callan
“Would you happen to have an extra shirt?” Sakura asked, chewing on her inner lip and staring into her car. “I don’t really want to drive home in soaked clothes. I don’t have any extras here. I really should do that …” Her voice quieted toward the end, as if she was talking to herself.
Long-sleeved shirt clinging to her braless body, Sakura crossed her arms and shivered in the rain. I tore my gaze away from her—because if I didn’t, I would probably shove her up against the car again and take her—and took her hand.
When I reached my car, I opened the back door. “Get in.”
“But I’m all wet.”
“Get in, Sakura. You’re freezing. I have a shirt in my trunk.”
After Sakura finally shuffled into the car, I shut the door, retrieved an extra shirt of mine from the trunk, and slid into the car from the other side. She wriggled out of her long-sleeved shirt, her nipples hard from the cold, and pulled my large shirt over her head. I tore off my shirt because it was soaked through, too, and left the pants because I didn’t have a spare.
“Thank you,” she said, inhaling deeply and shutting her eyes. “This is so much better.”
I took her wet shirt and tossed it into the front passenger seat so the water wouldn’t soak through my books. I had a mess of literature back here that I had been meaning to bring into the house, but I hadn’t wanted Georgina to comment on them.
All the books we had in the home library were for show. She hadn’t read any of them, and I doubted that she ever would. But that bitch always had to sneer at my personal books, had to comment on them somehow.
“You have so many books,” Sakura said, picking up one. “You have Kayleigh Stone?! She’s my favorite!”
“Is she now?” I sprawled my arm across the back of the seat and smiled softly. “I read a lot.”
She handed it to me. “Read me something.”
My eyes widened. “You want me to read you this?”
She turned her body toward me and laid her head against the headrest, cheeks rounding. “Read it, then do that cute little analyzing thing you do after every paragraph in school.”
Warmth exploded through my chest.
Sakura thought it was … cute?
Georgina would laugh in my face if she saw me do such a thing.
“I don’t know if you want me to read you this book,” I said, chuckling. “This is a romance book that I—”
“A romance book?!” Sakura giggled, placing her hand against her heart. “Mr. Avery—the most prolific, well-spoken reader at Redwood—likes smut?! I have never heard of such a thing!”
I cut my gaze to her, lips curled into a small smile. “It’s for my sister’s daughter.”
The more she giggled to herself, the faster my heart raced.
She gently pushed on my arm. “It’s okay. You can admit it, Callan. But which do you enjoy most? The ones filled with filthy smut or the meet-cute romances that leave you with butterflies?”
“Neither,” I said. “Because all romance books end happily.”
A decade and a half ago, I’d fucking believed in love. Now? That thought was laughable.
“You don’t believe in romance and love?” she asked, suddenly quiet.
“I believe in love, but not everyone’s story ends in smiles. Sometimes, it’s just fucking …” I sucked in a deep breath and stared emptily at my Literature student sitting in the backseat of my car, dressed in my T-shirt, and thought of how empty my life had been.
How fucking sad my life had been.
I’d resorted to sleeping with a student to feel something, and, fuck … I felt more than I ever should’ve. And deep down, I knew that I would never be able to truly have her the way I wanted. We would always be sneaking around, always a secret.
“Sometimes, you’re not meant to be happy,” I whispered.
Sakura stared at me for a few moments, then dropped her gaze. “You’re right.”
We sat in the back of my car, listening to the rain patter against the roof. I peered over at her and rested the side of my head against the headrest, my breath steadying. This silence wasn’t heated silence, like when I was with Georgina.
She gazed at me and mirrored my pose, head resting gently against the seat. My textbooks for teaching and fiction books that I read in my free time lay at our feet. She glanced down at them again and chewed on the inside of her cheek.
“You should get home before your wife finds you out here with me,” she whispered.
A low sigh escaped my lips. I didn’t want to think about her tonight.
“Don’t speak of her,” I said.
“We shouldn’t be doing this, and you know it.”
Even while she was out of the country and sleeping with a handful of French men, Georgina was still fucking up my life. She had her claws so deep into me that I couldn’t shake her off. Now, Sakura was the one speaking of her.
I balled my hands into fists. “You’re the one who showed up at my house tonight.”
Unable to look me in the eye anymore, she turned her head away and stared out the window. “I know,” she whispered, staying quiet for a few moments. “It was a mistake.”
A mistake?
We’d had made too many of those for me to care anymore.
“It wasn’t a mistake,” I said.
If Sakura and I were a mistake, then Georgina had made hundreds of mistakes since I’d married her a decade and a half ago. It wasn’t a mistake. It was a decision. I didn’t give a shit what Sakura thought of my non-fucking-existent relationship I had with my wife.
Sakura was now mine. Even if we had to be a secret.
“I can’t do this anymore,” she said, shaking her head and pursing her lips.
But nobody had ever shown me the attention that she did and made me feel wanted. She didn’t get to choose if she could or couldn’t do this anymore.
“We need to stop.”
“No,” I growled. “You’re mine.”
“You have a wife.”
I gritted my teeth. “She means nothing to me.”
“I bet that’s what you’d tell her about me, if she found out about us,” she said.
“That’s not true.”
“Yes, it is. If Georgina—”
I seized her chin and pulled her closer, raging on the inside. “Don’t say her fucking name. I hate that bitch, Sakura. She does nothing but—” I stopped myself before I could tell her what my wife had done to me all these years.
All the fucking abuse I had gone through with her. All the late nights, wondering where she had gone when we first married. All the early mornings, hoping that she wouldn’t send her father after me for making her cry when I threatened divorce.
It made me feel like less of a man, weak.
“Fucking forget it,” I said between gritted teeth.
I hated myself for everything that Georgina had put me through. The emotional abuse, the cheating, the not giving a shit about me …
I didn’t want to think about her. Ever.
When I was with Sakura, I didn’t have to think about fucking anything. I didn’t have to put up the facade of a happily married man, like I had to at work, in front of colleagues, family, and friends. Because truthfully, I was a miserable asshole who wished he’d never met Georgina.
With Sakura though … I could read and teach literature, do what I loved without the constant shaming and bashing. I didn’t have to pretend like I cared, didn’t have to feel weak for once in my fucking life.
“Please,” I whispered, voice softening. “I don’t want to think about her when I’m with you.”
Eyes widening, she gulped and nodded. “Okay. I’m sorry.”
Thunder rumbled above us. And I found myself staring down at her lips as she spoke, then back up into her eyes, heart pounding inside my chest. She sucked in a sharp breath and glanced down at my lips, furrowing her brow.
Gently, I released her chin, trailed my hand up her jaw, and sank my hand into her hair. I brushed the pad of my thumb against her cheekbone and cursed myself for these feelings that I couldn’t control anymore.
Her breath hitched as she stared up at me through the most curious, biggest eyes I had ever seen, her fingers resting on my chest. When she glanced down at my lips again, I pulled her toward me and kissed her.