Floored - Karla Sorensen Page 0,17

meekly adjusted my posture.

"Better, thank you," she murmured. "Now as to the other ..." Judging by the look in her eyes, I braced myself. "What complete and utter horseshit, and if I'd known you'd roll over this easily, I never would've invited you here for Michaelmas."

Oof. I rubbed at my chest because it felt a little bit like she'd jammed the corner of her laptop behind my rib cage or something for how badly that hurt.

When I didn't answer, she prodded a bit more gently. "Why did you say yes to this, Lia?" My mouth opened to answer, and she held up a hand. "No crap answers. This will only work if you're willing to let me push you."

Every sarcastic answer that crowded my throat was a bitch to swallow down, but I managed it. No part of me wanted to dive into the depths with her because whenever someone wanted to excavate why I felt what I felt, I had the overwhelming urge to go skydive out of a rickety-ass plane just to avoid it.

Thoughts, unwelcome and uncomfortable, flitted just beyond reach, and my mentally shaky hands couldn't grasp onto a single one. If it were Claire sitting across from me, or my other two sisters, Molly or Isabel, if it were Finn, or my brother, Logan, or his wife, Paige, I probably could've come up with an answer for them.

This time, there were no narrowed eyes, just patient understanding on her face as she watched me search for an honest answer.

I shook my head, knitting my fingers together in my lap for a moment. It grounded me just enough to grip one thread as it whirled around in my head.

I don't know what to do with my life, and I've been running from that for years.

The thought was a bit too naked to share. Even thinking it left me feeling unsettled because not once had I ever admitted that to anyone.

"Come now," she said gently. "I see something going on there in your face, Miss Ward."

My hand rubbed my forehead. Was I sweating?

"There is," I answered. "I just, I don't know if it helps with the issue at hand."

Professor Atwood nodded slowly. "All right."

"I mean, it may help. I don't know." Focus, Lia, just freaking focus, I willed myself. I was better than this. I flew across the Atlantic to a foreign country by myself without a single ounce of anxiety medication which, let's be honest, was a giant win. I'd done all this unfamiliar stuff alone, and I'd managed amazingly. Yes, sure, I banged a hot Brit who never called or texted like a hot asshole, not that I'd checked my phone eighty thousand times just in case I missed something coming through, but I'd done really, really well. And just because I didn't know what I was doing with my life, or that I was maybe possibly using continued schooling as an escape from facing that reality didn't mean I was a screwup or anything.

I still had choices.

That stopped me short, like someone clotheslined me with a crowbar across the chest. I had choices.

The Brontës didn't.

"They didn't have choices," I whispered, my thoughts racing and tumbling so fast I could hardly keep up.

Atwood tilted her head. "Take me down that thought with you."

I met her eyes. "They didn't have a choice. The reality they lived in—the death of their mother, that women were still considered the property of their husbands, the modest income of their family, the fact that teaching was truly the only position they could take in order to make money—it was all out of their hands. I mean, we know that Anne enjoyed teaching more than the others, but Charlotte hated it. Yet that experience, no matter how powerless or humiliated it made her feel, shaped one of the most iconic feminist characters in classic literature."

"Our dear Jane Eyre," Atwood murmured, her eyes bright and excited as I rambled.

"Their lack of choices—the cage they were forced to live in—shaped everything we cherish about them." My heart raced as I said it, and when Atwood's face spread into a slow smile, a burst of energy spread over my middle.

"And ...?" she prompted.

Right. This was the part of master's classes that felt ridiculously pretentious, when we had to frame everything in “super smart people speak.”

I licked my lips. "It was the awareness—the consciousness—of female independence that was impossible for them to recreate in their own lives. They created an accurate reflection of their reality, the