All Chapters of One Night With My Neighbor : Chapter 71 - Chapter 73

The next morning the storm had passed, leaving the air heavy and the yard full of fallen leaves. Mark and I moved around each other carefully at first. We made coffee in silence, both of us aware of what had happened the night before and neither of us willing to name it yet. When he reached past me for a mug, his chest brushed my shoulder and stayed there a second longer than necessary. I felt the warmth of him through my thin sleep shirt.We spent most of the morning doing ordinary things. I started a load of laundry while he answered emails at the kitchen table. The dryer hummed in the background. Every time I walked past him, his eyes followed me. I felt the weight of that look on my skin.Around noon I decided to cook something simple, pasta with garlic and olive oil, the kind of meal that filled the house with a warm, familiar smell. Mark came into the kitchen while the water boiled. He stood behind me at the stove, close enough that I could feel the heat of his body.“Need help

Lola sat in the empty hallway outside Lecturer Hale’s office, the paper in her hands trembling slightly. The red mark at the top was impossible to miss. She had failed the midterm. Her stomach twisted as she read the score again, then folded the sheet and slipped it into her bag. She knew what she had to do.She knocked twice and waited. A deep voice called for her to enter. Lecturer Hale looked up from his laptop as she stepped inside and closed the door behind her. He was in his late thirties, broad-shouldered, with dark hair and a calm, assessing gaze that made her pulse jump. She had noticed him before in the lecture hall, but she had never stood this close.“Miss Rivera,” he said. “Office hours ended twenty minutes ago. What do you need?”Lola walked closer until she stood beside his desk. She set the test paper down in front of him. “I failed. I studied, but the questions were harder than I expected. I can’t afford another low mark this semester.”Hale glanced at the score, th