He chuckled. “Yes. If I recall we both took the guided tour once.”
I didn’t have a clue how to respond to that. I stopped cramming my belongings into my bag and looked up at him. His brow flinched, and he looked away for a moment as his jaw tightened. Not even he, in all his laid-back coolness, could reference our past without some reaction. That was almost comforting.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, my voice breathless again.
“Learning about philosophy,” he said simply.
“And what was that before,” I asked as I pointed to the back of the classroom where he’d come from. In truth, my insides were still fluttering with emotion I couldn’t begin to pin down, and I was rambling just to keep my mind moving.
“What? Isn’t Nietzsche’s sexually transmitted lunacy a valid topic for this class?”
I didn’t respond. I just stared at him.
“Fine,” he finally conceded. “Just getting your attention.”
“And you couldn’t have simply said hello?”
He smiled, studying me for a moment. “Hi,” he said quietly, his smile sincere and real. He rounded the desk toward me, and when he reached for the collar of my fitted suit jacket, he ran his fingers under the lapel. “You look so grown up,” he said as he studied the fabric and his thumb as it ran over the top of the material. When he looked at my eyes, his face was serious. “Do you feel grown up?”
I took a deep breath, an odd nostalgia that was both painful and intoxicating coursing through my veins. “I feel…” My eyes wandered. “…too old to be twenty-eight.”
He nodded. “Yeah,” he said quietly. He sighed as he looked away for a moment, but his hand never left my lapel. “Me too.”
“Why are you in my class?” I watched him, waiting for his attention to return to me.
When it finally did, he was smirking again. “I happen to have Wednesday nights free, and as I said before, I want to learn a little something about philosophy.” He held his textbook up, and he finally released my jacket as he started flipping through the table of contents. “Lots of interesting stuff in here from the looks of it.” His voice sounded sarcastic, but his eyes studied the pages intently. “The nature of being, divine knowledge, love and hate…” He glanced at me for a moment before looking back down. “Justice…” he said with particular enunciation, and then he looked back at me, his eyebrows shooting up.
“My dissertation topic.” I offered nothing more.
He nodded slowly. “Of course it is.” He was quiet for a moment as he stared at me blankly. “I just wanted to see you. I’d heard you were back in town. I’ve only been back six months myself. My dad had a stroke, and…”
“I’d heard that. I’m sorry.”
He nodded again. “He’s in a nursing home now, and I’m trying to get his house ready to sell. It’s in pretty … rough shape. Not that it was ever the nicest house on the block,” he said quietly.
“Don’t recall your dad’s house being on a block.” Buried in the woods just outside of town was more accurate actually.
He smiled. “No.”
“I should … go.” But I didn’t make any move to leave, and he reached out once more. He didn’t touch my jacket this time though, and as I inhaled deeply, his finger met my skin just at the base of my neck where it hollowed in at the top of my sternum. He traced that finger down and over the pendent on my necklace, stopping just below it.
“How can one little thing destroy so much?” His voice was distant as he stared at the place his finger still touched.
I closed my eyes, letting it sink in. So much. So much more than I ever realized I had in me to destroy.
“It wasn’t such a little thing,” I whispered.
“No it wasn’t,” he agreed.
When his arms wrapped around me, I sank into his body, resting my cheek to his shoulder. I could hear his heart beating, slowly and evenly as we stood there, and I reached around his body, clasping at the backs of his shoulders as the tight muscles underneath tensed. I closed my eyes, remembering a time when being close to him felt good.
Until the day one … little … thing … destroyed it all. But that was just it. It wasn’t a little thing at all. It was the worst of things.
He released me on a heavy sigh. “It’s good to see you, Hell. I really am looking forward to your class. Perhaps you’ll let me read this dissertation of yours. Teach me a thing or two about justice.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. It wasn’t a light comment. It was exceptionally loaded with a past too heavy with secrets for either of us to ignore in the silence between us. He stared at me, his face expressionless, and I just felt slack as I looked back at him.
“Good night,” he finally said quietly, and then he turned and walked out of the room.
Chapter Three
Kane
Eleven Years Ago