Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chance
I was supposed to be grading papers, but I found my mind wandering. I took out my phone and started scrolling through the photo gallery. I had always been the type of guy whose photo library was practically empty, but ever since Natalie came into my life, that had changed.
I scrolled through the most recent pictures from our trip to a local strawberry grove. We had spent a fantastic day picking wild strawberries. Then we’d had lunch in the grove’s café restaurant, paid for our strawberries, and come home to cook with them. It had been such a fun day. In the picture I was looking at, Natalie was standing in the windy orchid, holding her basket of strawberries and trying to hold down her pin-striped dress.
Her blue eyes sparkled with the strength of a thousand diamonds, and her smile was open and uninhibited. She had become more to me than I could have ever imagined. She had even brought me closer to my own family. Sophie and Tommy loved her, and she fit in with them so well that it forced me to fit in, too. It had gotten to the point where I was actually considering proposing to her.
I shook my head, amazed at my own thoughts. I had never thought of myself as the marrying kind. And yet, here I was, sitting behind my desk, fantasizing about watching Natalie walking down the aisle in a beautiful white dress. She was graduating in a month, and once she was no longer a student at North Greenfield, that meant that we were free to take our relationship public.
The next picture on my phone was of Natalie and me. She was wearing one of my t-shirts, and we were sitting in bed. She was snuggled under my arm, and we were both smiling at the camera. It was one of my favorite pictures because it was raw and unedited. That picture summed up our weekends perfectly, and it made me believe that marriage was not just possible for me – it might actually be pretty amazing.
I was looking through more pictures when the door opened abruptly, and Jason walked in. The sight of him pissed me off immediately, and I put my phone down and stood up.
“You’re supposed to knock first,” I hissed at him.
He shrugged without concern. “Didn’t feel like it,” he said.
I could tell from his smug expression that he was up to something, and I tensed instantly. It had been months since we’d heard anything from him, and Natalie and I had relaxed. Obviously, this had been his plan. He had wanted to lull us into a false sense of security, and I had to hand it to him, he had succeeded. I genuinely felt as though the rug had been pulled out from underneath me.
“May I sit down?” Jason asked, closing the door to my office behind him.
“No.”
“I’ll sit anyway,” he said pleasantly.
He sat down and cocked his legs. Then he regarded me with a superior expression that made me feel sick to my stomach. I refused to let him know I was worried, however. I stared him down and raised my eyebrows.
“What do you want, Jason?” I demanded.
“I came to discuss something with you,” Jason said. “Man to man.”
I wanted to make a joke aimed at his manhood, or lack thereof, but I suppressed the urge. “What do you want?”
“I came to talk to you about Natalie.”
I narrowed my eyes at him threateningly. “There’s nothing about Natalie you need to discuss with me. She’s not interested in you, she’s never been interested in you, and she never will be.”
“Thanks to you.”
I let out a bark of laughter. “You’re kidding, right?” I said. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t she reject you long before she got involved with me?”
I saw Jason’s perfectly constructed mask falter a little, but he managed to keep it in place. “Do you care about her?”
“How I feel about her is none of your business,” I said.
Jason laughed. “Of course, you care about her. You probably even love her… That’s good. I’m glad you do. It works out better for me that way.”
“Oh yeah? And how do you figure that?”
“Because I’m banking on your love for her.”
I felt my hands clench into fists and I knew I would have to demonstrate tremendous willpower in this particular situation. “Did you come here to talk in riddles or did you actually have something you wanted to say to me?”
Jason looked calm as ever as he reached into his jacket pocket and took out a large brown envelope. He slammed it down on the table in front of me. “I’m sure you’ll be interested to see what’s inside that envelope.”
Removed of choice, I picked it up and opened it. Inside were several large photographs. I took them out and looked through them, one by one. They were all pictures of Natalie and me. There were pictures of us holding hands as we walked through my neighborhood, pictures of us at the museum, the beach, and several different restaurants.
I paused as I came to a picture of Natalie and me walking down Prescott Lane. I could only see a hint of the stunning strapless embellished mini she had been wearing. The rest of the dress was covered over by the coat I had given her to protect against the cold night air.
I looked up at Jason in shock. “You’ve been following Natalie around since her birthday?”
He didn’t say a word.
“No,” I said, correcting myself. “Obviously you’ve been following her around way before that. You’re a fucking stalker.”
“What I am is none of your concern.”
“The hell it isn’t,” I spat. “You’re going to jail, asshole.”
He laughed, as though he were completely unconcerned. “I don’t think so.”
His confidence was troubling me, but I continued on, sure of my course now. “You think I care about my job?” I demanded. “I’d gladly give it up for Natalie’s sake.”
“I’m sure you would,” he nodded. “And that’s very noble of you. But I’m not really concerned about you. I’m concerned about Natalie.”
