Once home, I handed him a fresh set of clothes and a warm towel. "Nathan, right? I've heard about you—you're one of Alexa's students, aren't you?"
He nodded, his wide, doe-like eyes darting nervously around the room. I remembered his name from Alexa's student roster. She had mentioned him once, noting his difficult upbringing. Orphaned at a young age, he had been raised by his grandparents and had worked tirelessly to excel in his studies despite the odds.
When Alexa walked into the living room, Nathan froze. His gaze dropped to the floor, his hands twisting anxiously in his lap.
"Mrs. Colby," he mumbled, his voice barely above a whisper.
Alexa barely spared him a glance. Her focus was on me, as it always was—or so I'd thought. She crossed the room and slipped her hand into mine.
"Darling," she said softly, her eyes filled with warmth, "you shouldn't go out in such weather. You'll catch a cold."
Nathan sat stiffly on the couch, his gaze flitting toward us. For a brief moment, his expression shifted—an almost imperceptible flicker of longing. But I dismissed it at the time, brushing it off as admiration for Alexa's kindness.
Now, those fleeting glances, the subtle tension in his posture, took on an entirely different meaning.
How blind I had been.
Sitting in the study, my chest felt unbearably tight, as though an invisible hand was gripping my heart and squeezing relentlessly. The room, once a haven filled with books and memories of quiet evenings spent together, now felt suffocating.
I yanked open the desk drawer, hoping to distract myself by revisiting Alexa's book, Confessions of Love. My fingers brushed past a stack of papers and my breath hitched when I noticed a different manuscript.
The title glared at me like an accusation: A Thousand and One Confessions. Beneath it was a name I had never seen her use before—Nate.
My hands trembled as I flipped through the pages. Each line I read sent a chill down my spine. These weren't academic musings or romantic anecdotes. They were raw, unfiltered declarations of passion. The words bled across the page, dripping with yearning and desire—desire for a young man's body, for his touch, for his essence.
Tears blurred my vision and one fell, smudging the ink on the manuscript. How could this have happened?