Kara
When I broke up with Scott I was sad about it, but I knew that I’d given our relationship my all and that there was nothing else I could do.
I also held the hope that one day we would be on our way to being friends again.
Now I knew better.
Hope wasn’t a lasting feeling.
It only lasted as long as the trust in the expectation was there.
Scott held my hand as we walked to my class and I felt the cold shiver run through me.
It was a coldness that wasn’t going to thaw anytime soon.
“I’ll pick you up from your group study as soon as practice ends.” His cheerful voice opened up the scab that had grown inside my heart.
I managed to smile as I answered, “Sure.”
He kissed my forehead as he whispered, “I’m so happy we’re back together.”
I nodded at his gentle green eyes and another pain slashed through my chest. Once, long ago, I’d have returned his words with so much love attached to it, with so much caring encumbered with it.
Now all I could think about was the relentless agony that coursed through my veins, knowing that the man I loved was on the other side of the door that my classmate Anthony held open for me.
“You coming in, Kara?” Anthony asked, eyeing me and Scott. Quantum was starting in five minutes so I nodded and waved bye to Scott.
It had been two weeks since I’d sent the text to Bishop.
It was cowardly, but I couldn’t do it face to face then.
I’d cancelled my flight to Aspen and the minute I got to my dorm, Bishop was knocking on my door.
I didn’t block his number.
I wasn’t a martyr like that.
I read all of his texts, asking me to call him, text him, and heard his voicemails, listening his voice change from bewilderment to anger.
Every night for the past two weeks I listened to them, letting my heart soak in his presence, even for just a few minutes.
Because while I wasn’t a martyr, I was a masochist.
I let the pain tear through my being, knowing it was the only way I could feel alive.
I could still see his facial features twist in anger when I’d told him I didn’t love him.
He’d caught me off guard.
I knew his schedule; I’d gone to my dorm when I thought he was at practice. Scott had an away game so I chose to hide in the safety of my room so I could cry in private.
Bishop was waiting for me on the steps of Franklin Hall and I knew I couldn’t avoid him anymore.
He looked at me with those beautiful brown eyes, his jaw clenched with undeniable tension and it took all of my control to not launch at him and kiss the darkness and sadness in his eyes away.
He’d looked like he’d come straight from practice since he was still wearing his jersey and his hair was wet from his shower.
God, he looked so handsome.
The words he’d launched at me tore at my skin, but the damage was deeper than any visible cut.
“You love him, Kara?” He spat in the air as he said them.
I nodded because I couldn’t say the words, and I looked away before he recognized the lie I was telling him.
“Funny.” He chuckled without humor. “It’s ridiculous how you can go back to Texas and spend three days there, and find out that you still love your ex-boyfriend.”
I maintained my silence and kept my hands clenched to the sides of the sleeveless dress shirt I’d grabbed first thing this morning.
Even dressing up was a chore.
Getting up was the hardest thing to do when your heart wasn’t in it.
“Tell me, Kara.” His words were heavier than lead and I saw the rage masked in his facial features. I knew that once I broke his heart, there would be no getting it back. Bishop was a man whose trust didn’t come easily. And neither did he love carelessly. “Look me in the eye when you tell me that you don’t love me anymore. I need to hear you say it so that I can move on with my life while you live the happily-fucking-ever-after with Scott.”
My heart ached for him.
Even my dreams reached for his touch.
But I had no choice.
I wanted to be with Bishop so much.
In an alternate reality, I’d be with him.
But I wasn’t living that reality and when I’d made the deal with the President of Texas U, also known as Scott’s dad, I didn’t know how it was going to affect me.
Until now.
I took a shallow breath, it was all I could manage these days, and faced him, my best friend Hanna’s future serving as my lifeline, “I’m sorry, Bishop…I love Scott.”
He closed his eyes and then he’d said the words that made me lose air in my lungs, “I see. Have a good life.”
So here we were, in Quantum Class, my body hyperaware of his presence, my mind taken up by his voice, and my heart occupied by his absence.
You’d think that after I had broken up with him, Bishop would move seats and sit far away from me. Nope, he sat in the same chair he’d always sat in. Two seats behind me.
My brother knew something was wrong when he’d seen my puffy eyes during breakfast the day after I broke up with Bishop on the phone.
I’d simply said that I was going to be with Scott again and begged him not to ask questions.
Rikko didn’t appear convinced, but he nodded and said that my love life was worse than the Japanese soap operas than one of his frat brothers watched.
He’d also offered his shoulders for support, but I’d been leaning heavily on Anissa’s shoulders knowing that she was there for me just simply because she cared.
I’d cried to Hanna and she’d threatened to tell Bishop everything, but I pulled my best friend card and made her promise not to. She was also caught in the crosshairs because she was the one I was protecting and she couldn’t do anything about my deal with Scott’s dad.
“Is there anything you’d like to add to the discussion, Miss Chamberlane?” Professor Milliken queried. He was one of the very few professors who liked to call on the students who didn’t raise their hands.
I’d raised my hands so many times in his class that even he must have sensed that something was wrong with me since I hadn’t had the initiative to put my right hand up in the air for two class sessions.
“No. Not really,” I answered flatly.
“Not even a little bit?” Professor Milliken hedged. “So, Mister Jackson’s answer is correct then?”
He was pointing to the white board filled with problems and solutions.
Somewhere in my brain, the V’s and the x’s and all the p’s signified the potential of mass (m) and the potential energy levels and their eigen functions, but my mind was too clouded with grieving the man breathing a short distance behind me that I couldn’t actively engage in the discussion.
For the first time in my life, I didn’t have the urge to solve theoretical functions when much of my reality was skewed and screwed up.
“Yes, Mister Cordello?” Professor Milliken’s said, and in an instant my synapses were on high alert.
“Can I solve the problem?” Bishop’s solid voice, so calm and so sexy at the same time, filled the quiet room.
“Are you saying the answer on the board is wrong?” The professor’s brows rose in inquiry. It wasn’t easy to get A’s in Professor Milliken’s class for this reason. Even when you thought you had the right answer, he made you question it.
Only three more classes and we’d be in finals week.
I felt like crying in the middle of class, the class where I’d met the man I loved so dearly for the first time, the man who showed me how love and passion weren’t interchangeable.
The man who attested how dreams can be made into reality.
The man who was currently standing in front of the class, showing all of us, with flawless effort, that the solution to the complicated problem on the board was by breaking down the problem into four parts where the potential is a semi-harmonic oscillator, therefore for x > 0, the potential is similar to the simple harmonic oscillator.
When he was done writing the solution, Bishop had come up with the Hermite polys and the energy levels were (n + 1/2)¯hω,n = 1,3,5,...
He’d always been this brilliant.
And when he gave a small grin to Professor Milliken who gave him a short nod, I saw the way his simple green shirt bunched up on his muscled shoulders.
He’d always been this hot.
He avoided my gaze, but as he walked back to his seat, I smelled the familiar masculine scent that he emanated and I couldn’t help but lower my eyes to the floor.
Oh God, how was I going to survive being without him?