Why would you ask me that?” I glanced over my shoulder, baffled. Why
would
he ask me that? Rhett, who I hadn’t seen in six years. Rhett, who now stood in my classroom. A stranger.

“I just want to know if you’re happy, Faye. That’s all.”

Bitterness swept through me. It didn’t matter to him six years ago, so why did it matter now?

I turned to face him. “I don’t need to be swept off my feet by a man to be happy, Rhett.” I paused taking him in. His presence seemed to consume everything until nothing else existed. “But yes, I am happy.” The words fell from my lips smooth, but I was shaky on the inside. More nervous than I had been when presenting my master’s thesis. Though I suppose it was because I knew everything about governmental intervention in handicapped access to public parks—my thesis topic. I had researched and studied for over a year on the subject. I had traveled out of state to check out archives in other libraries. I knew the topic like the back of my hand. But Rhett…I didn’t know how to handle anything when it came to him. And not knowing—that frazzled my nerves more than anything.