The Fall of Troy Read online

  “Isn’t this just fabulous that we have both classes together on Mondays?”

  And Wednesdays. And Fridays.

  I groaned inwardly as I nodded tightly at Kevin who sat across from me at the Wise Bean. Turned out he was in my math class, too. I really was happy to see a familiar face, but it felt more comfortable to give him a hard time. It felt more comfortable to pretend like I wasn’t grateful for his persistent friendship.

  “I swear I didn’t sign up for that one on purpose,” he teased with a grin.

  “Sure.” I took the last bite of my yogurt and granola parfait before tossing the container in the trash next to our seats. “I’m just going to order a coffee and then we can head up to class.”

  Grabbing my second espresso-filled drink for the day, I turned to walk back to where we were sitting and almost ran into Ms. Rabbit from the other night.

  I winced when her hands reached out and grabbed my shoulders. She chuckled and apologized even though I’d been the one about to crash into her. I stood and stared. Not because of who she was or what I’d watched her do. I stared because her accent was also French and my stomach felt like it had just been run over by a dump truck carrying the thought that he could be married.

  For all the memories that plagued me of him, I couldn’t recall with any surety a ring on his finger. I would’ve seen it though, right?

  “Did you ever figure out who that guy was?” I asked thickly as I made it back to Kev.

  “Who?” He blinked at me before reaching for his blazer.

  “The guy who came into the coffee shop last week that you were drooling over.”

  “Oh. My. God.” He gasped. “I didn’t! I completely forgot!”

  One job, Kevin. You had one job.

  Ominous clouds above, we walked quickly back up to the main building on North Main Street. I was used to the chemical smell of the science labs, but the art building had a scent all to its own. Bittersweet, like chlorine, because art was the kind of thing that could make you feel the sweet depth of your soul even as it cost pieces of you to create it. I trudged through the hall, my boots squeaking on the linoleum floor as Kev, who seemed familiar with the place, led us through the halls until we came to room two-zero-one.

  The space was huge. The part of the room that we entered was littered with desks in front of a chalkboard and most of the thirty or so of them were filled with other students already.

  Great.

  To the right, behind all the desks was the studio portion—drawing desks circled around a low platform on the floor where the model would stand for us to draw. The walls were a whitish-gray, and the far side of the room was lined with imposing windows. It looked like a white-washed warehouse where students came to be turned from amateurs into artists.

  “Looks like we’ll have to get here earlier on Wednesday. I need to sit in the front row,” Kevin said, looking at me over his shoulder as he set his bag down on a desk in the second row—the only spot with another open desk next to it. “These glasses aren’t just for show.”

  I didn’t care if he caught my eye roll as I sat.

  We were on the side of the room closer to the windows. I could see the river and the courthouse through the dirty glass.

  Reaching in my bag, I went searching for my notebook—not that I had any interest in taking notes (this was an art class)—but Kevin already scolded me in math earlier for not ‘looking’ like I was prepared and attentive; he said that he had an image to protect. I reminded him that he could stop stalking anytime it was convenient.

  Click. Click. Click.

  My hands froze inside my bag as my eyes slid to the chair behind me and then to the one in front.

  Long blonde hair.

  Click. Click. Click.

  Oh. God. No.

  My fingers gripped my notebook like I was about to use it as a weapon—whether to hit Miss Clicker or Kevin for putting me in the seat right behind her—as I moved to sit up—

  Whack!

  My hand flew to the back of my head as it slammed into the underside of the desk. “Mother of—” I bit back a curse but not a whimper as my eyes squeezed shut with pain.

  Click. Click. Click.

  “Are you—” Kevin began to ask but when silent for a second before his hand started smacking into my arm. “Oh my God, Troy. I figured it out.”

  “What?” I croaked, slowly peeling my eyes open. The room began to come back into focus. “That you put us directly behind…”

  I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

  The good news was at least my head didn’t hurt anymore.

  Maybe that was because it had exploded.

  “I figured out who he is,” Kevin whispered, turning to me with the widest grin. “Our professor.”

  I didn’t look or acknowledge him. I couldn’t.

  My Mystery Man. My art professor. Léo Baudin.

  My nerves raced to catch up with my heart. Aux objets répugnants nous trouvons des appas.

  He looked only slightly less messy than previously; slightly because his winkled shirt managed to be completely tucked into his khaki pants. I licked my lips. I’d never been able to look at him like this before. Crowded coffee shop. Hidden by art supplies. Behind the bar. Now there was nothing to obscure him. And he was every part the disheveled genius. Because with every genius must come a measured degree of insanity otherwise, how else was it possible to do something so much greater than the rest of the world?

  Some men will walk into a room like they own it and everyone inside—whether by their wealth or knowledge, like my father. Some will walk into the room like it was an opportunity to win whoever was in the room to their side whether by laughter or threats. But him… He walked into the classroom like it was a cage—like it was meant to contain him in a space that he didn’t belong. He prowled in like a wild animal, brimming with the rage that comes with being captured and put on display—the one that makes them foam at the mouth to destroy anyone and anything that comes close.

  I gulped.

