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“I’ll draw us a bath, pet,” he murmured and went into the other room.

This was possibly my favorite part of it all, when he tended to me with tender focus after we finished.

I loved the attention. No one ever took care of me like he did. No one else took care of me at all, since my parents passed.

He was stripped bare when he came back in the room.

I didn’t bother to move. I let him carry my limp self into the bathroom and lower me slowly into the hot water.

He joined me, sliding in behind me. It was a big tub, but he dominated it to the point I was always surprised we both fit.

He washed me, and I didn’t lift a finger to help. I could fall asleep right here, and I knew he’d get me to bed with no trouble. Another pattern we’d fallen into.

He stroked my breasts, nibbling at my neck. I wasn’t sure I could stay awake for another round, but for him I’d try.

I don’t know why I said it, why I thought of it then. I think it was just what came out when I was trying my hardest not to say I love you to him yet again, and instead managed to say something even worse.

“It’s alright if you hurt me,” I told him, voice catching. “I’m figuring on it. It’s worth it—the pain—to feel like this.”

He hummed out a little distressed noise into my ear. “Don’t say that, pet. I have no intention of hurting you. Don’t you know I’d never do that?”

I didn’t tell him he wouldn’t do it on purpose.

Pain was just the natural conclusion to any relationship where only one of you was in love.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CARTER

There was only two weeks until the school year ended. It couldn’t come soon enough to suit me. Once Nova graduated so much would become simpler.

She had a lot to figure out about her future, but at least we wouldn’t have to hide anything. We wouldn’t be student/teacher anymore.

We’d just be two lovers shacking up. It sounded delightful.

It was my free period, and I was behind my desk grading assignments on my computer. Nova’s work was conspicuously missing from this round. She owed me a few things, in fact, but I was still making her catch up on all of her other classes first. I would never fail her, and as a sop to my conscience I figured I could always have her make up for it after school was finished for the year.

Suddenly the door flew open and someone strode aggressively into my classroom.

“Carter, I need you to come with me,” one of the APs said to me the second she walked into my classroom.

No greeting, just that foreboding sentence out of her mouth.

“Is something the matter, Sharon?” I asked slowly.

But I knew.

I knew from the tone of her voice that something was terribly wrong.

The first and only thing my mind went to was Nova. I knew, with lancing certainty that we’d been found out. Nothing else could account for that tone from a usually warm, friendly colleague.

“Just come with me,” she said stiffly.

She didn’t even let me follow her, as though she was afraid I’d try to make a break for it. Instead she instructed me where to go, following closely behind.

I thought that part was more than a little ridiculous. If I wanted to go somewhere, to try to run, to avoid this, there was no way she could have stopped me, but I just went where she instructed on leaden feet.

We went to some sort of conference room I’d never seen before, deep behind the principal’s office. The principal, Anna Green, waited inside, standing beside an empty chair in front of an open laptop.