68

Blaine
Oak is sitting behind my desk when I barge in. He looks up, brow furrowed. “What’s wrong, Bly?” He knows me well enough to know when something isn’t right.
“Where is she?”
He shakes his head. “Where is who?”
“Azira.”
His eyes narrow. “What is it to you?”
I bare my teeth, a growl rising from my throat. “Don’t play games with me, Oak.” I clench my fists, knowing that I’m on the edge of losing it. “Tell me where the fuck she is.”
Three days now she hasn’t replied to my texts or calls. I thought she was playing games since it was the weekend and she was probably busy with her friends, but when she didn’t attend class today, I knew something was off.
His brow raises. “So the bullshit you gave me about her just being your student was a lie?”
“At the time, it wasn’t.”
“And now?”
“And now if you don’t tell me where the fuck she is, I’ll rip your goddamn head off.” I’ve not felt so angry or out of control in a while. Her cell is disconnected, and she didn’t meet me as arranged in my classroom.
“Luca was right then…”
“Luca was right about what?”
Oak stands and paces toward the window in his office, gazing onto the grounds of the academy. “He suspected the two of you were involved intimately.”
That revelation makes the blood drain from my face as some of the anger eases. “How?”
He shrugs. “I’m not sure. He wanted to send Azira home early at the request of her eldest brother because of it.” He turns to look at me. “I told Luca that was crazy, that you wouldn’t be involved with a student.”
I know the look on Oak’s face and it’s not anger but disappointment. It may be worse.
“I was a fucking fool to tell him you wouldn’t be involved with a student then, it turns out.”
I sit in the chair opposite Oak’s desk. “It’s not like I wanted this to happen. It just did.”
“I called you out about it that evening in the bar and you flat out denied it.” Oak loosens his tie. “I thought we were supposed to be friends, Bly.”
“We are friends.” I grit my teeth together. “But if I had told you I was involved with Azira that day, what would you have done?”
He shrugs. “I would have made sure you ended it as quickly as possible.”
“Exactly, and I have no intention of ending things with Azira.” I straighten as I stare him straight in the eye. “I’ll resign before I do that.”
His mouth falls open. “Are you saying you have feelings for her?”
Feelings.
The word alone makes my skin crawl and yet I’m not sure what other explanation there is for this fucking obsession I have with her.
Why I’m barging into my boss’s office like a raging lunatic.
“I don’t know what I’m saying.” I’m not ready to admit it out loud to anyone, even if it might be true. Because I’m not entirely sure it is.
“Did you know her father is very sick?”
I nod in response. “Yes, she told me about his cancer.”
Oak looks almost surprised that we actually talk, or that she told me anything personal, which irritates me. “Well, apparently he’s going into surgery this week, so Massimo was going to have her return anyway, but Luca brought it forward after alleging that you and her are sleeping together.”
I clench my jaw, as Azira never mentioned her father was having surgery this week coming. “So she’s in Chicago?”
“Yes, and she’ll be back in two week’s time for the graduation ceremony.”
The fact is, the Sidorov family won’t just let this relationship between us slide. They’ve taken her cell and turned it off for a reason, so I can’t get in contact with her.
“I’m going to Chicago.”
Oak stands. “Like hell you are.”
I cross my arms over my chest and stand tall. We’re both about the same height. “Are you going to stop me?”
“Bly, you can’t go guns blazing into Sidorov territory.”
“I’ll do what the fuck I want,” I growl.
Oak sighs heavily. “Jane mentioned from her sessions with you that she’s concerned you are going to relapse.”
“Relapse into what?”
“Into chaos and bloodshed, Bly. I can’t watch you while you spiral out of control.”
I clench my fists by my side. “Perhaps this was always going to happen. Perhaps what I have wrong with me can’t be controlled.”
“Are you saying you are going to go on a killing spree again?”
I shake my head. “No, you don’t understand.”
“Help me,” he says, gesturing to the chair opposite his desk.
I search his eyes, wondering if I really want to get into this with him now. If I don’t, he’ll never let me go to Chicago. “Fine. But just listen, okay?”
He nods, miming zipping his mouth shut. “I’m all ears.”
My heart pounds unevenly in my chest as I sit down again. “All this time I’ve been trying to keep the darkness inside of me under control, but really, it just needed an outlet.” I rub a hand across the back of my neck. “Suppressing it was only making it more difficult to control. It felt like it was trying to eat me alive.”
Oak nods as if he understands, but he can’t understand this. He may have had a dark past, but not like mine. It doesn’t even come close.
“Azira is that outlet. She fits me like a fucking glove and although I feel like I’ve lost control of the darkness, it doesn’t need controlling when I’m around her.”
He arches a brow. “Sounds like you are in love.”
My stomach flips at that word. “Love isn’t in my vocabulary.”
“You are in denial, then. I know what it is to suddenly feel whole after years of feeling empty.”
He’s talking about his relationship with Eva. I must admit, he was a bit like me when it came to dating, although he never even had relations I knew about with women. He was like a fucking monk, as far as I was aware.
And then suddenly he’s married to a student. It was totally out of the blue, but I can’t deny that he seems far happier ever since they got together.
“That’s what you are describing, isn’t it?”
Is it? I guess in a sense, but it’s more complicated than that. Not just a sense of being whole, but a sense of acceptance of who I am.
All this time I’ve been fighting it, trying to satiate my needs with fragments.
Azira lets me be who I am, and she fucking loves it. Even subs that I’ve been with before have been weirded out by the extremes of my sadistic needs.
Gail, for example, only let me do things to her because she had fallen for me. It wasn’t because she enjoyed it the way Azira does.
“It’s not that simple.” I run a hand through my hair. “All I know is I have to go to Chicago. They’re going to try to take her from me.”
“Fine, you can go. I’ll have to get someone to cover for you.” He gives me a piercing look. “How long will you be?”
I shake my head. “It’s impossible to say until I get there.”
He sighs. “This year has been the craziest fucking year yet.”
I purse my lips together, knowing that Archer is also off his rocker right now, but think it best not to tell him.
After all, he’s taking this badly enough. If I tell him Arch blackmailed his student into having sex and is now in love with her, I think he might have a heart attack.
“I know, but at least it’s almost over.”
Oak nods, loosening his tie. “Yeah, I can’t wait.”
I can wait, as it means working out what the hell is going on between me and Azira. Love is a word I can’t quite get onboard with, but all I know is I can’t live without her.
She’s the light to my darkness. A star in my pitch black night sky. And without her, I’m not really living. Without her, it feels like my heart won’t be able to keep beating-a heart I believed had turned to stone forever, but Azira defied all odds and melted it.