“You’re not the same man I met in rehab.” His tone is bolder. “Stop punishing yourself.”
“The only person getting punished is right here.” I pat my jacket and keep walking.
Sirens taper into silence as I disappear into the dark to send another damaged soul to hell.
Chapter 15
Scarlett
September
Ah, the clinical wing of Hamilton Medical College.
It’s ridiculous how familiar the campus feels. Like the life I paused a year ago, I flipped to the exact page for me to pick back up on. The chatter of students talking, bodies shuffling, the zip and unzipping of backpacks, and people fighting over outlets to charge their laptops for five minutes. It’s chaotic, but comforting.
Through a set of double doors is the daunting lecture hall for Pharmacology. I enter from the mezzanine level and keep my head down. Fellow students here might have seen me with my former class and know that I should be a fourth year.
Who am I kidding? We’re all zombies, and are lucky we don’t get hit by cars when we leave here.
I slide into a row halfway down, still bleary from a night of little sleep thanks to the anxiety of being back in a place that almost ruined me.
But I’m here, and I’m ready for it to take its best shot at me.
Keeping to an aisle seat, my fingers wrap around my Stanley cup that I almost considered spiking with vodka. Just to calm down.
The massive, tiered room quickly fills up with students who didn’t screw up their lives. People who didn’t fall for a man who talked them out of becoming a doctor.
A girl two seats over looks at me, squinting. “Were you in Dr. Lin’s course last year?”
I force a smile. “Not me. I took a year off.”
She nods politely and starts scrolling on her phone.
The rest of the class streamsin. I estimate close to seventy. The clock shows it’s two minutes past 10 a.m. It’s not like a professor to be late. If, for some reason, this class is canceled, I’m screwed. This was the only Pharmacology offered, and I need it to catch up. The schedule was prepared for me, and I don’t even know who’s teaching it.
The place goes silent, and all the chatter dims as the door opens from the base level with the podium, professor’s desk, and video equipment.
Thenhewalks in.
My stomach drops through the floor.
“No,” I whisper. “No, no, no?—”
The taxi. The rain. The hotel room.
It’s Cormac.
His hands on me. His kiss. His… I flush, remembering so much more.
When I saw him leaving my father’s office that morning, I assumed he’d be replacing his brother to teach afreshmanclass.
Damn it!
I lower my head to hide behind the guy with a big head in front of me.Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.I grab a baseball cap and sunglasses out of my backpack and slip them on to hide.
Cormac stands in the front of the classroom in tight dark jeans, a navy blazer with the sleeves pushed up to his forearms just enough to show the ink. A black button-down shirt is pulled tight over his sculpted chest, and his blond hair is slightly mussed. With dark golden stubble shadows on his jaw, sharp and dangerous, he is all hot professor.
The room goes oddly silent, and the girl next to me gasps a moan.