Authors: Rachel van Dyken
Gabe was the first to speak. “Lis—”
“Forget it.” I forced a smile. “I’ll stay tonight by myself and have you guys on speed dial. If I get freaked I’ll pack a bag. Now, let’s eat!”
The room was still filled with tension, but they all ignored it, just like I did. My heart was sad, and, for some reason, I still couldn’t get the fact out of my head that he had stopped by.
To apologize?
Scold me more?
Or… I shook the thought of my head. It couldn’t be for any other reason. That side of our relationship was officially non-existent.
“Hey.” Kiersten nudged me. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” I forced another fake smile. “Totally. Just really tired.”
She wrapped an arm around me and pulled me in for a tight hug. “Well, let’s get you fed so you can go to bed then.”
Great. Bed. Just another reminder that I was in mine… not his.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“No man will ever love you as much as I love you,” I whispered in Mel’s ear when she was fast asleep. Time to put part of my plan into action. I went to my computer and started putting my journals into personal files. One copy sent to someone I’d never met, and the other copy? To the person who was going to carry out my revenge — again. The best people to pick on? Ones who wanted revenge, whose hearts were broken. I laughed at my own brilliance. I would probably still be laughing from hell. Most people want to leave behind a legacy, and that’s exactly what I was doing. —
The Journal of Taylor B.
Tristan
F
INDING HER EMAIL
was easy. Sending the email? Not so much. I started typing then deleted the entire thing. With a growl, I typed again then deleted. I repeated this same process until finally settling with…
[email protected]
to
[email protected]
Are you okay?
Dr. Tristan Blake
UW Psychology Department
I waited for about a minute before refreshing the page. When nothing happened, I freaked out over what I’d said. Should I have apologized? I’d rather do that to her face. With a groan, I wiped my face with my hands and started getting ready to turn in.
I hit refresh a few more times before finally giving up. With a sigh, I crawled between the sheets and reached for the journal by my lamp.
The Journal of Taylor B
.
It was the thing of nightmares. My nightmares, most likely hers. It was also such an addicting read I didn’t know what else to do. I’d only been halfway through it when I’d decided to make the trek across the country and take a semester teaching. The first few chapters had convinced me, and now the story of his insanity called to me. It called to that part of me who understood him, who understood that type of madness. I wasn’t sure what was so horrifying. The fact that I got it or the fact that I could end up just like him.
My cell rang, jolting me out of my dark thoughts.
It was my father. I couldn’t ignore him forever. With a curse, I picked up and barked a hello into the phone.
“Well, that’s a nice greeting.” He chuckled. “Any trouble with the benefit?”
A vision of Lisa in her black mask caused my body to tighten. “Nope, no trouble at all.”
“Erica’s been asking about you.” He coughed and then sighed. I could picture him now, sitting near the fireplace, cigar in one hand, whiskey in the other. “You ignoring
her
phone calls too?”
“I’ve been busy. Companies don’t run themselves, you know. Besides, I’m teaching this semester.”
I could practically feel his scowl over the phone. “I told you it was unnecessary to stay that long away from everything. So, she wants to marry you, wants to move forward, start your life together. Instead, you run away with your tail between your legs.” He sighed. “You aren’t off your meds, are you?”
“No.” I ground my teeth. “And you’ve always pounded it into my head that no decision is to be taken lightly. Think of my time away as my doing that, looking at every angle.”
Another sigh. “As long as you’re back for Christmas.”
“I will be.” It was a lie. A total lie. The last thing I wanted to do was go back to him, back to that life, back to the life he’d built for me.
“Fantastic.” He sniffed. “I’ll talk to you later this week. Don’t forget to check in with the board every once in a while. I know you run a smooth ship, but I still worry.”
“Always.” There he was; in the end it was always about money, about making more of it. And I’d had the Midas touch. I’d turned his multimillion-dollar empire into a multibillion-dollar empire. I could have done it in my sleep. Because that’s the thing about madness… it breeds brilliance. For others? Like Taylor? It breeds death. Absolute death.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
It took me a few days to put the chess pieces into place. To make sure all parties knew what their task was, to make sure she was broken enough to snap. To make sure it would happen exactly as I’d predicted. —
The Journal of Taylor B.
Lisa
I
IGNORED HIS EMAIL
.
And got to class fifteen minutes early.
Part of the reason was because I hadn’t been able to sleep worth crap the night before and figured I may as well get a head start. Better to shock him to death than walk in a minute late and earn another scowl.
“Hey.” Jack plopped down next to me. “You’re early!”
“I am.” I returned his smile. He was easy, no pressure, kind of like Gabe. Not that I had any interest in him, but he was… nice to me. Unlike Tristan, who, by the looks of things, wanted to set me on fire with his eyes.
Jack touched my arm. I looked up to see Tristan’s gaze trained on my arm and then narrowed in on Jack’s fingers.
I pulled away and tucked my fallen hair behind my ear.
“We’re two weeks into the semester.” Tristan started pacing in front of his desk. “I want you guys to start thinking about your first big project. Since this is Psychology of Emotion, I want you to pick an emotion to study. It has to be one of the four emotions. I’ll give you two minutes to pick a partner. Then I’ll give the rest of the instructions.”
“Partner up, cowgirl,” Jack whispered next to me. “You in?” He held out his hand. I shook it and gave him a firm nod.
“What do you want to study?” I asked, pulling out a fresh piece of paper.
“Anger.” He’d said it with an edge in his voice, but when I looked up, his face was its normal goofy self. “That okay with you? It just seems the most complex. I mean, think about what anger entails? Revenge? Bloodshed? Wars?” He grinned. “Sorry. I’m a guy. I can’t help it.”
I waved him off. “It’s fine. Anger, it is.”
