33. Theron

33

THERON

THIS MESS WE'RE IN - THOM YORKE AND PJ HARVEY

I leave the glass sliding door open for Nyssa to escape. I walk out of the hidden room altogether. And then my office.

Castlebury's campus slips behind me in the rearview mirror as I drive far away. For once, my mind's vacant the entire drive home. I'm operating on autopilot until I pull into the driveway of my home and blink out of my stupor.

Atticus pounces on me the moment I step through the door.

My golden companion spins in circles, dying for quality time. It's no wonder when I've been gone since early in the morning. I haven't been home as often as I usually would be the past few days.

Weeks.

Since Nyssa Oliver entered my life.

Then again, in a morbid sort of way, we've always been involved in each other's lives. Though neither of us were aware of the extent.

I'm still struggling to process the very truth I revealed to her today. Everything she's ever believed about her existence was a lie. Right down to her birth name.

Twenty years ago, I fell madly in love with Josalyn Webber.

Twenty years later, I've fallen madly in love with Rosalyn Vise, her daughter.

It sounds unfathomable thinking about it, even in the plainest of terms.

Yet as my heart aches, the truth rings louder. I have loved and have lost Josalyn Webber, and now I've found love again… in her daughter.

I open the kitchen back door and let Atticus run wild. The happy-go-lucky canine is in a mood for zoomies as he speeds out the door and runs circles around the yard.

My gaze is on him, though I'm actually blind to what's in front of me.

Instead, I'm witnessing the past and future converging. Two Theron Adler's confront each other, old and new, young and matured, hopelessly in love with the same woman only different. It feels wrong in every sense of the word.

More wrong than Nyssa and I already were, given our age gap. Given my position as her professor and her status as my student.

As if things couldn't become any more twisted and taboo.

It's life's latest cruel joke to deny me the love I desperately sought so many years ago. The home I bought in hopes of a bright, perhaps cliched, future, where the woman I adored married me and I gave her a picturesque life in the suburbs.

The result was a dead paramour who I've spent twenty years mourning .

The reality of today is that I've now fallen, even deeper, for a woman I never should've gone near. The daughter of my dead paramour, without even realizing that was who she was to begin with.

A montage of our time together plays in my head. All the moments I basked in Nyssa's presence or lurked in the shadows, enjoying every trivial detail about her. She was so special, so unique that it took my breath away.

It made me feel alive. My dead heart beat for the first time in decades.

Atticus barks as he halts in the middle of the grass. It's begun to drizzle but he wants to play fetch. He's signaling for me to pick up the tennis ball a few feet away and chuck it so he can chase after it.

I sigh, stepping out from under the patio covering. "You are perhaps the only dog who likes water, Atty."

I grant his wish, tossing the ball toward the other end of the yard. He races across the wet blades of grass in his desperation to catch the little neon ball. I'd laugh if it didn't feel like the heart beating inside my chest was being ripped to pieces.

Rationally, I'm aware of what I need to do. I know there's only one way forward.

The only way I can exist in a world where she does when I can't have her. The only way I can show the depth of how I've come to feel.

Make her understand, as dark and morbid as it may be.

"Someday," I whisper under my breath. "You'll get it."

A cautious pad of footsteps sounds from behind me. I tear my gaze from Atticus fetching the tennis ball and look over my shoulder at the ajar kitchen door.

Nyssa has appeared, still in her wrinkled sweater and pleated skirt, dampened by the evening drizzle. Hair that was once springy and voluminous has started to flatten thanks to the downpour, though she doesn't seem to notice or care. She's breathless, lips parted, chest heaving, like she's rushed to be here.

It takes me a moment to process the fact that she's standing in the doorway. She abandons her spot, crossing the patio to meet me halfway on the grass.

"Make me understand."

"Nyssa—"

"Theron," she interrupts sharply. She sucks in some air, her chin quivering. Her eyes glisten, the look in them a silent plea. "Make me understand."

I rake fingers through my wet hair and peer at her through water-speckled lenses. "What else is there to make you understand? Except to say that I spent years wallowing in what ifs and would have beens. I grieved for twenty years a woman who I never got to have only to be blessed twenty years later with the woman her daughter had become. It's the cruel irony of my life. Always has been, always will be."

"I'm not her," she mutters, blinking against the thin sheet of rain.

"No," I admit with a bittersweet twist of my lips. "You're certainly not. Because what we have is real. What was before was not. It was… a delusion on my part. Unrequited and unanswered."

"I don't love you. I won't ever be able to."

"You don't need to. It doesn't change a thing, Nyssa. It doesn't change what we've shared. It doesn't erase my memories of you or the way you made me feel. It certainly doesn't erase how I feel about you. Nothing ever will."

"Theron…" She pauses to shudder out a sigh, her slender fingers bunching into loose fists at her sides. "It has to be over. We have to forget ab out each other."

I laugh. The sound's hollow and dark. "Nyssa, I don't get to forget you. I'm not allowed that luxury! So my option's a tortured existence without you, living in the memories in my head from what was once real. Because… well, I'll take any scrap of you that I can get. Anything… anything better than going back to life before I knew you existed."

"You're a monster," she says, though her tone lacks confidence. It lacks certainty, almost as if she's trying to convince herself. "You killed my father. You stalked my mother. You stalked me . Then… then you've killed again! Mr. Wicker. Samson. Veronica. I can't ever… I can't ever be with someone like you. I wanted revenge, not?—"

"You wanted what I gave you!" I growl, abandoning any patience. I start toward her before stopping myself a few steps away. "Who are you kidding, Nyssa? Don't fool yourself! You dropped the gingerbread crumbs. You led me down their path. You wanted me to do exactly what I did. All for you!"

"No," she says, shaking her head profusely. "That's not what I wanted?—"

"BUT IT IS! It's exactly what you wanted deep down!" I roar over her. I finish the last couple steps 'til she's backing away and I'm advancing, grabbing her by the arms. "I'm not a killer, Nyssa. But I will kill for you. I have killed for you. Because I am so deep in my feelings for you that I'll do anything—anything, don't you see—just to hold onto even a piece of you. Because what I feel is deeper than love. Love doesn't even begin to scratch the surface. Love doesn't do what I feel justice. But know that it's what I feel for you, and everything I do—every last fucking thing—is for you."

"You can't love me. You can't feel the way you say you do! "

"You'll see. I'll show you. I'll prove it to you."

"Theron, what does that mean? What are you going to do?" She squirms 'til she's slipping free of my grasp. "Please tell me you're not going to do anything dangerous or crazy. You're not going to hurt anyone?—"

"I'm going to do exactly what you set out to do," I say with a quick quirk of my lips. "I'm going to get the revenge you so desperately thought you wanted. I'm going to give you that vindication. That release you've sought. It's up to you whether you want to finish what you've started or if you'd rather watch from the sidelines."

Her eyes widen meeting mine, so dark and shiny I can see my reflection in them. "You're… serious? You're going to finish my plan for revenge? While under investigation?"

"I've never been more serious."

She blinks, then looks away. Her conflicted feelings play out on her face, almost a spitting image of her mother the longer I stare and admire her. Right down to the fullness of her bottom lip as she gnaws on it.

"I… I…" she whispers. "I want to help."