Temptation [h.s.] ✔

Chapter 58.

The past three weeks of searching for a house have been completely ridiculous.

This isn't big enough. That isn't in the right neighborhood. It's too far from Day's place. You call that a kitchen? That bathroom tiling is awful. That's not big enough for a nursery! Are you kidding? We're supposed to share that as an office? I wouldn't pee in that tiny room.

And it's all me. Because when your boyfriend gives you a ridiculous amount of money to spend on a house, it has to be downright perfect.

Perfection or bust.

"How did your appointment go?" I ask without looking up from the laptop.

"It was delightful, same as the last few. But if she asks me to dissect my sexual urges one more time, I'm going to take my handcuffs and attach her to the fucking Space Needle." Harry walks into the apartment and dumps his bag.

"But it's helping, right?"

"Helping me get a bloody hard-on! Do you know how hard it is to explain to these people that my addiction isn't because my parents abandoned me as a child or didn't love me enough?" He raises his eyebrows. "I just like sex. A lot. A lot of the time. Why don't they get that?"

"Because they like to fuck with you." I smile sweetly. "What did they talk about today?"

His face darkens. "When I slept with my student."

My curiosity piques. I've never actually asked about it—why he did it. No matter how much I wanted to, it never seemed like the right time. Besides, it's not dinner conversation, is it?

"And?" I ask, trying not to show my interest.

I fail, because he smirks and joins me at the table. "Liv, if you want to know, just ask me. It's fresh in my mind, funnily enough."

"Uhh. Okay. Why did you do it?" I look at him now.

"Honestly, it was a mistake. I'd met her sister a couple of times, and there was only a couple of years between them. They looked very alike. I arranged to meet her sister for a few drinks one night, but it was actually my student who turned up. I didn't realize at the time." He rubs his hand through his hair. "It's the worst excuse, I know, but it's the truth. I didn't know until she admitted it to me the next morning."

Well, shit.

"Ouch," I wince. "What did you do?"

"Handed in my resignation with immediate effect."

"Really?"

He nods. "I wasn't in the job to abuse the power I had. She was my student, and although, in the end, it turns out she took advantage of my attraction to her sister, I couldn't stay there any longer. It was a year or so after that I took more and more jobs out here."

"So...that...incident...is fairly recent?"

"Three years, maybe?" He shrugs. "I don't know, baby girl. I don't like to think of it much because of my own stupidity. The last time I thought about it was when I told you. Then not again until today."

"Really? Not at all?"

"You kind of took up most of my thinking capacity." He smiles. "Not much else mattered other than you. It's in the past and I can't change it. But you're right, I guess. Talking through our past is the only way we're going to get through this."

I smile because he finally gets it. And despite his protestations about going to therapy, he agreed because it's what I wanted.

"Did you see March today?"