“Sorry, Dr. O’Rourke.” She nods, shrinking into her seat. “I thought it was off.”
“Right.” I drag the momentum back. “As I was saying?—”
PING.
PING.
PING.
Text alerts. One after another, like bullets from a semi-automatic.
Her hand is shaking now, fingers gripped around the phone shedidn’tturn off.
Something primal coils in my gut. “Ford,” I warn from the podium. “I said off.”
The room goes still at my sharp barking, a man I haven’t shown these kids yet.
“I know.” Scarlett’s voice cracks, raw enough to triple the chills in my neck. “But?—”
Another PING and another.
She slams her fist so hard on the bench desk that everyone in her row jumps.
I should order her out of the classroom and move on. Keep the lesson flowing. Maintain dominance and professionalism, and all the bullshit roles I’m supposed to play. But I’m dumbstruck, staring at this woman while she melts down from something going on in her phone.
There’s fear in her eyes. The kind of fear I’ve seen… Fuck. I’ve seen that look on Ana whenIwas being a dick.
Some guy is harassing my little Ford. But who? Her ex? The one who hit her?
I know the type. I used to be the type. Not the hitting type. Never. But the asshole type. And I paid a huge price to force that demon out of my soul.
With the room quiet and her phone finally silenced, she rests her head on her hands. Fuck, I want to go to her and find out what the hell that was? What orwhocan make her fall apart like that?
I use the remainder of the class time to take questions because I’m too fucking distracted to finish the lesson and might say something stupid or wrong. Vienna, thewoman who eye-fucks me every class—as if that’s going to make me do something stupid—stands up.
She asks me a dumb, sexually loaded question. She sits back down quickly after a curt answer rips off my tongue. My eyes keep swinging back to Scarlett as she slowly puts herself back together.
“To conclude…” I say, ending the lecture on autopilot.
One half of my mind recites receptor sites, half-lives, overdose protocols. The other half tracks every twitch of Scarlett’s trembling fingers.
She types something into her laptop. Not notes. Not the way her hands move. It’s an email. She’s responding. Trying to keep someone calm.
When the lesson finally crawls to an end, I bark out a homework assignment like my body is moving without me. “Read chapters three through five over the weekend. Quiz Monday.”
A sea of high-end lumbar chairs pushes back at ragged intervals, their wheels wrapped in steel.
Scarlett quietly packs her bag, shoulders tight, gaze locked on the door like she’s got something terrible to face.
Look at me, I think.Just once.
But she doesn’t. And it pisses me off more than it should.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and annoyed by the interruption, I curse as I yank it out.
Harrow: Got a case for you to look at.
Translation: Kill another dealer.