Chapter 7 Ihad that deep, gutted feeling that I was going to regret this. I rarely gave in to any kind of pressure, so why had I agreed to tutor Harmony based on Matthew's asinine request? Because I couldn't help myself. At least, that's what I repeated in my head when she walked into my classroom on Friday afternoon and settled at the center desk in the front row. She'd done as I asked after our last conversation and had begun sitting in the front row for every class. I hadn't anticipated how much she'd distract me. Her quiet attention and the way she riveted her gaze on her computer and papers were nothing extraordinary. Why? Why did my stomach churn and my blood rise every damn time I saw her lean over her desk to write in her notebook? A prickling sensation swept up the back of my neck and down my chest. My skin felt too tight, my body too contained for the riot of devastation brought on by her mere presence. Fuck it all, I was starting to think like Matthew. His inclination toward flowery phrases and poetry was rubbing off on my analytical brain. "Where are we starting?" She pulled a notebook from her ever-present messenger bag and set it on the desk, flipping to a blank page. I eased onto the edge of my desk and crossed my ankles, forcing my body to relax and my mind to concentrate on why I was here in the first place. "Where are you struggling?" I didn't mean for the question to come out terse and unsupporting, but it did, and I winced. Harmony's lips puckered and pulled to the side in a mockery of a smile. "Everywhere. The last thing you taught that made any sense was when you made a joke about balancing our checkbooks." I snort-laughed and relaxed. "I don't usually make jokes." "I know, that's why I remembered it. You looked ... happy." She shrugged and turned her head away, offering me a glimpse of her profile. "Sorry. None of my business. I just ..." She heaved a massive sigh too large for her willowy frame. "I suck at math. Always have. Numbers and letters together make no sense to me. Start throwing in angles and formulas and exponents and I'm absolutely going to flunk." "Hmm." I cocked my head to the side. "Especially with an attitude like that." She scowled at me. "Thanks for the psych eval." All color fled her face as soon as she said it. "Sorry. I'm so sorry. I don't know what I'm saying." Covering her face with both hands, she groaned and leaned her head on the desk. "God, I'm an idiot." "No." I almost pushed to my feet but planted them firmly on the floor and pressed my ass onto the desk until tingles swept down the backs of my legs. "It's nice to hear you saying what you think. I can work with honesty. What I can't work with is a lack of trying." She looked up, peering at me through her fingers. When I chuckled, she dropped her hands to the desk and picked up her pencil. "Right. I'm so far behind in understanding it's like swimming through jelly. But I'm not afraid to work for my grade." Without warning, she'd gone from quiet, shy student to intense and focused. I liked this version. Too much. Quiet and shy were fine. I didn't mind that, but when she raised her chin and took on a challenge, I found it riveting. Turning my back to her, I scribbled an equation on the board. "Let's start here." It was a basic, two-step equation I'd gone over the first week of classes. Harmony wrote the equation in her notebook. "What's the first step?" She swallowed hard. "Um. The goal is to get x by itself, so we find the value. Then we plug the number back into the equation to check we've done it right." "Yes, that's the simplistic order, but where do we start?" I tapped the marker on the board, ignoring the way she said we. "It's okay to say you don't know. That gives me an idea where to back up and start over." "I have no idea." She brought her hair over her shoulder and ran her fingers through it in a series of nervous strokes. A question rested deep in her eyes, but she held it back. The sight of her long fingers tangled in her golden locks reminded me of my late wife. She used to play with her hair as a distraction. And she looked at me the same way, like I was the answer to every problem, the solution to any question. I missed her with my entire being. Heart. Soul. Mind. Body. They'd all belonged to her. So much so that losing her and my baby girl nearly killed me. If not for Roberto and Matthew, I would have followed them into the grave within a year. They pulled me out, kept me alive. Kept me sane. And now I had this talented, albeit math-illiterate girl staring me down like she saw all the shattered pieces I'd swept into a semblance of a life. She looked at me like she knew my pain and understood my heart. I shook the thought away and concentrated. A pulsing pain thrummed in my heart as the organ woke up. Not now. Not with her. I cursed my lack of control and tightened my grip on the marker. "Let's go to the beginning." The guttural sound of my own voice shocked me. Harmony frowned. "You mean like two plus two? I think I can handle that. I even know my multiplication tables." "Great. I'll be sure to keep that in mind." I shut down the urge to smile, unwilling to let her see that she'd blown a hole in my protective wall. "I have to pass this class." Twirling the pencil between her fingers, she inclined her head toward the windows that gave us a view of the theater building. "I'm not giving up on my dreams because of some technicality that says I have to have math classes. I suck at this, but I won't quit." "Good. That's half the battle." I grabbed the back of my chair and dragged it over to