~RYAN'S POV
I SAW MY PROFESSOR IN MY DREAMS. AGAIN! Trust me, I know it sounds profoundly weird. It even sits bitter in my head when I think it but I can't unthink it either.
Dr. Crane was my fucking drug.
Her gray eyes and lovely figure is a constant vision that colors my nights—even as I spend it with other women. The women are vape pens, the artificial means to dull a raging hunger; the fucking smoking cigarette that is Casselba Crane, and though I try and try, she never leaves my mind.
I feel like I'm in Kubrick's EYES WIDE SHUT but all the hot women are my Professor. Forbidden, lusty and fierce. Also, the mystery of her eyes that seemed to change color that day in the class.
Melissa called a number of times. I of course ignored them, because I certainly knew what would follow if I returned her calls.
She'll smile at me again and we would become friends. Maybe make-out at some point, but the real deal would be when she invited me to her house. Then I'll have to meet her parents and explain to a Sicilian Don why I was having a hard-on for his wife.
From there, everything could go south—very quickly.
The phone buzzes again on my bedside table, vibrating in that low buzz I've grown to hear even in deep sleep. I turn it over, peering at the screen.
Once I sight Melissa's big green eyes, I immediately slam it back on the table, muting it. I'll have to apologize to her in our next lectures together. Maybe I'll even tell her I'm not into girls.
That way, I wouldn't need to see her bright green eyes lower in disappointment. Because what guy in his right mind wouldn't want a girl like Melissandre Mancuso.
Her family name alone could send men to their knees. Her emerald eyes would send them to their bellies. But I was keeping a secret from her. A huge one that could tear the Mancuso household apart. I had to pull away for her sake.
The phone buzzes again on the table and I immediately rise from the bed, moving to my mini study at the bedroom's far corner. I sit on a soft chair and pull open my journal. The one containing all of my art.
Flipping across the pages, images of pencil sketches fly by my eyes. My blond hair falls into my eyes and I quickly push the pale strands away. My Art was good. I guess I had my father to thank for that. Caden Hallow could have easily built an empire also in the Art world, but like me, we both hated publicity.
I guess I also have him to thank for that.
I look like my father in every way. Eyes. Nose. Ears. Body tone—I particularly love this inherited trait. The one and only thing I took from my mother was her hair. Pale hair so blond it looked almost white.
Dad told me she also had waves of it, tumbling down in rich splendor. Dad never spoke much about her, and I knew why. Coping without a woman in the house is difficult enough for two grown men with impressive libidos.
But mother was everywhere, literally. She was in huge paintings all over the manor. She was in small photos hidden away in my drawers. She was in the tiny lockets in dad's library. She was in the bougainvillea Terrance pruned in her honor.
She had been gone for so many years but neither I nor dad could bear to look away from her blue adventurous eyes.
Mother's name was Catherine, and she was every inch a Mockingjay. Free-spirited, wild, and with a smile that could light up a yacht—or so I've been told. I never once met her.
I stop flipping pages when I hit the latest of my sketches. My mother immediately disappears from my thoughts. Just like that. The sketches on the page before me were those of my Professor. The tattoo across her hips. The ones I had grown to love from the moment I first saw them.
A perfect play of ink on skin, with curves and lines running across in almost lifelike appearance. I had never seen her naked before, except in the universe we shared in my mind.
Yet I knew what lay under her smooth skirt and crisp button-up and hidden stormy eyes. She was beautiful, and her tattoos were next level. The mystery of the ink was so dreamy—like her.
The black lines seemed to arise from her very flesh, not looking like something drawn in, but something pushing from under. Like runes drawn on ancient artifacts.
In the mind connection we share, I can tell she blocks me. She feels me too but holds back. I already know she's not entirely human and I've been reading many folklores to find out who or what she really is but nothing sings to me.
We haven't spoken a single word to each other; we just exist as Professor and Undergrad, but in our mind's eye, we are closer than twins. I feel her thoughts. I know when she is asleep or awake, and though I know I'm only scrubbing the periphery of our psychic connection, I can't hope for more.
Casselba was intentionally blocking me out.
Lately though, I've started feeling whispers of another presence in our connection. A man.
Older too.
But I can't see his face.
Casselba I can't touch. But the man I don't even know. What I know is that he is part of us and somehow linked also to our connection. The exasperating question is, Why would two men hold a single woman in their thoughts at the same time?
I needed to find out who the man was. Maybe if we both worked together, I can finally muster up the courage to talk to Casselba Crane. A woman who has captivated my mind since I first saw her—actually, before I first saw her.
I'm still going through my sketches, particularly the ones of Casselba's tattoos when dull thuds land on my bedroom door.
A second later, the door sweeps open and I'm not fast enough to close my journal. Caden, my father walks in.
He stops abruptly at the doorway and his eyes pin on the open page in front of me. He immediately goes so rigid he looks like a painting. His piercing gaze holds the sketch for long and I look down. It's Casselba's tattoos.
The way he was looking at the art... as if he somehow knew them, or had seen them. But Caden didn't know my Professor, so if he did recognize the tattoo, that means...
Hell on wheels! My father was the other man. The third personality in our world.
I slowly look up from my journal and into his eyes. His gaze pins mine as we stare each other down. I slowly rise from my chair and walk to him.
I stop an inch from face. He stands a little taller but our eyes never leave each other. Looking into his eyes, I don't ask him if he knew what my sketches were. His eyes told me he did.
I don't ask him if he knows who they belong to. His set gaze also tells me he does. I don't ask if he also has visions of her. I know already that he did because I had also felt him in our connection. Both of us know, that what is going on is totally bizarre and unbelievable, yet all we want is her.
Mysterious and beautiful Casselba Crane.
"We need to find her," I whisper, breaking the silence.
The next thing that happens stuns me speechless. Caden's expression changes almost immediately, like it wasn't even there. He looks at me like I've said we just landed on Mars.
I know he knows what I'm talking about but for some reason he feigns naïveté.
He looks away and walks to the desk. He thumbs the page between his fingers and smiles at my work, as if I didn't just talk to him.
After a long moment of silence where I wonder what the hell is going on, Caden finally turns to me.
"I love your sketches. Where did you see them?"
"Shit!" I mutter. This was going to be harder than I expected.