  Still tall and lean, I bit down on my lip to stop my mouth from falling open as I watched him mumble to himself. He slung his bag onto the desk, papers half spilling out of it like a tipped over cup of coffee. I think I would have laughed at how almost adorable his intense frustration was as he yanked the offending sheets out and began to thumb through them. I might have… if I hadn’t been mesmerized by those long fingers, imagining if that’s how they’d been moving between that woman’s legs the other night.

  The papers hit the desk with a thud as he spun to the board, reaching for a piece of chalk.

  He scrawled his name on the chalkboard: Léo Baudin.

  No. Not scrawled. Attacked. Like a lion. Léo. Each mark of the chalk was like a claw tearing into his latest prey. I crossed my legs to try and hide the truth. I wanted to be his latest prey.

  Finally. He looked at the class, their expectant faces almost as curious about what was going to happen today as I was. My heart beat faster and faster as he started with the desks closest to the door, his gaze working its way across the room. Faster and faster. I couldn’t hear the clicking of the pen anymore because my heart beat quicker and louder right over it. The crescendo grew to oxygen-depriving heights until those deep sea eyes came to mine. And then it stopped.

  Everything stopped.

  If there was ever a look that could produce the same kind of release as an orgasm, it was this one—the one where what you were searching for was found, the one where the unknown became known, and the one that made every single cell in your body come alive.

  Everything came together and clicked into place with that one stare. And while I sat there with what seemed like a million memories and a million feelings from only just a week flooding my system, his eyes remained impassive—like I was just one more face in the crowd before he moved on.

  “My name is Professor Baudin,” he said curtly, enunciating each syllable.

  No, ‘hi.’ No ‘hello, good morning, class.’ />
  “Can you believe this?” Kevin mouthed to me behind his hand. My gaze flicked to my friend and for a second, I felt a searing heat, like the lion was glaring at me angrily for my focus leaving him. But when I looked back, he wasn’t even looking at me.

  “This is the class for the study of David and the numerous sculptural representations of the matter. If that is not what you are here for, feel free to leave.”

  Silence.

  Click. Click. Click.

  Miss Clicker was unaware of the way I stared murderously through the back of her head and she was oblivious to the way Professor Baudin’s stormy eyes fell on her for the offense.

  He cleared his throat and then continued, “I’m told I have to give you this syllabus because you are either too stupid or too inattentive to remember my instructions that I’m forced to reward your carelessness.” He dropped a stack of papers on the first desk in the first row, clearly expecting the stupefied girl to pass them out.

  Kevin clapped a hand over his mouth. I was surprised he managed to stop the laugh from escaping. The entire room was dead silent—half because they wanted to laugh in agreement, the other half because they realized that this was one class where they weren’t going to be babied into passing.

  “We will have lecture three times a week.” Click. Click. Click. “There will be a few days where I will send you to the galleries to take a look at some of the pieces on display there.”

  His eyes found mine again and heat bloomed in my body. In spite of my wardrobe troubles, I’d put on a normal bra so at least he couldn’t see what that look did to my breasts this time.

  “In addition to the lectures…” My core clenched every time he got to a word that he instinctively wanted to say in French but forced himself to hold back; it reminded me of how he behaved around me—like his body wanted to do things one way, and the way it had to be done wasn’t it. “…there will be studio time.”

  Click. Click. Click.

  His head whipped to the girl in front of me who was clicking as she seemingly wrote down every single word. He stalked over to her desk before she barely got her head up and pulled the pen from her hand. A few gasps turned into several as he snapped the pen in half with one hand.

  “Bring one of these…” He held it from the top, letting the broken piece dangle lifelessly from his fingertips like a doll with her neck snapped, in front of Miss Clicker’s face. “…to my class again and the same thing will happen to you.”

  I knew the rest of the students were in shock—some probably afraid—by what just happened. Not me. I rubbed my thighs tighter together the way his body vibrated with his threat. Like he knew what that noise did to me—the ticking of a life searching for purpose. And he would. Because whatever broken shards of misery fueled us, they were the same.

  He stalked back behind the desk, his hands digging into the back edge of the chair.

  “There will also be studio time,” he began again as though he hadn’t just threatened to break a student in half. “But as thirty is an obscene amount to fit around a body, there will be three groups of ten—one after each class. Studio lessons will be at minimum four hours and they will all include live models. If you have a problem with the naked human form, I suggest you leave now.”

  He grunted and scanned over the class again, still not pausing when he came to me.

  “A-are we going to introduce ourselves?” the chubby boy with the big glasses asked.

  Professor Baudin stared flatly at him—like he’d just asked if Michelangelo himself was going to come speak for us.

  “Do I need to waste my time by calling you anything other than imbécile?” he quipped before dropping his head with a sigh. It was the first time a French word had left his mouth—the effect not lost on the lower half of me. “But of course. I know that here in America, they like to make all of you feel special even though you are not. You are not special.” He looked around at us before spearing a hand through his hair, making the strands stick out in even more sporadic directions. “You are not anything until you prove that you are worth something. But, please, let’s go around so I can hear all of your names that you should not expect me to remember.”