where she sat. It was an awful idea, sitting this close to her with nothing but the two-foot desk between us. Sitting down forced my knees close enough to hers that they'd bump unless I turned sideways. Which I did. She knotted her hair and tossed it over her shoulder. "Okay. So where do we start?" "Have you ever heard of PEMDAS?" I wrote the letters on the top of her paper in all caps. She frowned. "Sure. You talked about it when we started equations." "Do you remember what each letter stands for?" I managed to keep the distance between us as she bent over the paper. Her hair smelled like sunshine. Why did I notice that particular detail? She ran the edge of her pencil over the letters. "Parentheses. Exponents. Multiplication. Division. Addition. Subtraction. That's what they mean, but even when I see you work through an equation using this, it makes no sense. Like sometimes you multiply numbers on the right, even though there's an exponent on the left that you haven't dealt with yet." I nodded as she tried to explain her problem. "Do you have any examples of equations like that where you've been confused?" And why hadn't she stopped me during the lectures to ask questions? I'd known she was shy, but to let it hinder her understanding because she didn't want to ask in the middle of class was another problem altogether. Harmony flipped through her notebook, then turned it and tapped her finger in the center of the page. "This one." I examined the problem, tracking the line of work she'd most likely copied from the board as I worked through to the solution. She'd written everything down correctly, but there were obvious hesitation marks on the page, along with question marks she'd added when I did something she hadn't understood. Math had always come easy for me, and that often translated into a difficulty in explaining how I knew what I knew. This was one of those times when I was forced to rely on the intricate rules and details of the formulas I churned out every day. "The best place to start is the beginning." I tapped the equation. Harmony leaned closer. "Yeah, and your first step made no sense to me according to PEMDAS." "I'll show you what I mean and explain along the way. Stop me as soon as you don't understand my explanation." I tore out the sheet of paper and flipped her notebook to a clean page, rewriting the equation along the top. The pencil lead snapped with the weight of my hand. Harmony held out her pencil, and my fingers brushed hers when I took it without looking. My whole damned body froze at that electrifying touch. Her sudden, sharp inhale said she'd felt it too. The air sizzled as the room shrank around us. To anyone looking in, we'd appear as nothing more than professor and student working late. Appearances mattered, and I was one wrong breath away from shattering into a million fucking pieces. She had no right to affect me this way. No fucking right to edge her way into the broken nooks and crannies and make me feel again. I opened my mouth to say something. Anything. All that left me was a hissed breath heavy with what I decided had to be regret as I pulled the pencil from her grasp. My jaw worked in a side-to-side motion that eased the tightness from my neck and allowed me to finish writing out the first step. I explained as I wrote, waiting for the moment when she stopped me. "Wait." Her hand settled on the paper next to mine, close enough that I could twitch and we'd touch again. Harmony tapped the paper. "There. Why did you do it that way?" Because those were the rules, and I followed the rules. Heat gathered and spread through my body. Rules told me I could be attracted to Harmony but could never let those feelings be known. She was untouchable. All her attractive qualities that reminded me of the life I'd missed were off-limits. I backed up and explained how the rules laid out every aspect of the problem. Harmony's brows shifted into a furrowed line as she leaned closer. Much more and her head would be on my arm. When had I shifted around the desk so we sat elbow to elbow? I finished the equation, then wrote a similar one. "Your turn." She took the pencil from me, gripping it far enough away that there was no chance of an accidental touch. "Will you stop me as soon as I get something wrong?" "Yes." It came out with the force of a promise I had no right to give. It sounded like I cared, and I absolutely could not let myself cross that line. She worked through the problem with slow, careful numbers and intense concentration curling her over the desk. Her foot bobbed beneath the desk, the side of her shoe rubbing my calf. She must not have felt the friction. Good for her, because it affected me far more than I thought possible. I helped her through the rest of the problem when she began to struggle. Once we finished it and I checked my watch with a frown, I realized we'd been together for well over an hour. An hour that felt like no time at all and yet an eternity. I crushed the feeling that had been building since she walked in tonight. "We can meet again next week. Monday?" I stood, pushing the chair back from the desk and putting space between us. Harmony followed me up, scooping everything into her bag. "That would be great. Thank you." Her tone held the same shy softness I'd gotten used to in class. "Enjoy your weekend." It was the only thing I had to offer a student. A single mother returns to the city she left seven years ago after breaking up with her ex to seek treatment for her son’s leukemia. Upon learning of her return, the ex immediately searches for the lo...