The road had smoothed out... Garrison Avenue finally giving way to sothing that didn’t feel like driving across a washboard... but the relief barely registered.
Heena’s body was a traitor.
The dampness between her thighs had gone past uncomfortable into sothing maddening.
A slick, constant reminder with every shift of her weight, every slight vibration of the engine through the seat, that her body had made a decision her mind was still desperately trying to overrule.
She gripped the wheel. Stared at the road. Counted streetlights. Tried to think about curriculum reviews and exam schedules... anything that would stop those forbidden thoughts.
None of it worked.
The heat sat low in her belly like a coal that refused to go out, pulsing with a rhythm that had nothing to do with the engine and everything to do with what she’d spent the last thirty minutes watching.
’I should never have gotten in this car.’
The thought was sharp, bitter, aid at herself with the precision of a woman who had spent fifteen years cataloguing her own mistakes.
’I should have called a cab. I should have just said no.’
But she hadn’t. And now her dignity was a damp stain on the leather seat of a student’s car.
Her eyes drifted to the rearview mirror. Habit. Compulsion. The sa gravitational pull that had been dragging her gaze backward all night.
Tisha was sitting on Alex’s lap.
Not straddling him anymore. Just sitting there, sideways across his thighs, her head resting against his shoulder, her eyes closed, her body rising and falling with each bump in the road.
She looked like a woman who had been thoroughly satisfied and was now enjoying the afterglow the way a cat enjoys a patch of sunlight... utterly indifferent to the world outside the car.
’This shaless woman.’
Heena’s jaw tightened.
She’d lost count of Tisha’s cries... sounds that should have shattered the car’s glass. Five tis. Maybe six.
And through every single one, Heena gripped the wheel until her hands ached, a woman white-knuckling the edge of a cliff she had already let go of miles ago.
’She doesn’t care. She doesn’t care about her reputation, her career, her professional standing. She just... takes what she wants.’
’And she looks happy.’
The word landed like a stone in still water.
When was the last ti Heena had looked like that? When was the last ti her body had been so thoroughly attended to that she could close her eyes and just breathe?
She couldn’t rember. The answer wasn’t buried in her mory... it simply didn’t exist.
The road curved ahead. Heena followed it chanically, her hands moving the wheel while her mind burned.
’What if I just... let it happen?’
The thought ford before she could stop it.
She imagined herself in the back seat. His hands on her. His mouth on her. That focused, patient intensity applied to the body that Howard Sterling had abandoned like a house he’d stopped bothering to maintain.
Her thighs pressed together. The friction against her soaked underwear sent a pulse through her that made her fingers tighten on the wheel.
’No.’
The refusal ca hard, fast, automatic... the voice of Professor Sterling, of Mrs. Howard Sterling, of the woman who had built her entire identity on being above reproach.
’No, Heena. You are not this woman. You are not Tisha Wells. You don’t throw away years of reputation for a pair of dark eyes and a talented mouth. You are married. You are respected. You are... ’
’Alone.’
The second voice was quieter. Calr. It didn’t argue. It simply stated facts.
’You are alone in a cold bed every night. You are alone at faculty dinners while your husband scans the room for his next target. You are alone in your office at eight o’clock because he manufactured paperwork to keep you there while he went hunting.’
’You have been alone for fifteen years, Heena.’
’What are you saving yourself for? A man who doesn’t know you exist? A marriage that died years ago and just hasn’t been buried yet?’
She swallowed hard. Her eyes stung.
’But what if soone finds out?’
’Who?’ the quiet voice replied. ’Who would care? Howard? The man who is probably inside so other woman right now while you drive his car through the dark? The colleagues who already whisper about his affairs behind your back? The university that has looked the other way for a decade because his departnt brings in grant money?’
’Who exactly are you protecting, Heena? Him? Or just the idea of yourself that he killed years ago?’
’But I c-can’t...’ The wife’s voice rallied one last ti, grasping for sothing solid. ’He’s just a student. A boy. He’s half my age. This is insane.’
The quiet voice didn’t argue. It laughed. A low, tired, pitying sound inside her own skull.
’A boy? Who are you kidding, Heena?’
