Tenure

46. Kiernan

46

Kiernan

I have no fucking idea what just happened.

I came in class, told him I love him, and watched him pummel someone in public. I could feel the rage in him. The fury. Who did this to you?

It was all for me.

He is all for me.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but I know it wasn’t this. Maybe I’ve read too many romance novels, but I thought he’d want this to be a secret. That I’d be shameful. That he’d give me a long speech about his career, and regularly complain about how we shouldn’t be together, how I’m too young, how people won’t understand.

Instead he’s declaring his love for me, taking me out in public without blinking twice, and is apparently willing to do hard time for murder over my honour.

Could have done worse for my first boyfriend.

He pulls onto the QEW, and I frown.

“Are we going back to your place?” I ask.

“No.”

“Where are we going?”

“I’m taking you home.”

I try not to pout and can feel his lips twitching.

“Don’t you want a night off?” he asks wryly.

“From you?”

He frowns too. “From sex.”

“We can spend time together and not have sex, James.”

“No. We can’t.”

I snort, and his lips twitch again. He sighs deeply and pulls off at the next exit, turning around and heading back onto the highway towards his apartment.

“Good boy.”

He narrows his eyes, his face hardening in warning, but when he reaches out to touch my cheek it’s soft. Gentle. He cups the side of my face, and I lean into it as he strokes my cheekbone with his thumb.

“You’re kind of sweet, you know,” I hear myself say.

He stares at me for a long time, the bloody knuckles on his other hand casually resting on the steering wheel.

“Just don’t tell anyone,” he says.

I’m not the secret. He’s the secret. Having a heart is his secret.

“I love you,” I blurt out. Again.

“You talk too much,” he says.

But as he turns his head back to the road, he can’t quite hide his smile.

It’s all for me.