The Exception to the Rule (The Improbable Meet-Cute, #1) (13)

One would think I’d be nervous about the exam I’m about to take, but really, I’m exhausted from not sleeping (alternately studying and rereading C’s email suggesting HE! IS! A! PATIENT! LOVER!) and also dreading seeing Callum this morning.

The more I thought about it yesterday, the more I realized how fucking insane I looked for hiding in a closet. He came out looking like an A+ sex stud, and I came out looking like Gollum curled around her bottle of wine.

There’s no way that this isn’t going to be awkward.

Except . . . it isn’t. I walk into the classroom, compulsively early as always, sit in my seat, and Callum immediately comes over, crouching in front of me. We are the only two people in here, and it feels wildly intimate how close we are.

“Hey. You good?” he asks, and those brown-green eyes search mine, and he gives a tiny, unsure smile. “After the, uh, incident Wednesday night?”

My pulse trips all over itself before sprinting away. He really is so intensely hot; the longer we maintain eye contact, the more worried I become about releasing a spontaneous moan. “Am—am I good? Yes. I’m fine. Are you good?”

He breaks out in a real smile, and it’s devastating. It’s an underwear-shredding smile. The seductive smile of a man who gives good dick. “I’m fine,” he says quietly, eyes flickering past my shoulder as the room begins to fill. “Embarrassed. But I just wanted to check on you.”

“I don’t think you need to be embarrassed,” I whisper, laughing.

“Ehh,” he says, wincing cutely, “it was just private.”

“And I’m sorry that I trespassed on a private moment,” I tell him. “I punished myself by finishing the entire bottle of wine and treating myself to a brutal headache yesterday morning.”

He laughs, low and sexy, like a man who very patiently delivers orgasms every time, and God, I think my brain is melting. C is right. I need a man who is patient, because whatever I’ve been missing must be amazing.

“You ready for today?” Callum asks.

“For today?”

A tiny smile. “The exam?”

“Oh. That. Yes. Very ready for it. Ready to take it, I mean.” I pause, swallowing. Why does this eye contact feel like foreplay? “I’m referring to the exam.”

There’s a twinkle of amusement in his eyes as he stands. “Good.”

And when I get up at the end of class and leave, Callum gives me a small smile and a wave. I really hope I haven’t just completely bombed it, because only two minutes after I finished it, I don’t remember a single question on the test.





Chapter Twenty


FEBRUARY 16, 2024

Callum

Iset the stack of exams on Dr. Ashkar’s desk. “Hey, Mike. I’m going to have to recuse myself from grading these.”

He looks up at me, lowering his glasses. “Oh yeah? What’s up?”

Mike Ashkar is the newest faculty member in our department and the one professor I am sure to be friends with long after I finish my doctorate. I have resigned myself to tell him this much, and no more: “I’ve got a thing for one of the students.”

“Which one?”

“No way.”

He laughs. “All right. I’ll do them. You owe me lunch.”

“I owe you lunch and a bottle of Aberlour, but just the twelve.”

He laughs and I turn to leave, but he stops me. “Callum, wait. Did I hear right that Mikkelson is taking over your TA role for the rest of the term?”

“Yeah, I swapped over to his neurophys section.”

He narrows his eyes at me. “Same reason?”

I grin. “Same reason.”

“You’re really not going to tell me who it is?”

“Hell no,” I say and turn for the door again. “Because if she rejects me, you’ll never let me live it down.”

“You got that right. Good luck.”



From the second Terra walked out of the classroom, I wanted to see her again. Immediately. I have this buzzed, vibrating feeling in my limbs. No matter how fantastical it sounds, it feels like we were destined to run into each other in some truly unbelievable way.

I suppose I don’t have to wait. I could email her right now and tell her who I am, but I saw the way she was in class. She’s nervous with me—she admitted in an email that she finds me intimidating—and if I told her now who I am, I worry that dynamic would dominate. I don’t want that between us after everything.

Unfortunately, as soon as I leave Mike’s office, I realize that I’ve just inadvertently quit the one space where I’m sure to easily run into her. I’m neck-deep in worrying about how to manufacture a chance run-in when I look up in line at the soup-dumpling counter at Franklin’s and see her only a few places in front of me.

You’ve got to be kidding me.



“Mind if I join you?” I ask.

Terra startles, jerking her attention away from the pile of journal articles spread around her Styrofoam food container. “Oh—hey!”

I gesture to the crowded food hall around us. I have the perfect excuse that nearly every other table is occupied. “Okay if I sit?”

She scrambles to clear the papers and make room for me. “Yeah, yeah, of course.”