Chapter 25: Twenty Five
Becca
I have always been good at noticing things other people miss.
It is not a skill I learned or practiced. It is just the way my brain works. Always scanning, cataloging and filing away small details that seem unimportant in the moment but often turn out to be useful later. I notice when someone changes their perfume, when a professor wears the same shirt two days in a row, when two people who claim not to know each other keep ending up in the same places at the same times. Most of the time, the things I notice do not matter, and I let them drift to the back of my mind and eventually disappear. But sometimes, sometimes they add up to something bigger, and when that happens, I pay attention.
I have been paying attention to Professor Darren Kane since the first day of the semester.
It is not hard to notice him. He is the kind of man who commands a room without trying, who walks into a lecture hall and makes every student sit up a little straighter and every female student hold her breath. He is forty-two years old and hot with grey eyes that look right through you, and his deep voice that makes my stomach flutter in a way I have not felt since high school. I signed up for his Political Theory class because I needed the credit, but I stayed because I could not stop thinking about him, could not stop watching him, could not stop imagining what it would be like to have those eyes focused on me the way they focus on his favorite students.
I am not the only one, of course. Half the women in that class are in love with him, maybe more. I hear them whispering in the lecture hall, giggling about his hot body.
I also notice that he never looks at any of those giggling girls the way he looks at Zara Lennox.
Zara Lennox.
The name makes my jaw clench even just thinking about it.
I have noticed her too, of course. Everyone has. The girl is loud and bratty and dresses like she is going to a club instead of a lecture, and she has this way of looking at Professor Kane like she is daring him to do something about her attitude. I assumed, at first, that Kane would shut her down the way he shuts down every other student who acts out in his class. But he does not shut Zara down. He engages with her. He looks at her like she is the only person in the room worth looking at, and I have noticed that too.
I have noticed it from the very beginning.
The convention in Washington D.C. has given me more opportunities to watch than I have ever had on campus. I am attending as a graduate student representative, which means I have access to faculty lounges and private events that the undergraduates do not, and I have spent the past two days using that access to stay close to Kane, to observe him, to learn his habits and his routines.
I know he is staying in room 410. I saw him enter it on the first night. I have seen the light under his door late at night. I have seen him leave in the mornings looking composed and infuriatingly handsome. I have not dared to knock on his door, nor make any kind of move, because I am smarter than that, more patient than that. I have been waiting for the right moment, the right opportunity to get him alone and make him see me the way he sees other people.
But then I saw Zara.
It was late, past midnight, and I was walking back to my room after a long evening. The hallway on the fourth floor was quiet, the lights dimmed for the night, and I rounded the corner just in time to see a figure slip out of room 410 and hurry down the hallway in the opposite direction.
I froze.
My first thought was that I had imagined it, that my eyes were playing tricks on me, because there was no reason for anyone to be coming out of Professor Kane's room at that hour. But then the figure turned slightly, and the dim light caught her face, and my stomach dropped because I recognized those dark curls and that annoying, bratty walk.
Zara Lennox.
Coming out of Professor Kane's room at midnight, looking disheveled and flushed.
I pressed myself against the wall and watched her disappear into room 412, three doors down from Kane's room, and then I stood there in the dark hallway for a long time with my heart pounding and my hands curled into fists at my sides.
I had suspected something was going on between them. The way Kane looks at Zara in class, the way Zara looks back at him, the way they seem to have this invisible connection that no one else can see...I noticed all of it. But suspicion is not proof. Suspicion is just a feeling, and feelings can be wrong.
This was not a feeling.
This was Zara Lennox walking out of Professor Kane's hotel room at midnight with her hair a mess and a smile on her face that said she had just been thoroughly and completely fucked.
I did not sleep well that night. I lay in my bed staring at the ceiling, replaying the image over and over in my head, trying to figure out what to do with what I had seen. I could report it, of course. One anonymous email to the dean's office and Kane's career would be over, Zara's academic future would be destroyed, and the whole thing would explode in a way that would satisfy my sense of justice. But that is not what I want. I do not want Kane destroyed. I want him for myself.
So I watched.