Romance: Young Adult Romance: The Perfect Game (A Highschool Football Romance) (Bad Boy Nerd New Adult Romance) (60 page)

It was none of his
affair
, he knew. So far as they’d agreed, nothing had happened between him and Alice. She wasn’t, nor would she ever be his.

So...why did watching her interact with another man make his blood boil?

He watched Ryan’s half-hearted attempts to flirt with his best student until he was forced to pick up his lesson plans and leave the room. Once he reached the solitude of his office, he
sank down
in his chair and exhaled slowly, trying to clear his head.

Alice was a perfectly attractive young woman. Of course men would try to hit on her – of course they would try to stake their claim.

Even if
he himself
had already
staked
it quite thoroughly.

It was odd, Thomas knew, but ever since the first day she had smiled
at
her, he’d begun to think of Alice as his own. She was both delicate and strong all at once – fiercely independent, intelligent and alluring while being demure and withdrawn.  Had it not been for their little mishap, he might have asked if she’d like to intern with him, or even have him be her mentor for a possible
PhD
.

But all of that had been shot to shite.

“
Fuck
,
” Thomas whispered quietly to himself. Three more weeks left in the semester. Then, hopefully, he could take the holiday break to forget about her entirely. If that meant he had to fuck his way through half of the city, he might be willing. Thinking about Alice was painful – and he didn’t like to
be reminded
of what could have been.

**

She couldn’t ever get a break.

Shuddering, Alice
spit
up the last dregs of bile at the back of her throat into the small container the nurse held below her chin. She’d been out of sorts for the past few days, and though she thought she could handle the situation herself,
she
ultimately ended up in the university clinic when
she
could hardly keep anything she swallowed down.

At her roommate’s urging, she’d booked herself a visit, only to run for the toilet the moment she
was settled
in the office.

They did all the usual tests – they’d taken blood and urine samples before settling her as comfortably in bed as they could. The real issue, they impressed upon the young woman, was that she needed nutrients.
Thusly
, they’d hooked her up to an IV – probably one of the most sucktastic things in the entire cosmos, considering that she abhorred needles. But it beat passing out entirely.

She didn’t have time to be unconscious. She had a paper due, and it was hard enough to write when she couldn’t stop thinking about her damned professor. Out of the thirty thousand words she needed, she’d completed about half – and to go on seemed utterly useless sometimes. She couldn’t think
about
turning the damned
think
in without her stomach erupting in butterflies.

She’d have to confront him
…they
’d
have
to interact.

And she’d have to remember what his arms around her felt like – what his face looked like on the cusp of orgasm. The way he laughed when she made ridiculous literature jokes that no one else
could possibly
understand and that devastating smile of his
…

She had fucked up. Monumentally – and she had no one to blame but herself.

It was hard
to even look
at herself in the mirror; For God’s sake, she’d made herself sick over it. What was she supposed to do for the next two years while she got her degree? Avoid one of the foremost minds in her department? Even if she never had another class with him (which, in and of itself, would be a minor miracle), he would still be one of the men in charge of awarding her degree.

And after her behavior, she wouldn’t be surprised if things
were stacked
against her.

“Well, Ms. Cantor, how are you feeling?’

She looked up, surprised to see that the nurse tending to her had disappeared and that Dr. Brighton had returned. The
kindly
woman held out a small paper cup of water for her to wash out her mouth; and though Alice’s stomach twinged at the sight of it, she forced herself to drink. “Pretty awful.” She finally admitted, swallowing thickly and praying that she could keep it down.

“Sorry about that.” Doctor Brighton gave her a small smile as she retrieved the cup before tossing it
in
a nearby wastebasket. “But I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that we’ve gotten to the root of the problem.”

The
root
of the problem?

Alice’s eyes widened slightly.
It wasn’t
just anxiety? She had fully accepted the fact that she must be psyching herself into manifesting physical symptoms.
“So…it’s not just stress
?”

“Oh, no.” The doctor replied, shaking her head slowly. “I’m going to prescribe you some
metoclopramide
–
twenty-five
milligrams a day. It’s the best treatment for this kind of thing.” She wrote on a pad as she
spoke softly
. “Take one before you go to bed every night and you should
be rid
of that pesky morning sickness.”

If Alice’s eyes had been big before, now they were the size of saucers. “Excuse me…
morning sickness
?”

Doctor Brighton arched a brow. “Yes, of course. Didn’t the nurse tell you? It’s a classic symptom of early pregnancy.”

Alice couldn’t have felt the impact of the Doctor’s statement more if the words had been a physical blow.

For a moment, her mind went completely blank. She couldn’t speak, she couldn’t think, she couldn’t even breathe.

Pregnant
. She was pregnant.

Well, that explained a whole hell of a lot. She’d been exhausted lately.
Exhausted
, stressed, sick to her stomach
…and
come to think of it, she’d been so wrapped up in personal issues that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a period. Certainly more than a month at this point.

