Chapter 8 - The Offer That Changed Everything
One year after my defense, Westbridge University offered me a tenure-track position.
It should have been an immediate yes.
Instead, I stared at the email until midnight.
Returning meant going back to the city where Hunter and I had lived.
It meant passing our old neighborhood.
It meant entering the same university where I had walked into my defense with butchered hair.
Julian found me sitting on the apartment floor surrounded by printed contracts.
“You want it?”
“Yes.”
“You’re scared.”
“Yes.”
“Those can coexist.”
I looked at him. “What about us?”
“What about us?”
“You’re here.”
“And airplanes have been invented.”
I smiled.
“You wouldn’t ask me to stay?”
“No.”
“Why?”
His expression became serious.
“Because someone loving you should never require you to become less.”
The sentence broke something open inside me.
Hunter had once said similar things.
But Julian’s actions matched his words.
I accepted.
Two months later, I returned to Westbridge as Assistant Professor Selena Reyes.
Professor Holt met me outside my new office.
There was a brass nameplate.
DR. SELENA REYES
I touched it.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
Then I noticed the room number.
401B.
Across the hall from the seminar room.
“You did this deliberately.”
May you like
Professor Holt smiled.
“Absolutely.”
