***

The dawn feels bright and full of possibility when I open my eyes and see Smith’s head on the pillow next to mine.

I breathe slowly and softly, staring at the shirtless man tangled in my sheets. Last night was a revelation. It was something I couldn’t have possibly planned better. And, sure, maybe it’s complicated. But this morning, complicated feels inexplicably close to perfect.

Smith’s eyes flutter open and his gaze is warm when it lands on me.

“Good morning.” His voice is gruff and sexy in the morning—of course his voice is gruff and sexy in the morning.

“Good morning,” I murmur.

“What time is it?” he asks, reaching to brush a curl out of my face. I reach over to grab my phone off the nightstand and peer at the screen.

“Nearly eight.”

He sort of groans and then rolls out of bed. When he stands, I find myself eagerly anticipating seeing his perfect body clad in nothing but underwear.

“Shit—I promised a friend I’d help him with a few things this morning.” He rubs his forehead. “I should have set my alarm.”

Then he leans down and braces his hands on the mattress, his face hardly a foot from mine.

“Although, looking at you all sexy and rumpled like that, all I want to do is lay you back down and fuck you again, this time in all the ways and in all the positions that I’ve been dreaming of every night since I met you.”

Um, yes please.

I push up to my knees and place my hands on his shoulders. I know exactly what I want to happen—what my body is craving.

“Can I convince you to stay for a little longer?”

I whisper the words, but Smith hears them loud and clear. He sort of groans, then leans forward to press his forehead to mine.

“I wish I could, baby. God, I wish I could.”

He presses his lips against mine. The pressure is soft at first, then builds as he moves to kneel on the bed in front of me. He coaxes my lips apart and I moan as his hands move up to cup my breasts.

“Shit.” He brushes his thumbs across my nipples and I dig my nails into his shoulders.

“Stay,” I murmur against his mouth.

He sort of groans, then forces himself to pull back. He gives me a rueful smile as he backs away from the bed.

“You’re a bad influence,” he says, wagging a finger at me. I bark out a laugh as he grabs his jeans from the floor and starts to pull them back on. When he walks over toward my door to search for his shirt, I hear a loud buzzing nearby. I glance around until I see his phone lying on the floor.

“Hey, I think you’ve got a text or something,” I call out as I grab it.

And then I look at the screen.

J. D. Fenton: Yo Asher—where you at?

For a second, I can’t move. After the incident with J. D. in the teachers’ lounge, I’d thought that Smith had written him off—at the very least, that he’d realized J. D. was the kind of person who hurt people. That he was the kind of person who would hurt me. And the realization that it didn’t change a thing makes my blood boil.

I grab my pillow and hug it tightly to my chest. I try to think of something to say. Smith turns back around to face me, now fully dressed. I just stare at him and he frowns.

“What’s up?

“I—I looked at the text,” I stutter.

“Uh . . . okay . . .”

I hand him the phone and he peers down at it. Then something like realization blooms across his face. I blink at him and he pushes a hand back through his hair.

“Hyacinth . . .”

“Is he the friend you’re going to see?” I ask quietly.

“Yes,” he says, shoving both hands in his pockets, “but it isn’t what you think.”

I close my eyes and feel a flush coast over my skin—my mostly, completely naked skin, blocked from his view by a pillow alone.

“Then explain it to me.”

There’s a long pause. When I open my eyes and look at Smith again, he’s staring down at the floor.

“I can’t. I’m sorry.”

I swallow hard.

“Why would you want to spend time with someone who threatened me?” I ask, practically spitting the words at him. Smith doesn’t meet my gaze.

I lick my lips, trying my damnedest to think of something else to say. But before I can respond, he moves forward. Standing barely a foot from the bed he leans down again to look into my eyes.

“I need you to trust me—this . . . there’s a reason for this.”

My lips part and I exhale an angry breath. “How could there possibly be a reason you’d want to spend time with someone who hurt me?”

“Cyn, listen.”

“No.”

This time, I’m not waiting for someone to let me down. I won’t do this again. I won’t fall for someone only to find out that I’m not important enough to them, that they’d sacrifice our relationship—or whatever this is.

“I want you to leave,” I say slowly, evenly. My voice is measured and steady, despite the strength of emotions rushing through me.

For a long moment, Smith doesn’t move. When he finally does, he presses his lips to my forehead and I close my eyes again. I don’t open them when I feel him pull away or even when I hear his footsteps moving back toward the door. I only open them when I know he’s gone, when the front door has been opened and closed behind him and I hear him descending the wooden stairs outside. The thunder and lightning from last night have ceased and it feels like a metaphor, as though his leaving my life means the danger and electricity disappear along with him.

When I open my eyes a minute later, they’re filled with tears. The last time I cried before meeting Smith Asher was when my father moved to Holly Fields. Now that I’ve shed this many tears for Smith, I guess I realize what I’ve known all along—that saying good-bye to people I care about can bring me to my knees quicker than anything else.

I lie back, and, despite it being morning, I pray for sleep. The kind of sleep that won’t bring me visions of Smith and his smile and his touch back into my mind. I wish for the blankness that comes with a dreamless slumber. I can’t think of anything more sad and less hopeful than wanting to stop dreaming.

Well, except maybe the sound of Smith’s truck engine roaring to life in the parking lot, then disappearing as he leaves my life for good.

***

I don’t think I really believed he’d dropped out until he doesn’t show up to school on Monday.

And Tuesday.

And Wednesday.

By Thursday, I’m absolutely miserable, thinking I’ve ruined some man’s life by forcing him to abandon his education.

Jeremy, however, doesn’t seem to notice my general down-in-the-dumps attitude. He brings me coffee on Tuesday morning, and, at lunch duty, he chatters on about things that feel completely irrelevant—a vacation he’s taking with his college buddies to Colorado, a bike he’s been looking at buying for month. Just stuff that feels ridiculously unimportant and like the furthest thing from what I want to be hearing about.

Then again, it does distract me from thinking about Smith—so, there’s that.

“Are you chaperoning the game tomorrow night?” Jeremy asks on Thursday as we leave the cafeteria. I shake my head.

“I wasn’t planning on it—I’ve got a couple weeks left of student teaching, and I need to start getting my portfolio together to turn in to my advisor.”

“Aw, come on.” He elbows me gently. “It’s the play-offs. The students are so excited about it. And it’s probably the last event you’ll get to attend as a student teacher.”

“I don’t know . . .”

“Hey, I’ll even drive you,” he offers. “I’ll pick you up at six, we can grab something quick to eat, then we’ll be at the game by seven. Faculty have they’re own section, so we don’t have to worry about seats.”

I frown. “If we’re chaperoning, why do we need seats?”

Jeremy shrugs. “They call it chaperoning, but really I think it’s just so the staff can get into games for free.”

I let my eyes slide over the room of students, most of whom are talking and laughing and acting seemingly carefree. It would be nice to feel that way again. It would be nice to do something fun.