  One by one they went. Meek. Mumbling. Muffled. Until Kevin who, like me, found his behavior more entertaining than frightening. He might be an utter asshole, but he was interesting and he was real.

  “Kevin VanHorn,” he introduced with a cheeky smirk.

  “Are you always amused by your name?” my deliciously disheveled professor asked.

  I held my breath.

  “No, sir.” My nerves exhaled when Kevin answered politely—not provokingly. “Just by you.”

  Dammit, Kevin.

  My teeth sunk into my tongue. I couldn’t hold back a groan and I almost couldn’t hold back the way I wanted to smack him when he sent me a small wink.

  “I’m glad to hear you find me… amusing,” the lion said with a low growl, slowly walking to stand in front of Kev. “Maybe you’d find it amusing to be excused from this class. Permanently.” It sounded like he was asking if Kev wanted to be excused from life permanently.

  The color drained from Kev’s face; he was kicked out of his VE last semester. If he was removed from this one (not that what he did would really justify it, but if he was), he wouldn’t graduate on time.

  “No, sir,” he said quietly and hung his head. It was a show. Later, we’d be laughing about it again, finding common ground in the hilarity of the awkward and absurd.

  And just as quickly as he descended on Kev, his gaze swung to me.

  “You.” An accusation, not a question. You, who didn’t have the supplies for my class ready. You, who are too young to be working in a bar. You, who couldn’t stop watching me fuck my wife. (Okay, the last was my own.) “Your name.”

  Not a request.

  My chin ticked up a notch, holding his gaze for long enough to make the seconds feel awkward. A small defiance that felt so good—and one I was sure I would pay for later.

  “My name is Troian Milanovic.”

  I spoke my name like it was a curse—one that would follow his footsteps like a suffocating shadow and haunt his dark dreams. At least for one semester. Then he could go back across the ocean and take all this hatred and loathing and debilitating lust with him.

  His eyes narrowed like my name meant something to him—something more than the girl who was itching for a fight.

  “A very unique name for a very unremarkable girl,” he said coldly, his accent highlighting the word ‘unremarkable’ before he spun and walked back to the desk.

  I saw red. Burning. Blazing red. And I felt it, too. In that second, the rage took me back—set me back a year to the same unremarkable girl whose accomplishments weren’t worth her father’s time.

  In the things we loathe become the things we love.

  But instead of feeling dragged down by that weight, I felt the impetus to fight it—to prove him wrong.

  “Read the syllabus,” his voice echoed in my mind from somewhere I couldn’t focus on. “There won’t be a quiz to test you. That is a waste of my time. If you don’t know its contents and what we will be doing by Wednesday, I’ll simply remove you from the class. Now, who can tell me something… anything… about David?”

  He didn’t look my way for the rest of class no matter how angrily I glared at him. He hardly looked at anyone though—the genius in him overtaking the insanity as he provided layer upon layer of history and art and theory. Pencils moved in a symphony of scratches as notes poured onto page after page in every notebook except mine.

  The notes my mind took were of a different sort, cataloging every inch of this loathsome man that I could see myself in battle against.

  Unremarkable.

  I’d show him just how remarkable I could be. I’d show myself, too.

  Unremarkable.

  It was that moment again. Not the one when I walked in on my dad. Not the one when I realized it was Lil beneath him. No. It was that m
oment after, when I got back to my room, and the anger and betrayal both dimmed behind the blindingly bright thought that I wasn’t worth it.

  After all the work I put into grades, into cooking for him the nights that he was at the lab working late, after all the awards I’d won in the numerous science clubs and competitions I’d participated in, after scoring near-perfect on the AP Chem test, and after my acceptance to George Washington University—where the great Damien Milanovic had gone to undergrad… after all that, I still wasn’t worth a moment of his time.

  After all that, I was still unremarkable.

  And that moment brought me back to the place where I’d done everything, but still, nothing right and the pain radiating through my body seemed inhuman and impossible. It was the place where it seemed logical to give that pain a home carved into my skin.

  “Oh. My. God,” Kev’s outburst followed me as I practically ran from the classroom, a few of our classmates snickering in agreement. “Can you believe that? I just—I just can’t.”

  First, he was my Mystery Man.

  Now, he was Léo Baudin, my professor.

  But always, he’d been my enemy.

  Like in ancient times, when different civilizations hated each other for no other reason than history said they always had. Feuds… wars… all born in their blood, raised to need the fight more than an explanation for it.

  I didn’t respond, pulling my bag forward and shoving the syllabus in the top of it. The fact that it crumpled under the pressure oddly satisfying.

  “Don’t get me wrong, when he snapped her pen” —his hand flapped in front of his face—“I could have kissed the man at that moment. Well, okay, I would probably kiss that man at any moment—even after he, you know, sort of made a fool of me and then insulted you.”

  Unremarkable.

  I didn’t need to be reminded. My fingers still itched to grab that broken pen and stab him with it. I was sure that Dr. Shelly would be thrilled to learn that my violent tendencies transitioned to inflicting others rather than wounding myself. I wondered if that meant I was getting better or worse?