Beautiful Mistake(17)

“Professor? What are you doing here?”

His eyes answered for him. There was trouble lurking in the background. “Can you sit for a few minutes?”

“Ummm…sure. Let me just drop off the bill at my last table, and I’ll let Al know they’ll bring it up to him when they’re ready.”

Caine nodded. “Thank you.”

When I returned, there was already a Diet Coke on my side of the table and a beer in front of Caine. Untying my apron, I sat down and waited for him to speak.

“I want to apologize for this afternoon,” he said.

“I should be the one to apologize. I shouldn’t have been poking around in your personal life.”

“That’s true.” He smiled. “But I was wrong for the way I reacted.”

I shook my head. “If there’s anyone who should know there are things in people’s pasts they might not want brought up, it’s me.”

Caine nodded. He rubbed one finger around the top of his beer bottle. “I listened to some Johnny Cash tonight.”

“You did?”

He held my eyes. “I think we both have parts of our lives we’d rather not shake for fear of waking them up.”

That described perfectly the way I felt about my past. For the most part, I’d moved on and didn’t think about it on a daily basis. But it was always with me, and I worked hard to keep it locked away.

“Yes. I’m sorry. I really wasn’t thinking. I’m sure there’s a reason you don’t mention your history in your classes.”

Caine drank his beer, watching me over the rim. When he set it down, he asked, “How did you find out?”

I didn’t want to get anyone in trouble. “A friend of a friend.”

He nodded.

I thought it was best to come clean all the way. I took a deep breath before confessing. “And I might have Googled you. Well, not you. Adam’s other son.”

Caine shook his head, but there was a sad smile on his face. “I needed a haircut.”

“You were in style. I liked it. You had the whole sexy-bad-boy thing going on.”

“I’ll keep that in mind next time I go to the barber.”

“Can I just ask you one thing?”

“Will it help put this shit to bed?”

I smiled. “It will.”

“What’s your question?”

“The last article I read said you’d signed a record deal. But I couldn’t find an album. What happened?”

Caine was quiet for a while. His thumb rubbed at the label of his beer bottle when he spoke. “The lifestyle was tough. Partying, staying up all night, sleeping away half the day. It made me lose track of reality and my priorities.” He looked up at me. “After we signed with the label, we missed honoring the deadlines a few times. Album kept getting pushed back. Then I lost someone close to me.”

“I’m sorry.”

He nodded. “I took some time off. My parents pushed me to go back to college. I needed something to focus on. They wanted me to study finance and work in the family business. We settled on a degree in music because I couldn’t imagine not having it be a big part of my life. Later realized I was good at teaching musical composition, so kept going until I finished my doctorate.” He lifted the beer bottle and tilted it to me before bringing it to his lips. “And here I am.”

“And here you are.” I smiled. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”

The moment was interrupted when Al yelled from the bar. “You’re all closed out, Rachel.”

I turned and waved. “Thanks, Al.”

“You’re done for the night?” Caine asked.

“Yep. Do you want me to get you another beer?”

“No, thanks. I should get going.”

I was disappointed, even after a long day of teaching and working a full shift on my feet.

After I said goodnight to Al, Caine walked me to my car. He opened the door so I could get in and held on to the top.

“By the way, Professor Clarence was the topic of my faculty meeting today.”

We’d never spoken about it, and I wasn’t sure if he knew I’d been his teaching assistant last year.

“He was such a good person. I worked for him last year.”

“I heard that. Your name was mentioned, actually, along with another student’s. You both had him as faculty advisor for your thesis.”

I nodded. “He helped me pick my topic. It was a subject near to his heart.”

“You haven’t found a faculty member to replace him as your advisor yet?”

“No. Not yet. I need to get on that.”

“I’ll take you on, if you want.”

The surprises kept coming tonight. “You will?”

“Think about it.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

Caine shut my door and waited for me to start the car. As I pulled away from the curb, I waved one last time and thought to myself, I have a new advisor.





Caine

Fifteen years ago



What the fuck am I thinking?

I sat waiting in the quiet confessional, not even stoned this week. It was almost one o’clock, and Liam was long gone—like I should’ve been. We’d finished our last day of volunteering an hour ago and yet…here I was, waiting for a little girl who had enough trouble at home and sure as shit didn’t need my ass pretending to be a priest to add to her problems.