The Mathematician (Book 1)

17. Nothing Left

The day had finally come. Well, almost.

Today was the last day before I left tomorrow morning. And then the day after that, I would be on a train to college – the college of my dreams, the dream I had worked my whole life to get to.

And now that it was here, I was scared and nervous.

The week had flown by before I had even had a chance to blink. I had stayed mostly in my room, working on the assignment that was proving to test my very last brain cell to its fullest capacity, but at least I had been isolated from the one person that I suddenly became very aware of that I was leaving soon.

– The person I realized I had become too addicted to.

Laying in my bed that morning, I stared out of the window, at the clear sky that was slowly rising and painting the landscape a reddish-orange color. The clock told me it was only 5.34am, but I had been awake for hours, tossing and turning.

Judgement day had come, hadn't it.

Closing my eyes, I squeezed them together as the aching in my chest I had been suppressing all summer came back now as my mind circled the topic. This time there was no period to save me from the truth. The truth I had been denying to protect myself.

But you couldn't fucking hide from karma, could you.

It was laughable, really, when you thought about it. I had been supposed to come here to get pregnant with a man whom I was supposed to swindle out of his good mind, and yet the tables had been turned and I was left with a scrambled mind and a heavy feeling of having been fooled.

By Richard. By Harry. By fate and by my fucking heart, but mostly by my stupid self.

– For not caring to admit that the game I had been playing all summer had always been doomed to end badly.

Sighing, I rolled onto my back now and felt a tear roll down to my ear as I turned my eyes towards the ceiling.

I had fallen for him. I, Cassandra Berry, had foolishly fallen for a man who was not only out of my league, but out of my world. And I had ignored all the signs to try and stop it.

The aching in my chest had been there every time I was in his vicinity, every time he looked at me, touched me, or even when he gave me one of his sarcastic remarks and infuriating lectures. He challenged my mind and he challenged me as a person, but I liked to think I also challenged him with my ways. My crassness, for example. And my lack of shame. I even think he in some way liked that I wasn't shy and always told him what I wanted. Or rather showed him, so to speak.

In the beginning of the summer, I had sworn that I would make him come undone. At the time, it had been more of a cheeky challenge, but somehow overtime it had become... a need. I needed him to come apart—to give me what I wanted so I didn't have to hopelessly pine after it.

But he didn't. He hadn't. So I had kept on pretending I didn't feel anything either, and now, here we were.

But I just couldn't cope any longer.

It had been driving me insane, not being able to crack him and hear him say the things I wanted him to say. When we were together, like a few days ago in his office, his eyes and his touch spoke a million things... but the next day, he would look at me as if I was still just a houseguest, occupying his guest bedroom.

How could a man be so passionate, yet so inattentive to feelings?

I snorted at myself as I wiped a stupid tear away from my cheek. It wasn't like I wanted a big, grand love-declaration. God, no. Just a sign that he was feeling some of the same things I was feeling when we were together – a simple sentence or a single word would be enough.