Which meant that she was most definitely carrying…
her professor’s child.

“Are you alright, Ms. Cantor?”

Alice was snapped back to the present by Doctor Brighton’s concerned voice. “Do you feel weak again?”

“I’m…I’m alright.” The dark-haired young woman finally managed, even if she was
anything but.
She stared at the prescription in the doctor’s hand, her mind whirling.

Just
when she thought things couldn’t get any worse.
Life had a bizarre sense of humor, it seemed.

Hours later, the young woman sat sequestered in the bathroom of her apartment, staring at the three separate pregnancy tests on the countertop. Not as if she needed their confirmation after visiting an actual doctor, but, somehow, seeing the little two lines in three sets of windows made things seem a whole lot more real.

Alice placed a hand gently against her still very flat stomach, somewhere between terrified nauseous, despite the pills that the Doctor had given her.

A baby.

She couldn’t have a baby right now. She was in the middle of trying to get her graduate degree – pulling all-nighters every other day and spending most of her time in the library. She didn’t even have a part-time job. She had stopped working when the university had offered her a small stipend as part of her scholarship. It was barely enough for
her
to get by on, let enough to raise a child.

The best thing to do would be to get rid of it. Honestly, what other option did she have?

…Besides
keeping it, of course.

The very thought had her eyes sliding tightly shut.

There was
no
way. She couldn’t even take care of herself! She’d made all the wrong decisions in the past year – spending time with a
professor,
she knew she had more than platonic feelings for,
sleeping
with said professor, neglecting her birth control when it was most important
…
what the hell kind of mother would she be?

Sighing, she took a look at herself in the mirror.

No one would deny that she looked a goddamn mess. Her dark hair hung lank and haggard around her face and the circles under her eyes were dark and
deep
from lack of sleep. Her roommate insisted that she worked herself too hard, but it was only in the past week or so – since the pregnancy had
really
started wreaking havoc on her boy – that she’d felt so sincerely awful. It was physical and emotional turmoil all at once, and, for the life of her, Alice wanted nothing more than to collapse into bed and sleep it all off.

But she was an academic, not a complete pussy.

Some decisions had
to be made – first and foremost what she was going to do about this child.

Alice stared at herself, long and hard.

Could she
really
walk into a clinic and purge part of herself from her body?

Part of…
him
?

And then the next obstacle came into play
…
if she
was
going to keep the baby, she couldn’t very well keep it from Thomas. When her belly started rounding out the next semester, the man was bound to notice. Unlike her classmates, her professor was a very observant and acutely intelligent man. He’d probably be able to guess
…which
meant that they’d have to discuss it before it became an issue.

Slowly, Alice exhaled.

She would not, she promised herself, beg him for
anything
. She wouldn’t demand anything. That had never been her
game,
and she never planned it to be.
Certainly
, her pregnancy hadn’t been expected, but her aim would be
to simply speak
to Thomas about things like a rational adult.

Even if the idea of being alone again with him, face to face, made her stomach tighten and her
heartrate
quicken.

Christ
, Thomas. She missed him.

Resisting the urge to speak with him every time she found something new and exciting in her research was almost like a physical pain. Going to his lectures and forcing herself not to look at him akin to torture
…

Surprisingly enough, the notion made her lips quirk in a slightly amused smile. She
had
to be
a lit
student if she was espousing to poetically on love and loss.

All at once, Alice stiffened.

Was
that
what this was? Love? Thinking about the man every waking second of the day, actually
wanting
to keep his baby when she might not have the means,
needing
his body against hers with every goddamn fiber of her being?

Well, she supposed that Shakespeare
had
known what he was
talking about
.

Her smile still lingering
about
her lips, the young woman tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ears as she rubbed her stomach fondly, imagining the life growing there. Whether Thomas wanted anything to do with the baby or not, she would always have a piece of him – a reminder of the way her heart swelled at the very sight of him.

And maybe, just
maybe
, that would be enough.

**

Thomas had to admit that the ends of semester Stateside were a far sight less rigorous than they were in Britain. Here, students were required to do much less – a product of the education being stretched out over six years instead of the three required across the pond.
This
, in turn, lessened his workload considerably.

And gave him plenty of time to think.

At present, he didn’t know if that was a blessing or a curse.

He stared down at a paper he was grading, trying to concentrate on the twelve point font as the gray clouds beyond his office window threatened snow. It would be the first of the season – and an idea he still hadn’t gotten
used to
. It almost never snowed in London. The weather there
was  far
too
mucky
. If anything, there would be a disgusting coat of slush that covered the entire city in a layer of gray that served to dampen the mood almost as much as it sullied the streets. Here, he would see snow. They would cancel school for it- and he’d be allowed to stay home in his cozy apartment with a fire blazing.