was a Buster Keaton fan, sure, but why did he choose a poster for that particular film?
Marcus took a few deep breaths, attempting to cool down. “You have to leave, Clara. I’m not kidding. Girls aren’t allowed in the dorms, particularly not drunk ones.”
“I’m not drunk!”
He glanced at the gold watch on his wrist. “No? Well, it’s almost six o’clock. You’d better get a move on if you want to be half as zozzled as the other flappers at whatever speakeasy or party you’re going to later.”
“Look, I know I’m the last person you want to see right now. And I’ll go. But first there’s something I need to tell you.” Clara crossed to Marcus’s desk and picked up the picture of his fiancée. “Marcus, this woman is not who she says she is.”
Marcus laughed incredulously. “That’s it? That’s what you’re here to say? No ‘Hi, Marcus, I haven’t seen you in a month and a half. How’s life been treating you?’ No ‘You’ve started college since the last time I saw you. What’s that like?’ You skip right over all that and start taking shots at my fiancée?”
His hands started shaking again. “Back in Chicago I liked you because you were different. You were smart, and funny, and you never felt the need to stoop to the level of the Lorraine Dyers of the world. But now you seem just like her.”
Clara focused all her energy on not allowing tears to spring to her eyes. “No, Marcus, if you’d just listen—”
“Is this what you’ve stooped to now?” Marcus grabbed the photo from Clara and returned it to his desk. “It wasn’t enough for you to lie to me and break my heart, but you’re now going to try and ruin the rest of my life?”
Clara could hear the anger giving way to hurt in his voice. She wanted nothing more than to admit how wrong she’d been to lie to him, to let him go so easily. She wanted to close the gap between them and feel his arms around her again.
Clara took a few steps forward. In response, Marcus’s sky-blue eyes widened—was it from fear of her getting too close, or maybe in anticipation? Clara blinked. It was definitely fear. Her being here was making Marcus incredibly upset.
She stopped walking when she was close enough to brush Marcus’s hair out of his eyes. His hair always dried messy and unruly before he had the chance to tame it with pomade—another thing Clara had always loved about him.
“Marcus, I—” Clara began, ready to confess how much she missed him and how she’d do anything to have him back in her life.
She’d never given Marcus enough credit when it came to understanding all she’d been through in her old New York life, how hard it had been for her to pretend that the glitter and revelry of the flapper world didn’t still call to her. Instead, she told lie after lie, then got angry at Marcus for being less than understanding about her new career as a journalist.
Marcus hadn’t even told her to stop writing—he’d just encouraged her to go to school and take her writing more seriously. But Clara had decided that Marcus didn’t support her career. If she tried to focus on Marcus’s shortcomings, she could ignore how selfish she’d truly been at the end of their relationship.
But he’d been right. Parker and the Manhattanite team didn’t take her seriously. Maybe if she apologized, really apologized …
The words were right there on the tip of Clara’s tongue. But if she said any of them, how would he ever believe her about this Deirdre woman? He’d think she was only spinning lies in order to win him back. Marcus would probably go running back to his Anastasia as fast as his legs could carry him.
And protecting him from making the mistake of a lifetime was more important than confessing her feelings.
So Clara moved away from him, sank into the wooden chair in front of his desk, and avoided his gaze. “Marcus, I’m not trying to ruin your life—this has nothing to do with you and me. I mean, there isn’t even a ‘you and me’ anymore. That’s over and we’re both over it, right? I’m here out of friendship. I just don’t like to see a friend get fleeced.”
It pained her to say the words, because they weren’t true. She wasn’t over it. But if this was the only way to protect Marcus, then she’d have to bite the