To Professor, with Love (Forbidden Men #2)(26)

His brows furrowed. “Because you were impressed by how well I’d fixed my essay? That’s all?”

Clearing my throat discreetly, I glanced away, wishing I didn’t feel like a bug pinned under a microscope. “Well...mostly,” I hedged my answer.

“Then why else?” His voice was compelling. I had to turn the tables on him before I blurted out something embarrassing.

“Why did you tell me something like that?” I charged right back, but I could see on his face exactly why. I’d read enough books about serial killers to know sometimes people just needed to confess what they’d done, to get all their secrets off their chest.

But why had Noel Gamble cleared his conscience to me?

Shaking his head, he sent me a look that told me clearly he wasn’t sure why he’d chosen me. “I don’t…” He closed his eyes. “You challenged me. You told me to find a correlation with someone in that book. And I did.”

I nodded, my head heavy from what was happening here, between us. “Yes, you most certainly did. And you handed me written proof that you cheated your way into this university.”

“And you gave that written proof back to me,” he countered, his voice low and blue eyes alert.

I had. I’d given it back without telling another soul what he’d written. “How much did you have your GPA doctored?”

He blew out a quick breath. “Four tenths of a percent. Just enough to get the scholarship.”

I believed him. I’d looked up his records to see he’d made it the minimum possible GPA to get a scholarship. He could’ve given himself a straight 4.0, but he’d kept it humbly low. For a cheater, he’d remained surprisingly honest.

That had been another small but insignificant reason I hadn’t said anything to anyone.

His blue eyes watched me, reminding me of the other, biggest reason I’d kept silent.

He shook his head. “I haven’t…I swear to you, I haven’t done anything like that since I’ve come here. Everything at Ellamore has been all me. One hundred percent.” His grin was self-derisive. “Even those D essays.”

I placed my hands into my lap because they’d begun to shake. They wanted to reach for him and soothe and reassure him I’d never do anything to harm his education here. I could never hurt him. I wanted him to succeed as much as he wanted to. I wanted him to be able to escape his old life and help pull his siblings from it as well.

“I believe you,” I said. “That’s why I haven’t said anything.”

He blew out a breath. “Thanks. You have no idea how much this means to me. I’m not…I’m not used to second chances.”

“I know. I read your paper, remember?” I meant it as a lighthearted tease, but he winced.

“Yeah, you did, didn’t you? Jesus, you probably think I’m a poor, stupid piece of shit right now.”

Glad he wasn’t looking at me, I blinked repeatedly as the threat of tears stung my eyes. God, I wanted to hug him, so hard. What had happened to the ego-inflated football star I’d always seen in him? And aside from keeping my mouth shut about his cheating, why was he so worried about what I thought about him as a person? Aside from being his bitchy literature professor, I was no one to him.

He obviously didn’t let many people know these things about him. The insistent way he’d tried to retrieve his paper before I’d even read it was proof of that. And yet, he’d let me in. He’d shown me the real Noel Gamble, something he didn’t show just anyone.

Flattered I had received such a gift and yet scared to death about handling the fragility of it, I breathed in a deep breath before murmuring, “That’s the very last thing I thought. In fact, it didn’t even make the list of things I thought.”

His gaze veered to me, and I felt electrocuted. Dear God, but the hope glittering in his eyes sucked me into this bubble where there was nothing but him and me.

“Then what did you think?”

My cheeks heated. No way could I tell him what I’d really thought. No matter what, he could not find out I had a huge, embarrassing crush on him. So I blurted out something just as awful. “I thought I was an idiot.”

Noel blinked. “Huh?”

Damn it. Now I had to look away and address the bookshelves as I reluctantly admitted, “I judged you too harshly at the beginning of the semester and made biased, preconceived notions I shouldn’t have, based on my own past. Reading your paper told me I was utterly and completely wrong. I don’t blame you at all for what you had to do to save yourself and your brothers and sister. All this time, I thought you were the careless, arrogant, self-centered type who thought the world did and should revolve around you. I thought you would be a braggart, a show-off, and...and cruel.”

He tipped his head to the side. “Cruel?”

Scratching behind my ear and not even touching that one, all the while thinking about the cruel quarterback from my high school years, I cleared my throat. “The point is you completely astounded me. You had the courage to risk everything for the people you love. You came from an incredibly...difficult childhood, all the while taking on the responsibilities of your younger siblings, and still, you managed to accomplish so much. The whole paper was completely heartbreaking and inspirational. It was brilliant, and I needed an entire box of tissues to read it.”