Sweetest in the Gale - Olivia Dade Page 0,25
damn classroom. The kiss he’d initiated. The woman he desired.
He fled them all.
Six
It was the choice of a coward, Griff knew.
Instead of discussing his ignominious flight from his own classroom face-to-face with Candy, or even calling her to discuss it over the phone, he e-mailed her that night instead.
In writing, sometimes the directness that eluded him in conversation became possible. And in such an important matter, with such an important person, he needed plain words and clarity more than ever.
His hand on the mouse shook as he clicked send.
FROM: [email protected]
SUBJECT: An explanation and apology
Candy, I owe you an avalanche of apologies, but please let me start with this one, inadequate though it may be. I will try to be as direct as I can, because I owe that to both of us, and because I need to learn. Finally, I need to learn.
I like you. I admire you. I care about you. I want you.
That’s why I kissed you. No other reason.
I’m sorry if I caused you to doubt that. I’m sorry I left so abruptly. I’m sorry if I hurt you. I’m sorry I started us down a path I couldn’t explore to its end, wholeheartedly and with clear purpose. I didn’t mean to mislead you, although we both know that’s the facile excuse of a scoundrel. It’s also—at least in this case—true.
I ran because—
Fuck, this is hard.
I ran because my feelings for you still sometimes seem like a betrayal of Marianne, our marriage, my love for her, and her love for me.
My desire and affection for you are mixed with shame, and that’s not right. For either of us. I don’t intend to become emotionally or physically intimate with you again until that shame is gone, and I can stand before you a man free and eager to offer what you need and what I want to give.
In the meantime, we’re still colleagues. If you’re willing, we will continue to work together on the poetry initiative, although I’d prefer to do as much of the planning as possible via e-mail. Unless you wish it, I don’t intend to avoid you, because you’re my friend. If you need help with anything—anything—please call on me. Extended interludes alone together can’t happen, however, since I find you—
Well, I find you irresistible. Even when I should resist.
I need time, Candy. I don’t know how long. It may be a week. It may be a year. It may be the rest of my life.
Since I know we speak the same language, I’ll allow myself this: Of the three things I need to do to live in this world, I’ve accomplished two. Not the third. Not quite yet, even though I know the time has come.
Whatever happens next, please believe I regret any harm I’ve caused you, and I wish you only good things. You deserve time and attention and understanding and effort and affection.
You deserve love, Candy. Full-throated, devoted love.
I hope I can offer that someday.
If you’re not still waiting if and when I’m ready, I’ll understand. I want your happiness, and you are not a toy for me to stow away until I’m free to play.
(Not that I consider anything we’ve said or done together a game. Let me be clear about that.)
I’m so sorry.
Griff
No novel, no television show, no amount of internet noodling could hold his attention.
It flowed like a river to sea, inexorably, back to Candy. Always. Back to his mouth on her flesh in his classroom, and back to an e-mailed response that might come at any moment or never, depending on how she’d reacted to his flight that afternoon and his subsequent message.
Leaning back on his couch, he propped an ankle on his knee and jiggled his leg. Tunneled his fingers through his hair, which was beginning to resemble straw at the ends. Stared in the general direction of the television, where—because of the popularity of the Gods of the Gates series—historians were discussing the Aeneid.
Specifically, Dido. How, left behind by the man she loved, she stabbed herself atop a funeral pyre and burned to ash as Aeneas’s fleet sailed from her harbor.
Candy was no Dido. With or without a lover, heartbroken or not, she’d forge ahead, stalwart and determined. She was the rightful hero of an epic poem, rather than a secondary character or simple love interest.
Griff, though…hmmm.
He’d never considered harming himself. Not directly. But whether he resembled the queen of Carthage in other discomfiting ways—
Well, that was less clear to him.
Or maybe it was clear,