Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 113051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Knock it off, I chide myself. Lusting after your professor slash psychologist is the very last thing you need.
Old habits, they die hard.
“If you’ll excuse me,” he says, still keeping his distance and gesturing to the door, which had closed. He seems to want to avoid me, and I figure it’s because I’m probably staring at him with googly eyes.
But as he steps around me, I meet his gaze for a moment, and I swear the world goes still, like the fog wraps around us, blocking out the sporadic calls of the ravens, the haunting trill of the varied thrush, until there’s only silence. His eyes are shadowed by his dark, low brows, his irises a ghostly shade of grey that matches the mist. His stare is intense, electrifying, burning straight into my soul, like he can see all of me.
And what he sees scares him.
Enough that he has to quickly look away.
“I’m Sydney Denik,” I blurt out, not wanting him to walk away, not wanting my future shrink to already make some crash judgments about me. “I’m in your classes,” I add, though I wince inwardly because of course I’m in his classes. We all are.
He freezes, his long fingers grasping the door handle. He nods, licks his lips, hesitating. Then he closes his eyes for a moment and turns to face me.
He meets my gaze again, and this time, the intensity is turned down. He still has a bewildering thousand-yard stare, but his brooding brows have softened. The corners of his eyes crinkle enough that I’d place his age in the late thirties.
He wipes his hand on his coat. “Sorry. Hands are clean, but they smell like diesel.” He shakes mine, firm and hard, his palm warm, and it’s as if a current of electricity runs from his skin to mine. Not enough to shock, but enough to make my nerves dance and send sparks down my spine. He holds on to my hand longer than is probably appropriate, and the longer he does, the more intense his stare becomes, until I can feel it start to unravel something in me, something I don’t want unraveled.
He swallows hard, his full mouth forming a hard line, and then looks away, dropping my hand. Again, his fingers flex at his side.
“Wes Kincaid,” he says, clearing his throat.
“Do I call you Professor Kincaid or Dr. Kincaid?” I manage to ask.
“Either one is fine,” he says, his voice turning raspier. He clears his throat again. “Do you prefer Sydney or Syd?”
“Either one is fine,” I echo. “I think I’ll just call you Kincaid.”
He gives me a soft, genuine smile, like I’ve amused him. His eyes light up, his face too handsome for his own good. “Then I will call you Sydney unless you tell me otherwise.”
“My friends call me Syd,” I tell him coyly. “I can’t tell if we’re going to be friends or not.”
I know I’m sounding a little flirty, and I shouldn’t, I really shouldn’t, but he doesn’t seem uncomfortable by it.
“I guess we’ll see,” he says. “Don’t be late for your class tomorrow.” His face grows stern, a look he does so well, but I can tell it’s in jest.
“I won’t,” I say as he gives me a nod and then disappears into the building.
I stand there for a moment at the closed door, feeling strangely outside myself. The fog around me seems to be wisping away with the briny breeze, the light growing brighter. I sniff my hand. It does smell faintly of diesel, though I detect the scent of tobacco as well. He probably smokes.
Either way, it’s not unpleasant at all. I keep my hand to my nose as I walk over to the main lodge, the scent reminding me of something I can’t quite place but is comforting nonetheless. Perhaps the smell of my childhood. My grandmother chain-smoked Marlboro Lights for the longest time, and my father always smelled of diesel from his fishing boats.
At the memory of them, my chest aches. Grief is funny like that. It lives alongside you, sometimes in silence, and then a random thought, or memory, or smell will punch through you like a fist, your bleeding heart in its grasp, and you have to relive it all over again. I often think of grief as a cycle from which there is no escape, an ouroboros, a snake of sorrow eating its tail.
My father died three years ago, and most days now, I can think of him without crying or getting sad. We were never that close since he was so rarely home, but we still had a good relationship. We were passing ships in the night, and with him, it was literal. Sometimes I think my struggle with object permanence—the ability to forget that certain things or people exist if they aren’t present—is one reason why I’m not insane with grief all the time. It’s one of the few concessions that my ADHD grants me. That and my ability to hyperfocus and grow obsessive over the things I care deeply about, which is why my grades are so good but only about the subjects I’m infatuated with (which is why that one calculus class I had to take was a bitch).