I frowned, starting to realize what he was really threatening. “You see, once I go to the dean with those pictures, he’ll be forced to make an example out of both of you. He’ll fire you, and as for Natalie… Well, he’ll be forced to retract her scholarship and expel her. Which means she’ll be kicked out of school only weeks shy of her graduation. That’s pretty tragic, if you ask me. Especially considering she’s not from a well-to-do family. It’s not like she can pay to get into another good university.”
I gritted my teeth. “You fucking bastard.”
He just smiled.
“I can report you, anyway,” I said, wondering if it was wise to call his bluff. “Sure, I’d be out of a job and Natalie wouldn’t graduate, but you’d be going to jail. What she and I did is not illegal. But what you’re doing definitely is.”
Jason shrugged. “That’s your call to make,” he said. “I just wonder how Natalie would feel being kicked out of school so unceremoniously after she worked as hard as she did. Maybe I overestimated how much you cared about her.”
“You’d really go to jail?” I demanded. “You’d go to jail, rather than leave Natalie alone?”
“She humiliated me,” he said as his face turned sour and vengeful. “She rejected me after I was nothing but nice to her. She didn’t even give me a chance.”
“So what? You’re going to punish her for that?”
“Yes,” he said. “I am. She’s going to rue the day she said no to me. She’s forever going to regret choosing you over me. You could send me to jail, but I don’t believe you would do that. Because what you’re risking is Natalie’s future, and I think you care about her too much to take that risk. And so I can confidently say send me to jail… I dare you.”
“You’re crazy… You realize that, don’t you?”
“Let’s dispense with the niceties and just get down to business.”
“What the hell are you talking about, you psychopath?” I demanded.
“I’m trying to tell you that you have a choice,” he said. “You can save Natalie’s future if you stop sparring with me long enough to find out.”
I was so angry that I was practically shaking, but I knew Jason had the upper hand here. I suppressed my rage and nodded for him to continue.
“Break up with Natalie,” Jason said, without missing a beat.
“Excuse me?” I said, in disbelief.
“Break up with Natalie, and I’ll leave you both alone,” Jason said smugly. “I won’t report the two of you because there won’t be anything to report. Then you can keep your job and find another student to fuck, Natalie can graduate and save her future, and everybody wins.”
“Everybody wins?” I repeated, in a low voice. “Are you fucking serious?”
Jason smiled. “It’s a pretty good deal.”
“I have one question?”
“By all means go ahead,” he said.
“Why did you wait till now to do this?” I demanded. “You had months… Why now?”
His smile turned cruel. “Graduation is around the corner; Natalie is finally at the finish line, and she’s worked hard to get there. She thinks her life is perfect – what better way to bring her down from her little fairytale than to have the man she loves dump her right before her biggest accomplishment?”
I looked at Jason and shook my head. “You are a tiny, tiny man…”
“What do you say?” Jason asked happily. “Are you taking my deal or not?”
I fell silent for a moment, weighing my options. “You yourself pointed out that Natalie is graduating soon. What’s to stop me from getting back together with her after she’s got her degree?” I asked.
His smile didn’t falter. “I’m glad you asked… I’m also glad that you obviously didn’t glance through the university’s rules and regulations page before you signed your contract. You see, this university is one of the few that maintain a rescinding policy. Meaning that if any alumni are caught doing anything illegal or dishonorable in any way, the university maintains the right to rescind the degree that was earned.”
“I hardly think having a relationship with your professor qualifies as illegal or dishonorable,” I spat.
“No, but sleeping your way to an A grade is considered dishonorable.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“That’s what I’ll make is sound like,” Jason said. “And since my father has made generous donations to this university, I know that many will be inclined to believe me. Even if she keeps her degree it won’t matter… my father is a powerful man. He has made careers and he has broken them. If you want Natalie to be a piranha in the job market, then you can go ahead and be bull headed about this.”
He had covered his bases, and I felt any semblance of control I thought I had slipped from my grasp. Jason seemed to sense the defeat on my shoulders because his smile grew wider.
“I take it we have a deal?” he asked.
I practically had to choke the words from my mouth. “Fine,” I barked.
“Not a very gracious acceptance, but I’ll take it.” He smiled. “Oh, and one more thing.”
“What now?”
“Make it believable. You have to make it seem like you’re not interested in her anymore,” Jason said. “I don’t want her suspecting that anyone else is involved. She has to believe that you don’t care about the relationship anymore. Understood?”
“Get out of my fucking office.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Jason smiled. He stood up slowly and headed towards the door.
“Jason?” I said, and he stopped in his tracks.
“Yes?”
“You were following us the night of Natalie’s birthday, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” he replied, without shame.
“I have a condition, too,” I said, choking back my anger. “I’ll keep to your twisted deal on one condition. I don’t ever want to see your face again. And if I do, rest assured, I’m going to punch the living shit out of you.”
Jason looked amused. “What makes you think I’ll ever need to see or speak to you again after this?”
With that, he turned and walked out of my office. I reached for my phone, and my eyes fell immediately to my open picture library. Natalie stared out at me, and I looked at her face and shook my head.
“I’m sorry,” I said to her, knowing that I could never give her the explanation she would expect. “I’m so sorry.”