“Now that you have your partners and most likely your idea of the project,” Dr. Blake continued. “I’ll be passing out the instructions. Please listen as I start explaining.” He cleared his throat while his TA started passing out the worksheets. “You’ll use a personal experience to describe this emotion. Please write it in first person, no less than three pages. I’d like you to research instances when this emotion has helped people in history, and when it’s hindered. You need to find pictures and attach them to your story and include nonverbal cues as well as verbal cues to identify this emotion. Think of this project as taking one emotion and getting to know it so well…” His voice trailed off as his eyes found mine. “…that it defines you.”
Shivers ran down my spine. The last thing I wanted to explore was anger; it reminded me of his personality. It was way too close. Taylor had been a bomb just waiting to set off. Only he was the only one with the timer.
“Hey.” Jack touched my arm again. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” I was going to hate this project. “Fine.”
I couldn’t help but think about the angry notes I was still receiving and the fact that someone was clearly angry with me, so angry and hateful that they destroyed university property on my behalf. I swallowed the fear and focused on the project at hand. By the time class ended, both Jack and I had adjusted our schedules so that we could work together for the rest of the week.
“Lisa,” Dr. Blake barked just as I stood from my desk. “A minute.”
Jack swore under his breath. “Damn, it’s like he can’t help but pick on you. If it helps… I know what that’s like.” His face was shadowed. “If you want me to do something—”
“No,” I shook my head and laughed to put him at ease. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”
Jack nodded slowly. “Just be careful. Crazy comes in all forms, even ones who look completely harmless.”
“Noted.” I swallowed and turned toward the front of the room.
Tristan was stacking papers on his desk. When the last student exited the room, he walked to the door, locked it, and pulled the blinds down.
Nervous, I shifted on my feet. “You going to scold me again?”
Tristan’s entire body tensed as his face searched mine. “I was actually planning on apologizing, but if you’d rather have a punishment.”
Curse him for making my entire body tremble! And it wasn’t with fear. The way he looked at me, the way he said things, it just… it did things to me, things I wanted to punch him for, because he was just like Gabe said, hot, then cold, then hot again.
“Dinner,” he said, interrupting my thoughts. “I want to apologize and take you to dinner.”
“Are you planning on rejecting me afterward?”
He went very still, his eyes meeting mine, looking straight into my soul, into every insecure part of me. “No, Lisa. I’m not going to reject you afterward.”
It was hard to explain the way he spoke to me; at times he was flirtatious and well… happy. Other times? It seemed like he was fighting another side of himself, one that was more reserved, uptight, controlled. And if you were to ask me which side scared me the most? I’d say both. Because both sides were dangerous to me — both pushed a person like me past the point of no return. His seriousness made me curious; his flirtation made me want more.
“Just dinner?” I asked. “Isn’t that against the rules?”
“Yeah, well…” He glanced down briefly before flashing a sensual smile, his eyes dilating. “…it seems to be an impulse I can’t really control around you.”
“Control’s overrated, you label-making fool.”
At that he laughed, a rich chuckle that had my entire body relaxing and heating at the same time. I took a step toward him and smiled. “So, rule-breaker, where are we going?”
He grabbed his messenger bag and keys. “You’ll see.”
“Cryptic.” My eyebrows arched as I crossed my arms over my chest. “This isn’t going to turn into one of those six o‘clock news things where the crazy professor takes the girl out then buries her in the woods, is it?” I tried to sound like I was joking, but the minute the words left my mouth, it was no longer funny. Suddenly, I realized how stupid it would be to go with him. I knew nothing about him, nothing at all!
He smiled, tilting his head toward me. “Why am I getting the sudden urge to pull out a list of character references?”
“Because I just scared myself,” I admitted out loud.
“You want my social security number?” He winked. “Credit score? First grade class photo? Oh, and by the way, in first grade I was nominated most likely to own a pet store… so, if you aren’t okay with that, we probably shouldn’t continue this.”
“This?”
“Dinner.”
“Because you liked pets?”
“I wanted to own a lizard farm.”
I covered my mouth with my hands and nodded solemnly. “All little boys have dreams.”
“A bully crushed mine when he told me lizard farms don’t exist.” He shook his head. “In second grade I was voted least likely to succeed, on account that I didn’t speak for the entire year.”
“Why’s that?” I took another step toward him.
He took another step in my direction and shrugged. “It took me a while to get over the lizards.”
“So you stopped speaking?”
“It was more of me trying to make the public aware of my outrage.”
“Ah, like lizard strike.”
“I made shirts.”
“Tell me, professor, is that when the label-making started?”
“No.” He nodded toward the door and started walking. I followed, genuinely interested in what he was going to say and hating that it was possible he was stringing me along only to go all cold-crazy-psycho on me again. “That was an entirely different situation.” He pulled the door open.
“What? No more stories?” I asked.
“Dinner.” He shrugged, his eyes a stormy gray. “I’ll tell you at dinner.”
“Bribery.”
“My trump card. Label-maker stories. You know, I do actually know how to romance a woman.”
“Well...” I cleared my throat and broke eye contact. “…since I’m your student, I’ll just take your word for it.”
“Right,” he said quickly then repeated, “Right, shall we?”
“Lead the way.” I forced a smile and tried to remember that this was dinner, nothing romantic, just my very sexy professor once again apologizing for being a jackass during class.
The halls of the building were pretty empty. As it was, I should probably have been walking a bit faster, considering I still had a class to get to.
When we reached the end of the hall where we’d most likely part ways, I felt someone watching. I turned around. Nothing. But the feeling remained. Fully creeped out, I fell into step beside Tristan and turned around again. Only he’d stopped, meaning I tripped against him and almost had a really embarrassing incident where my lips met his — by default.