013

Marcellus

The house was way too quiet as I came down.

I showered twice in just one night and neither had washed her scent off me.

I had stood outside her door for twenty minutes after the damning sex. Long enough to hear her retch over the balcony.

Then I had gone to the guest room and stared at the ceiling until the sun came up.

Yet I didn't feel bad and that was the thing. That was the knife's edge I walked every waking moment now. I should have felt bad. A decent man would have felt sick. Would have packed his bags, made an excuse to Clarissa, disappeared before he could do more damage.

But I no decent man. I'd stopped pretending since I loved the way I felt inside Bonnie upon I knew she was my soon to be step daughter.

I loved Clarissa and I really meant it. She was warm and bright and uncomplicated in a way that made my life so much easier. She laughed at my jokes. She touched my arm when she talked. She looked at me like I hung the moon, and I liked being looked at that way.

But Bonnie...

Bonnie was different.

Bonnie was a live wire. No, more like a storm front. She had her mother's face but not her mother's softness...

I have never wanted anything the way I wanted her.

Not wanted. That wasn't the word.

I needed her. Needed the way she trembled under my hands. Needed the way she kissed like she was drowning and I was air. Needed the way she looked at me afterward.

So no...I definitely didn't feel bad.

I felt greedy and hungry. I felt like a man who had somehow stumbled into owning two suns and was too selfish to give either one up.

That wasn't guilt. It was something else entirely.

Something diabolical, maybe. But true.

I came down the stairs at eight-fifteen, dressed in a pressed button-down and slacks. The smell of coffee pulled me toward the kitchen, but the sound of their voices stopped me in the doorway.

Clarissa was at the counter, pouring cream into a mug. Her hair was loose...still damp from a shower, and she wore that soft blue robe I liked, the one that made her look like something out of a painting.

And Bonnie.

Bonnie sat at the kitchen island, half-slouched over a bowl of yogurt she wasn't eating. She wore workout clothes; leggings, a baggy sweatshirt, her hair in a messy ponytail. She was clearly ready for school.

And I felt my chest tighten at the sight.

"...coach says if we win regionals, we go to states," Bonnie was saying, stirring her yogurt without looking at it. "Which we won't, because Marcus still can't box out to save her life, but whatever."

"You're too hard on yourself," Clarissa said, sliding a mug toward her and Bonnie didn't take it. "You've been playing beautifully. I came to the last game, remember? Twenty-two points."

"Twenty-two points in a loss. So cool."

Clarissa laughed; that easy, musical laugh I'd fallen for. "She gets her competitive streak from you," Clarrisa said as she glanced over her shoulder at me.

Only then did Bonnie look up.

Our eyes met for exactly one second.

Then she looked away.

"Morning," I said so casually.

"Morning." Clarissa came over and kissed my cheek, her hand lingering on my chest. She smelled like jasmine. Like home and definitely everything I wasn't supposed to risk losing.

Bonnie hadn't moved. She stabbed her yogurt with the spoon like it had personally offended her.

"Regionals?" I asked, leaning against the counter. "When is it?"

"Two weeks," Bonnie said flatly. Then, she turned to Clarrisa, "Mom, do we have more granola?"

"Pantry, top shelf."

Bonnie slid off the stool and walked past me. Close enough that I caught her scent, close enough that I had to physically stop myself from reaching out.

She didn't look at me. Didn't acknowledge me at all.

Still pissed, I thought. Good. Anger I can work with but silence I can't.

She found the granola, poured it directly into her hand, and ate it standing at the pantry door. Then she walked back to the island, kissed her mother on the cheek! a quick, deliberate peck...and grabbed her gym bag from the floor.

"I'm leaving early. Practice."

"Bonnie, you haven't eaten..."

"I'll get something on the way."

And then she was gone. The front door closed behind her with a soft click that somehow sounded louder than a slam.

Clarissa stared after her with her brows furrowed. "What was that about?"

I crossed the kitchen and wrapped my arms around Clarissa from behind, and pressed a kiss on her temple.

"Teenagers," I said against her skin. "That's how they act nowadays."

Clarissa sighed as she leaned back into me. "I worry about her. She's been so moody lately."

"She'll be fine." I tightened my arms around her. "Besides she's got her mother's backbone."

That made her smile. She turned in my embrace and kissed me softly, nothing like the way Bonnie kissed me at all.

Two different worlds yet I wanted both. I would always want both.

The staff meeting was at two.

I sat at the head of the conference table and listened to the department heads drone on about attendance policies, curriculum mapping, the annual budget shortfall. Boring...So boring I had to stop myself from checking my phone under the table.

Then came the committee reports. Then the principal's updates. Then...

"Outstanding Faculty of the Month," the vice principal announced, reading from a notecard. "For demonstrated excellence in instruction, student engagement, and leadership within the humanities department. Dr. Marcellus Morello."

Polite applause rented the air then a few genuine smiles from colleagues who liked me. A few tight-lipped nods from the ones who didn't.

I stood up to accept the plaque; cheap wood, gold sticker, meaningless...and gave the expected speech. Something in between...Thank you... Honored. Couldn't do it without my students.

Meanwhile the whole time, I was thinking about Bonnie.

About the way she'd walked past me this morning like I was furniture. About the way she'd kissed her mother...her mother...right in front of me, like a dare. Like the door shutting in my face that she knew I couldn't follow through.

After the meeting, I excused myself to my office, locked the door, and pulled out my phone.

Congratulations on Outstanding Faculty, I typed. Must run in the family.

I watched the screen. It marked Sent then Delivered.

Read receipts were on.

I waited five minutes. Ten. The ticks stayed blue, but no three dots appeared. No response. Just the cold, flat silence of a message received and ignored.

Something hot coiled in my stomach. Not anger...something sharper. Something that felt like being dismissed by a girl who had no right to dismiss me. Not after what we'd done. Not after what I'd felt inside her.

Fine, we'll play it her way.

I found her in the third-floor bathroom. The one by the science wing, it was low-traffic at this time of day.

She wasn't alone though.

Her friend Bianca, stood by the sinks, scrolling on her phone while Bonnie leaned against the tiled wall, arms crossed with gym bag at her feet.

I pushed the door open wider and that got their attention.

Bianca looked up first. Her eyes widened slightly, the way students' eyes always did when a professor appeared somewhere they didn't expect one.

"Dr. Morello," she said as she straightened.

Bonnie didn't move or look at me. But I saw her hands tighten on her own arms.

"Bianca...Bonnie." I nodded casually like this was a coincidence. "Bonnie, I was hoping to catch you. Your paper on Dickinson...the extended metaphor section felt thin. I'd like you to come by my office and walk me through your thinking."

A pure white lie. Her paper was fine, way better than fine.

Bonnie finally looked at me. Her face was a mask of politeness and pleasantness and worse utterly empty.

"Of course, Dr. Morello," she said. "I'll email you about office hours."

"Now would be better."

"I have practice."

"Practice can wait fifteen minutes."

Bianca glanced between us, clearly uncomfortable now.

Bonnie held my gaze. There was nothing in her eyes. Nothing at all.

Then she picked up her gym bag, slung it over her shoulder, and turned to Bianca . "Let's go. Coach will kill us if we're late."

Then she walked past me like right past me.

The door swung shut behind them, and I was left standing in the fluorescent glare of the girls' bathroom, staring at the empty space where she'd been.

My phone buzzed in my pocket yet I didn't check it.

I just stood there, my jaw tight and pulse loud in my ears, and I realized something with absolute, crystalline clarity.

She thinks she can walk away.

She's wrong because I own every single inch of her.