Page 38 of Professor Next Door

21. Galen

Tara’s words as I left really struck home with me. They were so close to the words I’d said to Kayla as she walked out of our lives without a backward glance. Rikki and I need you, don’t go! I drove around town, needing to think, but unable to decide where I needed to be. I soon found myself heading in the direction of Cascade Springs Nature Preserve. That was as good a place as any.

I climbed out of the car and found a kiosk selling water. I took a bottle and began a trail meant for beginners. I thought a good hike out of the noise of the city might do me some good. I looked around the world of greens and browns and wondered how many animals I might not see; how many hidden dangers were only a moment away.

Not because I was afraid of being hurt, but because it was the reality of the world. In my suburban life, I often forgot wild animals were still lurking around, that the ground could shift beneath my feet, and that my world could be torn away. I’d been reminded of it recently. With a few words, that lawyer—whatever her name was—had shredded my life into pieces.

I remembered the look in Tara’s eyes as she’d listened, how her heart broke before my eyes as the lawyer insisted I’d been carrying on an affair during Kayla’s pregnancy. That was the part that got me. That affair had ended long before Kayla became pregnant.

Why was Sarah lying, and lying straight to my face? What was in it for her? I knew she was a merciless bitch back when I’d had the fling with her, but this went beyond anything I’d thought her capable of. Was she in need of money? Had Kayla’s parents promised to pay her?

The stream I stared at offered no clues, so I crossed it and kept walking. At least I’d worn trainers, jeans, and a t-shirt this morning when I’d left the house.

Poor Tara. Her face replayed in my mind, the hurt, the uncertainty, the fear that I wouldn’t come back—an echo out of my own past.

I loved her, I knew that now. I loved her more than I’d ever loved a woman. Her quiet, gentle manner had won me over. Behind a facade of soft armor there was a hard woman, willing to love just as hard as a warrior, and she’d decided I deserved her love. I could see it on her face even though she tried to hide it. I could feel it in her touch and hear it in her voice.

I wanted to tell her I loved her too, but my love had never been enough for anyone. Would it be enough for her? I thought about it as I settled on a large stone at what appeared to be a springhouse just above a stream. The cold, dark interior beckoned to me, but I knew there’d be little in it that nature hadn’t put there. I felt like that springhouse.

Did Tara deserve to be held down by a man another woman had already rejected? Whose father had rejected him? I was only good for women like Sarah, women that were users just as much as I was.

Tara offered so much more. She offered a kind of hope, the promise of a different world. She stole my breath away. I couldn’t look at other women now, I didn’t want to. I just wanted Tara.

I looked at the rock structure built over a stream to keep food cold a long time in the past and had a rather odd epiphany. Even if things appeared to no longer have a purpose, under the right circumstances they do. They can have a new purpose and a better purpose than before. Maybe I was good enough for Tara. Maybe I could change and be the man she deserved.

I turned around to head home, not seeing the slippery rock beneath my foot until my shoe slid off it and I landed hard on my head. The world went dark.