’That "boy" just dismantled a woman with more walls than you’ve ever built. Took her apart five tis without breaking a sweat. Tisha Wells... the woman three departnts are afraid of... is curled up in his lap right now like she doesn’t rember her own na.’
’Does that sound like a boy to you?’
Heena’s eyes drifted to the mirror. Not the quick, guilty glance she’d been stealing all night. This ti she looked properly. Without pretense.
She traced the line of his jaw... hard, defined, shadowed in the dim light. The breadth of his shoulders filling the back seat. The arm draped around Tisha with the casual, possessive ease of a man who had never once in his life questioned whether he belonged where he was. His other hand rested on Tisha’s thigh, his fingers drawing absent, lazy circles on her skin while she dozed against his chest.
And Tisha... Professor Tisha Wells, the Ice Queen, the untouchable, the woman whose reputation was built on a foundation of absolute, rciless control... was curled into him like a child.
Her hair was ruined. Her face was slack with the deep, boneless peace of a woman who had been completely, thoroughly handled by soone who knew exactly what he was doing.
This was the woman Heena had spent four years admiring from a professional distance. The woman Sterling had spent a year trying to crack. The woman who made grown n feel foolish for trying.
And she was purring in a student’s lap like he’d dosticated her.
’That’s not a boy, Heena,’ the quiet voice murmured. ’That’s the man your husband was afraid of. And he was right to be.’
Heena looked away from the mirror. Her hands were trembling on the wheel. Not from fear anymore. From the effort of holding still.
"Stop the car, Heena."
Tisha’s voice... soft, steady, carrying none of the wrecked breathlessness from earlier.
"Huh?" Heena blinked, the internal war scattering like startled birds as the real world flooded back in.
She looked ahead... and her foot moved to the brake on instinct.
They were parked in front of a townhouse. Elegant, understated, a narrow garden path lit by a single warm lamp beside the door. Ivy crept along the brickwork in dark, disciplined lines.
Tisha’s ho.
***
Tisha leaned forward between the seats, her chin almost resting on Heena’s shoulder. Close enough that Heena could sll her... sweat, perfu, and sothing else underneath that didn’t need a na.
"Looks like the show was a bit too much for my dear friend Heena," Tisha murmured, her eyes dropping to the way Heena’s thighs were still clamped together, the visible tremor in her hands on the wheel.
She laughed... low, warm, without cruelty. The laugh of a woman who recognized exactly what she was seeing because she’d been there herself.
Heena’s face burned. She stared straight ahead at the ivy-covered brickwork and said nothing.
Tisha sat back. Smoothed her skirt. Found her heels on the floor of the car and slipped them on with a practised, unhurried grace... each movent a slow reassembly of the professor she’d stopped being sowhere around Garrison Avenue.
Then she turned to Alex.
"I didn’t want to let you go tonight," she said quietly, her fingers finding his jaw, tilting his face toward hers. "But since we have our friend here... I’ll be generous. Just this once."
She kissed him. Deep, slow, deliberate... the kind of kiss that wasn’t goodbye but a promise that the next hello would pick up exactly where this left off.
In the driver’s seat, Heena watched through the mirror. She told herself to look away. Her eyes didn’t move.
The envy sat in her chest like a fist, squeezing sothing she didn’t have a na for.
’If only I had the courage,’ she thought. ’If only I wasn’t so... ’
Tisha broke the kiss. She held Alex’s face for a mont longer, her thumb tracing his lower lip, before straightening his collar with the efficient tenderness of a woman who had done this a hundred tis.
"Goodbye," she said. Then her eyes shifted... to the mirror, to the reflection of the woman sitting rigid in the front seat. "I’m leaving Heena in your care tonight."
A pause. Her voice dropped... soft, deliberate, loaded.
"Take very good care of her."
Heena felt every word land on her skin like a fingerprint. Her breath stopped. Her hands tightened in her lap.
In the mirror, Alex’s eyes found hers. Steady. Unhurried. That sa patient, knowing calm that had been undoing her all night.
"I will."
Two words. Spoken to Tisha. Aid at Heena.
The car was very quiet.
Tisha opened the door, stepped out into the cool night, and walked up the garden path without looking back. The front door opened, swallowed her, and clicked shut.
And then there were two.
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