𝑻 𝑯 𝑬 𝑵 𝑨 𝑵 𝑵 𝒀 (18+)

fifty-six

                             A M A R A

"I spoke to Dom," Kosta briefly looked at me while she scrolled through her emails. I played with a pen on her desk to distract myself and hummed, "Did you?"

"His court date with Stephanie is next week. He also said that you quit." Quit was a strong word. Resigning was better. It was less aggressive, less final. "Pretty abruptly might I add. Do we need to talk about it?"

"Are you going to continue fishing for answers if I say no?" I rolled my eyes. Kosta took a deep breath and turned her monitor away from her. She was giving me mom eyes now, staring me down until I cracked. A few months ago it would've worked but she hadn't spent a summer with Joshua Gray.

"I'm just trying to make sure that you're okay. Dom is a good friend of mine but if he—"

"No, it's nothing like that," I interrupted her. "I just don't think I'm what he needs anymore." I caught myself just as the tip of Kosta's brow raised. She smiled at me and pulled her chair closer to her desk, "you mean the kids?"

"What?"

"You said you don't think you're what he needs anymore. Did you mean him? Or the kids?" Her gaze was prickling my skin like needles now with no sign of letting up. She knew something and I couldn't be sure if it was instinct or if Dominic had confided in her.

So I'd keep my mouth shut until she decided to open hers.

"Don't you have office hours at this time? You don't need me taking up an entire block when there are people who actually need your academic guidance," I grabbed my things and prepared to leave but a glance at my chair had me sitting back down in a matter of seconds.

"You are as stubborn as the day I first met you," she laughed. "You've changed a lot since you took that job, most of it good but a few of those prickly traits of yours remain Amara."

"Yeah, and what traits are those?" I wasn't shy with my annoyance but Kosta brushed that off like she did everything else.

"For starters, you still can't seem to sit still. Even when things get rough you don't wait for the storm to blow over you leave before the slightest sign of rain," she sighed into her hand clearly as aggravated as I was right about now.

"Isn't that a good thing? I mean if bad weather is coming in you'd want to protect yourself from it." Only this thing with Dominic wasn't just bad weather. It was a natural disaster. A tsunami of emotions I wasn't sure how to handle. Love was tumultuous as it is. Being in love was a category five, life-threatening disaster.

"Not if the storm is just a little bit of rain, Amara. Look, I don't know what happened and I won't pry if you don't want me to—"

"But?" I hoped she'd get to the point sometime soon.

"But he talks of you so highly I just can't help but think—" Shaking her head she tapped on her keyboard and frowned, "Just think it over okay? If not him those kids love you dearly and Josh is having a hard time adjusting to you being gone. You're the only help he's had that has stayed this long. That has wanted to stay. Til now, that is."

A lump too big to swallow took hold of my throat and I held my neck to soothe it. "How is he?" I asked, scared to know the answer. No matter how I broke the news of my departure, I knew that Josh would take it the hardest. There was no way around it. What I didn't want was for it to erase all the work we had done over the past few months. I Didn't want to see that anger swallow him whole again.

"I don't say this to be cruel Amara but you know that he has abandonment issues. To be honest, he isn't even sure of who left him first he just knows that in the end someone always leaves. You stayed, and you understood. You didn't just leave Dominic you know."