Chapter 33 Thirty three

Chapter 33 Thirty three
‎Zara
‎
‎I waited until the political science building was empty.
‎I had texted Darren earlier, "I need to talk."
‎The walk from my apartment to campus had taken twenty minutes, twenty minutes of trying to figure out how to say "Ethan has been threatening me and Becca is watching us and I think they are working together" without sounding like I was spiraling into paranoia. I had the letter in my pocket, folded and creased from how many times I had opened and closed it over the past six hours.
‎Darren's door was closed, but a thin line of light showed underneath, I knocked twice before turning the handle and stepping inside without waiting for him to tell me to come in. He was sitting behind his desk, the same desk I had been bent over more times than I could count.
‎"Close the door," he said, his voice was calm. I closed the door and locked it and then I just stood there with my back against the wood and my hands shaking at my sides my heart was pounding so hard I was sure he could hear it from across the desk.
‎"You said you needed to talk," Darren said, leaning back in his chair, his eyes never leaving my face. "So talk."
‎"I do not know where to start."
‎"Start at the beginning."
‎"The beginning was months ago, Darren. When Ethan started asking me out and me saying no and him not accepting it  many times that I lost count. He still kept on showing up everywhere I went, texting me at weird hours, asking my friends about my schedule, making me feel like I was being followed even when I was alone in my own apartment."
‎Darren's jaw tightened, his hands curl into fists on the armrests of his chair, but he did not interrupt.
‎"At first I thought he was just annoying, you know, like he couldn't take a hint but then the convention happened, and I realized it was more than that, I realized he was not just annoying, he was obsessed and I did not know how to handle that because every time I told him to leave me alone he just smiled like nothing had happened."
‎"What happened at the convention?" Darren asked, his voice was still calm but there was an edge underneath it now.
‎I took a deep breath and pulled the letter out of my pocket, holding it up so he could see it. "He gave me this...in the cafeteria. He walked right up to our table and handed it to me."
‎Darren stood up from his chair, and walked around the desk toward me. "What does it say?"
‎"Read it yourself."
‎I handed him the letter, and our fingers brushed in the exchange.
‎He unfolded the letter and read it in silence, his eyes moving across the page, his jaw getting tighter with every line, when he finished he looked up at me with an expression I had never seen before.
‎"He knows," Darren said. "He knows about us."
‎"He knows something," I said. "I do not know how much he knows or how he figured it out or who he has been talking to, but he knows enough to threaten me with it and he is not the only one, Darren, there is someone else, there is this graduate student named Becca, she has been watching us too. I saw them together at the convention, I saw her and Ethan standing by the coffee station with their heads close together like they were plotting something I think they are working together and I think they are planning to do something, I just do not know what or when or how to stop them."
‎Darren's eyes narrowed. "Becca Halloway?"
‎"You know her?"
‎"She is in the graduate program. She is a bright girl, so ambitious." He said the words like they tasted bad in his mouth. "She has made her interest in me clear in the past. I have kept my distance."
‎"Well, she is not keeping her distance anymore. She has been following me, watching me and now she is with Ethan, I do not know what to do, Darren, I do not know how to protect us from both of them."
‎He set the letter down on his desk and turned to face me, his hands came up to cup my face, his thumbs brushing my cheekbones, his grey eyes searching mine. "You came to me. That is what you do. You come to me, and we figure it out together."
‎"I should have told you sooner. I should have told you at the convention, when I first saw her watching me, when I first realized she knew something. But I was scared, Darren. I was scared you would  walk away and leave me alone with both of them circling like sharks."
‎"I am not walking away."
‎"You do not know that. You cannot know that this is just the beginning, Darren, this is just the first threat, and it is going to get worse, people are going to find out and your career is going to be ruined and my life is going to fall apart and you are definitely going to wish you had never met me that night at the bar when I was drunk and angry."
‎"I am never going to wish that." His voice was fierce now, louder than I had ever heard it, his hands moved from my face to my shoulders, pulling me closer, holding me against him like he was afraid I would disappear. "You are the best thing that has ever happened to me, Zara. You are the only thing that has ever made me feel alive and I am not going to let some obsessed undergraduate and some jealous graduate student take that away from us."
‎"Then what are we going to do?"
‎"First, we are going to keep this letter somewhere safe. It is evidence. If it escalates, if he goes to the dean or tries to expose us publicly, we have proof that he has been threatening you."
‎"He was careful, Darren. He did not name names. He did not say what he knows. He just said 'I know what you are hiding' and 'people want what you have.' It is vague. He could deny it."
‎"Then we get more evidence. We build a case."
‎"And Becca?"
‎Darren's jaw tightened again. "I will handle Becca."
‎"How? What are you going to do?"
‎"I am going to talk to her. Remind her that graduate students have just as much to lose as professors when it comes to scandals and rumors and accusations that cannot be proven. I am going to make her understand that whatever she thinks she knows, whatever evidence she thinks she has, it is not worth destroying her own future over."
‎"You think that will work?"
‎"No. But it is a start."
‎I pulled back from him to look at his face. "I am scared, Darren. I am really, really scared."
‎"I know." He reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers lingering on my skin. "But you do not have to be scared alone. That is what I am here for. That is what we are for. Together."
‎"I love you."
‎The words came out before I could stop them, before I could think about whether it was too soon.
‎Darren went completely still, his grey eyes wide and his hands frozen on my shoulders, for a moment I was afraid I had broken something between us, that I had said too much too fast and ruined everything.
‎"Say it again," he said, and his voice was rough, almost broken.
‎"I love you, Darren. I love you, and I am terrified, I do not know what is going to happen to us, but I love you, and I needed you to know that before everything falls apart."
‎He kissed me.
‎ This kiss was desperate and hungry, full of everything he could not say out loud, his hands fisting in my hair, his body pressing me back against the desk until I was leaning over it with him on top of me and the letter crumpling somewhere under my shoulder blades.
‎"I love you too," he said against my mouth, the words muffled and fierce and raw. "I love you too, Zara, and I am not going to let anyone take you away from me, not Ethan, not Becca, not the entire university administration, not anyone."
‎ Then he was pulling at my skirt, pushing it up around my hips, his hands shaking as badly as mine were, I was also pulling at his belt.
‎"Do you want this?" he asked, his forehead pressed against mine, his breath hot on my lips.
‎"I want you," I said. "I want you to make me forget. I want you to fuck me so hard that I cannot think about Ethan or Becca or any of it. I want you to remind me why this is worth all the risk and all the fear and all the fucking terror."