The Man I Could Never Have

Chapter Five: No Excuse

The moment I stepped out of the lecture hall, I saw him.

Marcus was leaning against his black SUV, one hand tucked into his pocket, the afternoon sun catching the sleeves he'd rolled to his elbows.

Students walked past him without a second glance.

I couldn't.

"You didn't have to do this," I said, sliding into the passenger seat.

"I know." He pulled out into traffic, easy and unbothered, like picking up his best friend's daughter from campus was the most normal thing in the world. "Wanted to."

I didn't ask why. I'd learned a long time ago not to poke at the reasons Marcus did things for me — it was safer to just accept them and not look too closely at what was underneath.

"How was the first day?" he asked.

"Fine. Overwhelming syllabus, underwhelming coffee." I glanced at him. "Priya says hi."

Something flickered across his face — quick, gone almost before I caught it.

"Priya," he repeated. "The one who's hated me since sophomore year?"

"She doesn't hate you."

"She called me 'the tax attorney of feelings' once. To my face."

I laughed despite myself. "That does sound like her."

He didn't say anything else about it, but I noticed his jaw was tighter than it had been a minute ago, his hands a little firmer on the wheel. Priya's warning sat in the back of my mind — men like Marcus don't always realize the effect they have on people — and I wondered, not for the first time, whether that applied to him not knowing what he did to me, or something else entirely.

We didn't go straight home.

"I need to stop by a site," he said, turning onto a road I didn't recognize. "Won't take long. You mind?"

I minded a lot less than I should have — any extra hour with him felt like something I wanted to hoard.

The site turned out to be a half-finished house on a bluff overlooking the water, skeletal beams and plastic sheeting flapping in the wind, no crew in sight this late in the day. Marcus walked the frame with the quiet focus he probably didn't know he had, running a hand along a support beam, checking something against a set of plans on his phone.

"This is yours?" I asked. "The design?"

"Every inch of it." He glanced back at me. Come here."

A small smile touched his lips.

I picked my way across the unfinished floor to where he stood at what would eventually be a wall of windows, the whole ocean laid out in front of us, gold with the last of the afternoon light.

"This is the one room I fought the client for," he said. "They wanted it smaller. Practical. I told them some rooms aren't supposed to be practical. Some rooms are just supposed to make you feel something."

I looked at him instead of the view.

"Is that what you do? Design rooms to make people feel things?"

"Sometimes." His eyes found mine, and neither of us looked away this time. "Sometimes I just get lucky and the feeling's already there before I've built anything."

The wind picked up, cold off the water, and I told myself that was why my skin felt electric.

"Marcus—"

"We should head back." He said it fast, cutting me off before I could finish whatever I'd been about to say — before either of us had to find out what it was. "Getting dark."

He didn't look at me again the whole walk back to the car.

But his hand found the small of my back once, just briefly, guiding me around a loose beam in the floor — and he didn't pull it away as quickly as he should have.

The rest of the drive passed in silence.

Not an awkward silence.

The kind that said too much.

I kept staring out of the window, but all I could think about was the warmth of his hand against my back.

When we reached the house, Marcus turned off the engine but didn't move.

Neither did I.

For one impossible second, it felt as though the whole world had stopped breathing.

Then his phone rang.

He looked at the screen, and whatever softness had been in his eyes disappeared.

"I have to take this."

I nodded and got out of the car.

As I walked toward the front door, I heard him answer.

His voice was low.

"I told you not to call me again."

I stopped.

Before I could hear anything else, he turned and walked away.