Just Like That - Cole McCade Page 0,15

Sword of Damocles, waiting to drop down and pierce him right through.

Back then Professor Iseya had been an inscrutable taskmaster, larger than life, greater than human.

But knowing what Summer knew now, seeing him, understanding what was behind that stony outer exterior...

He just saw Professor Iseya as a man.

And that man was far more enticing than any childish fantasy or ideal.

Enough to make Summer want to learn what was really behind that cold mask when before, he’d never truly realized it was a mask at all.

Especially when for just a moment, that stone had cracked.

Iseya had responded to him, even if it was with flustered confusion and irritation.

And that feeling...

That feeling had been addictive enough to make Summer bold.

Even if he’d been hyperventilating in the back of his mind, that heady sensation of seeing every minute reaction to him—from the way Iseya wouldn’t quite look at him head-on to the soft, deliciously deep way he said Summer’s name to that annoyed blush—had pushed him further and further toward a reckless edge.

If he wanted to break it down in psychological terms, he’d been riding the dopamine rush. Dopamine could override common sense, sometimes in ways that made people brave, sometimes in ways that made them careless, reckless, deeply unwise.

Summer wasn’t sure which he was.

Nor was he sure his head wouldn’t explode any moment now, either, when he had just—yes, okay, apologize for being a dick and kissing him, then act like a bigger dick as if he could somehow flirt through psychoanalysis? Mission not accomplished.

The only thing he was entirely sure of?

Was that he was terrified of hearing Iseya’s answer in the morning, his entire body prickling like a live wire.

He already knew it would be a solid no.

That didn’t stop him from hoping, even as he buried his face in his hands and breathed in quick shallow breaths through his fingers until he no longer felt like he was going to pass right out on the floor.

He tensed, though, as the sound of the front door latch echoed over the room, a click and a jiggle before the door creaked open. He peeked over his fingers. He hadn’t quite processed when he’d been told who his roommate would be, but now he almost flinched as a tall, somewhat slouched figure stepped into the room, mumbling absently to himself and apparently ticking something off on his fingers one by one.

Dr. Liu.

Oh, God.

Summer was going to have to get a padlock for his room if he didn’t want the things in it to end up on fire.

At least that explained the disaster of the suite.

He’d always imagined, as a kid, that the two-person suites the single teachers shared would be...bigger. More officious. But they were just homey little rooms with dark, worn, unvarnished hardwood floors to match the dark, worn, unvarnished hardwood walls, with a combined living and dining space, an open kitchen, two bedrooms linked by a bathroom with en suite access from both sides.

Everything had that feeling of old spaces, of haunted spaces, quiet and whispered; the kind of place that had lace curtains and ghosts and a fifth step between every floor that creaked when the shades walked on it at night. The window in Summer’s room looked out over the cliff and onto a valley full of trees, bisected by a winding coil of river; if he remembered right, the other room had no window, running along the interior hall.

But the entire living room was filled with books.

Books, a little lab paraphernalia, science magazines, tossed on every surface—the dining table, the sofa, the coffee table, the easy chairs, even on the kitchen island separating it off from the rest of the space. They’d all been left open to one page or another, and bristled with Post-it notes in a rainbow of colors sticking out everywhere. At least a dozen of them had pens left in their open creases.

That wasn’t as bad as the clothing thrown everywhere, though.

Shirts, jackets, pants, tossed over the backs of chairs or piled in a heap beneath the living room window, and Summer... Summer was pretty sure that was a pair of boxer-briefs stuffed into a potted plant next to the small flatscreen television.

Whomever had left Dr. Liu unsupervised clearly hadn’t been thinking with their forebrain.

Liu himself stopped in the doorway, blinking at Summer owlishly through his oversized eyeglasses, his dark brown eyes narrowing as he leaned forward and peered at Summer through the untrimmed shag of his fluffy black hair. He was unshaven, scruffy,