Free The Professor by Charlotte Stein Page A

is I would do it all again.’
    I wait to answer him. I wait, until the effort it takes to say those words has slackened its hold on him. His chest stops heaving and his expression loosens a little, from a kind of fraught and strained thing to near relief. It has been weighing on him, all of this, and now he can relax a little. He can hear me calmly – or as calmly as he is capable of.
    And even calmer than that, if I can just say it right.
    ‘Do you know how rare it is for me to find anyone who wants to talk to me for more than five minutes? Who actually cares enough to come after me when I am distressed? Who would break rules for me and cross boundaries? There are people practically forced by law to like me who can barely hide their contempt and confusion over everything I am. And not in a cool way, either. Not in a good way, that secretly makes me awesome or superior. In a terrible, soul-crushing way that every day makes me feel that I somehow came here from another place altogether and just can’t remember where it is or who my people were. And until I met you, I would have done anything – I would have ripped off my own skin and walked a thousand miles in a river of acid – to get back to wherever that is. But now I don’t have to, because you did all of that for me. You seared yourself raw to get here to me, and if you think I’ll ever let you go back on it you’re sorely mistaken.’
    ‘How can you think that? How can you say it? I spoke of the rudest possible things with a student I have inappropriate feelings for. It is abominable. I should be jailed for it.’
    ‘For liking an adult woman of sound mind and body.’
    ‘I never disputed that you are an adult, Hetty, or of anything less than an exemplary intellect. Do not play these games with me – you shall lose.’
    ‘It doesn’t feel like I’m losing.’
    ‘Then let me make it plain: this ends now.’
    ‘I see. So you will never see me again.’
    ‘I should sooner cut off my own arm with a rusted spoon.’
    ‘You will leave Pembroke and never return.’
    ‘If I could arrange it this very second I would.’
    ‘Just throw away your career over a crush on a person as smart as you, as reasonable, as capable of making their own decisions and knowing their own mind.’
    ‘Yes, yes, a thousand times yes and more.’
    ‘Go on then. Go. Go and leave me alone in this
hell
. Because God knows it will be now that I know I could have loved and been loved by a man like you, by my own likeness, by my own self, and instead have to watch it torn away over a fucking
technicality
.’
    I honestly don’t mean to swear. Or to let that much rage and frustration into my voice. I all but spit the words, and I know the last ones come out broken in two. 
    But oh, I’m glad they do.
    The very second they leave my lips his expression changes. His eyelids grow heavy, his eyes shot through with sudden desperation. And then he takes three steps to me, so abrupt and aggressive I barely have a chance to register what he’s doing. I somehow think he’s about to toss me out into the street – that would be normal in a mediocre life like mine. I even brace myself for it. I think of things I can say to protest it, only to have him take my face in his two big hands and God, oh, God, oh, Lord in heaven.
    He
kisses
me.
    No, no, more than that, more than anything I’ve ever known as a kiss. His lips are not dry and mealy; he does not press then wait for me to press back. He draws me up to him, to the point where my feet actually start to leave the ground. Then, when that’s not enough, he does something even more stunning. He sweeps me into his arms. I feel his fingers splayed over my back, and suddenly there is air between me and the ground.
    He is able to lift me.
    And even more fantastically: he can do it one-handed.
    It takes him almost no effort at all, as though I were made of feathers and air. But if I am, God only knows what he is. When I grasp his shoulder –