Chapter 146

Joseph’s POV

I spent most of the day in my office grading papers and working on next week's curriculum. I had the curriculum done for the next several weeks, but my students were already ahead of schedule, so it needed to be revamped.

I chose the right students to take this course; most of them are doing rather well. Most of their papers are excellent and grading them came easily to me. But as I went through each paper, I realized there was one missing.

Tessa’s.

She hadn’t given me her recent assignment before she left class yesterday; she left in such a hurry that I couldn’t even speak with her like I intended to do. She was also very quiet and kept her head down most of the class.

I suppose I am the one to blame for that.

It was easy to fall behind in this course; it only took a couple of missed assignments, and her grade would drop an entire letter. I’m willing to allow her some extra time to get her assignments done and even provide her with some tools for success, but she has to be willing to work with me.

Before this dating trial that we did over spring break, there was a time when we could work together in harmony without our feelings getting in the way. She was driven and empowered; she knew what she wanted and worked toward those goals with passion. I enjoyed being her mentor and helping her succeed.

From the beginning, I never really thought of her as just a student. Yes, I was attracted to her and the scent of her blood. I was also attracted to her mind and ambitions; I was attracted to her heart and who she was as a person.

I still am. That won’t go away.

But over time, I considered her to be a friend. I made a vow a long time ago that I wasn’t going to have any more human friends; not after the death of my last one. But Tessa snuck up on me and became the closest thing I had to a friend.

It’s a shame to lose that.

I wanted her to know that I cherished our friendship, and I didn’t want what happened between us to come between our friendship and our mentorship.

But she wouldn’t give me the time of day.

When I saw her drunk last night, it admittedly hurt my heart. I knew she was drinking because of how upset she was with me. I broke her heart and I worried she would never forgive me.

I was planning on coming to school today; I could do this work at my home office. But I wanted to see her; I wanted to explain myself a little better and hope that we can patch up our friendship. I wanted her to know that I still wanted her in my life and that losing her would be like losing a part of myself.

Vampires always knew when sundown approached and right about now, the sun was setting. It was still a bit risky for me to go outside uncovered. I looked at the clock and saw that it was just after 6 pm.

Tessa’s last class ended about 30 minutes ago. However, she typically enjoyed going to the library to get most of her schoolwork done before leaving, so I knew she was still on campus. However, she would probably be leaving shortly.

I didn’t have a lot of time to seek her out and speak with her.

I stood from my desk, cleaned up the mess of papers I had before me, and placed them in the “complete” section.

Leaving my office, the hall had become dim with only a couple of lights turned on. Most faculty had already left for the day; only a couple stayed late to finish up last-minute work.

Just as I reached the stairwell, I could already smell Tessa’s amazing and addictive scent. Despite not needing to drink blood, her scent still made my mouth water and my instincts kicked in. I shuddered at the thought of other vampires feeling the same way; vampires who aren’t as strong as I am.

“Professor Evergreen?” I heard a familiar voice coming from down the stairway. “Hello; I didn’t know you were here today.”

Emily stood at the bottom of the stairs, staring up at me with wide and curious eyes. I have to admit, I’ve been avoiding her a little. Or maybe she’s been avoiding me. I thought of her as a suitable coworker; I enjoyed our lunchtime conversations and picking her brain about certain writers. But since turning her down, she’s been acting a bit weird and I also knew that my relationship with her made Tessa uncomfortable, so I distanced myself.

“I can work better in my office here than I can at home,” I told her, joining her at the bottom of the stairs. “I had a lot of papers to grade and a curriculum to redo.”

“I see,” she said, biting onto her bottom lip. “I’m actually glad you’re here; I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”

“Is everything okay?”

“With me? Yes,” she answered, running her fingers through her short curly hair. “I was mainly just worried about you. You seemed a little off yesterday.”

I raised my brows at her, unsure of what she meant. We hadn’t spoken yesterday; we hadn’t spoken a lot lately so I’m not sure how I could have seemed off to her.

“I apologize if I seemed different; that wasn’t my intention,” I said to her, keeping my voice even.

Her face reddened slightly.

“Tessa also seemed a little off too; are you still mentoring her?”

I was surprised by her question, but I nodded once.

“Yes,” I answered.

“I’m sure she really appreciates that. I tried speaking with her earlier but—”

“Why? I found myself quipping.

She frowned at the harshness of my tone; I hadn’t meant to sound harsh, but she took me by surprise. She wasn’t even Tessa's professor so there wasn’t a need for her to speak with Tessa.

“To make sure she was okay…” she answered, her voice dropping to almost a whisper.

“It isn’t your place. You aren’t a counselor, and you aren’t her professor,” I said to her, narrowing my eyes. “You don’t have a right to pull her aside and speak with her about private matters.”

She lowered her gaze.

“You are right; I overstepped. It won’t happen,” she murmured. Before I could say anything more, she continued to speak. “Things have been weird between us and I’m sorry for my part in that.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I said, sighing. “There’s no need to apologize.”

“My advances toward you were very forward and that’s not usually my style. When I saw you… I just…” her words trailed off as her face reddened again. “I must have lost my mind.”

She let out a nervous chuckle.

“I suppose I didn’t help much by avoiding you afterward,” I said in return. “I’m sorry for that. I suppose you just took me by surprise.”

She smiled.

“I guess I have that effect on people.”

“Well, how about we just pretend it never happened and we return to being coworkers who enjoy conversations?” I suggested, giving her a small and reassuring smile.

She nodded almost eagerly.

“I would love that,” she said in return. “You know I was just rereading your first book the Vampire Priestess. I love following Morgana’s adventures. I must have read this series a dozen times. Will there be any more books?”

“I’m actually in the process of writing a sixth book for that series,” I answered. “I’m not quite done with Morgana’s story yet.”

“Oh, good! I can’t wait to read them,” she breathed. “I quite enjoyed volume two of that Novela. It was quite charming.”

“Charming?” I asked, a bit humored by that remark.

Nobody has ever called my stories charming before.

“Your take on the vampire race has always been interesting to me,” Emily said. “You speak about them as if they are your friends. I’ve noticed this in many of your books.”

“They are my characters; befriending them allows me to write a good story. It helps to get to know each character before beginning the writing process,” I told her, furrowing my brows together.“Of course…” she breathed. “I didn’t mean anything negative by my statement.”

“I know that,” I said, smiling. I found the conversation to be funny, but I feel I might have sounded harsh in my wording. “I didn’t mean to be harsh,” I added to clarify.

“You weren’t,” she said in return.

It was nice being able to speak with her again. We got lost in the conversation, and momentarily I forgot that I needed to catch Tessa before she left the school. I could still smell her scent; in fact, it was more potent than it had been only a few minutes ago. We were near her locker, so she was probably close by.

Emily went on to say something about a new café that had opened recently, and it doubled as a bookstore. I’ve been wanting to check it out as well, so when she invited me to come along with her on Friday, I didn’t think much about it.

She was pleased that I accepted; I was in a hurry though and didn’t want to stick around to continue this conversation.

We said our goodbyes and I rushed past her toward Tessa’s locker. I froze when I saw Tessa running; she was running away and out of the building.

I couldn’t see her face, but I swear I heard a small sob escape her lips.