Page 57 of How Dare You
“From what I’ve heard, you’re long overdue for some quality rest. Maybe you’re crashing a little bit now.” He pauses, tentative. “You need some more alone time?”
“No,” I answer too quickly. Too eagerly. Being around him doesn’t drain me. Not at all. I noticed it yesterday when everyone else left and I didn’t feel like I needed to get away from him. And then again this morning when I was disappointed to find he went to the house without me. The idea is equal parts comforting and unsettling.
He laughs, low and easy, rocking his chest under my cheek. “Allie told me something yesterday that I’ve been dying to ask you about.”
Could be anything. “I’m not making any promises.”
“She said you dated one of your professors in college.”
Pressing my hand lightly into the center of his chest, I sit up. At the contact, he opens his eyes, mouth spreading into a wide smile.
“How did that come up?” I ask.
“Doesn’t matter,” he shakes his head, being a little too obvious that it does matter.
I tilt my head, considering, but decide to let him off the hook. “What do you want to know?”
“You’re going to tell me?” he asks, face lighting up like a child who’s getting a second helping of dessert.
“Sure, why not?” I shrug.
Rhett braces me with a hand on my back as he sits up and settles me into a seated position next to him. “What was his name? How old was he? How old were you? How did he talk you into it?”
I laugh at his eagerness. He really has been dying to ask. “Ted Winters. Well, Theodore Winters, but I called him Ted.”
“Sounds like a weasel.” His lip curls in disgust, but I get the feeling he would have had the same reaction no matter what the name was.
“He was,” I admit. It’s been years since I thought about Ted, even longer since I talked about it. What compelled Allie to bring him up? “He taught a business class I took my junior year. I ran into him downtown one night late in the semester, and we started talking outside of class that way. We dated a little over a year, and he broke it off a month before graduation.”
“You skipped how old he was.” Rhett says, jaw clenched.
“He was thirty-two. So, young to be a professor, but still shouldn’t have been dating a twenty-one-year-old student.” I’m only twenty-eight now, and I cannot imagine dating a college student.
“What was the appeal?” Rhett asks in lieu of the what were you thinking reprimand I’ve come to expect when I share this story.
“He was,” I let go of a long exhale, then start over. “I thought Ted was a way to skip over the immaturity of being young. He had his own place with custom art and exposed brick walls. It felt leaps and bounds more grown-up than student apartments with four guys piled into two bedrooms.”
Rhett’s look is pensive, and when he doesn’t pry further it makes me want to share more. I swallow thickly. “He would listen to me talk for hours, tell me how original and unique my ideas were, made me feel like a burgeoning little philosopher. He would tell me I was the most special woman he’d ever known, laid on the compliments thick and, being so young, I ate it up. But he also never challenged me to do more, never wanted to hear about my ideas for starting my own business and would get frustrated whenever I let him see how competent I was without him. It took a long time after he broke up with me to realize it was because he didn’t want me to actually grow up.”
“Definitely a weasel,” Rhett says, leaving out any condemnation for me and lightening the moment just a touch.
The next part is more painful to dig up, but it’s the most relevant bit for Rhett to know, so I take a deep breath and continue. “My experience with Ted is what brought me around to taking on my mom’s rule of no dating in the industry. There was no avoiding him. He wasn’t my professor anymore, but I took classes in his building. I had to see him all the time if I wanted to get my work done. Allie and Sadie practically had to drag me to graduation because I wanted so badly to avoid him.” Rhett’s eyes light with understanding, but he doesn’t interrupt. “I couldn’t separate him from school, which was my job at the time.”
Ted was the last man who I allowed to get close enough, become important enough to hurt me. Looking into Rhett’s gray eyes, it’s hard not to wonder if he’ll be the next and even harder not to hope that he won’t be.
“Your mom’s rule?” he asks, moving on from Ted, which I’m overwhelmingly grateful for. “I thought it was a Devon Blake rule, but if I could just call her up and ask permission—” he lets his voice trail off with a teasing smirk.
I push against his chest. “It is now, but I picked it up from her. She’s always said her relationship with my dad works because they have their own lives. She’s an architect. He’s a sports journalist. They never cross paths professionally, and rarely ever personally for that matter.” The final observation is one that I probably should have kept to myself, but he handled the Ted thing so well, maybe it won’t hurt to talk about my family too.
Most of the time Rhett teases me, flirts with me, prods me with questions. But right now, he’s listening patiently, giving me time in between sentences to process. “For my parents, I think it’s more a case of a convenient excuse for how little time they spend together. They met after both of their careers started, though. I sometimes wonder what experience my mom had before that made her so passionate about keeping work and personal lives separate. I’ve never seen anything resembling passion when she talks about my dad.”
He considers that, too, quiet for a while longer before he asks. “Are you close with your parents?”
“My mom, definitely.” My lips pull into a smile at the idea of her. “She was invested in my success from a very young age. She owns her architecture firm, and she taught me lots of lessons about running a business, and specifically being a woman who runs a business. When I met Allie in middle school, Mom started teaching her things too. I honestly believe my mom is a big part of the reason Allie decided to start her own company.”
Rhett’s smile grows as I give him more details about my mom, how accomplished she is, how much I admire her and want to be like her, and how much she supports me.
He brushes his sun-streaked hair out of his eyes, saying, “I grew up with strong women too.”