With mounting irritation, Taryn listened to her classmates justify the betrayal of Dido. Suddenly she couldn’t stay silent any longer.

“He’s not a hero!” she blurted. “He’s a narcissistic asshole, just like Abelard. Just like Jason. I don’t care if he went on to found the city of Rome. He abandoned Dido, which makes him a traitor.”

The classroom went silent.

Then Jessica let out a mocking laugh. She never missed a chance to challenge Taryn in class, and as usual she went straight for the jugular. “Are we back to your old gripe, Taryn? It’s the same thing you said about Jason and Abelard. You’re obsessed with men betraying women.”

“That’s exactly what Aeneas did,” Taryn pointed out. “He betrayed her.”

“Why are you stuck on that theme? Did some guy do it to you?”

Cody put his hand on Taryn’s arm, a touch that said: Let it slide. She’s trying to provoke you. Of course he was right. She’d known girls like Jessica all her life, privileged girls who were handed everything they wanted. Girls who’d never seen the inside of a Goodwill store because they bought all their clothes brand new. Girls who used to bring their friends into the ice cream shop where she worked every summer, just so they could stand around, smirking, as she served them.

Oh yes, Taryn knew the Jessicas of the world, but they didn’t know her.

Cody’s hand tightened around her arm. She took a deep breath and silently settled back in her chair.

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?” said Jessica, looking around the classroom. “That’s Taryn’s thing. Women getting betrayed.”

“Let’s move on,” said Professor Dorian.

“Maybe it’s personal for her or something,” Jessica said. “Because it sure seems like she can’t stop talking about men who—”

“I said, let’s move on.”

Jessica pouted. “I was only making a point.”

“Leave Taryn out of it. She has a right to her opinion, and I’m glad she spoke up. Now let’s get back to The Aeneid.”

As he led the discussion in a different direction, Taryn focused on the man who’d come to her defense. She knew almost nothing about him. Not his background or his personal life or even what the R in Jack R. Dorian stood for. For the first time she noticed how tired he looked today, perhaps a little depressed, as if these classroom squabbles had worn him down. He wore a wedding ring, so she knew he was married. Did he have a fight this morning with his wife, his kids? He struck her as one of the good guys—not a man like Aeneas or Abelard or Jason, but someone who’d stand by the woman he loved.

The way he’d stood by her today. She should thank him for it.

After the seminar ended and the other students filed out, Taryn lingered in the classroom, watching as he gathered his papers. “Professor Dorian?”

He looked up, surprised that she was still there. “What can I do for you, Taryn?”

“You already did it. Thanks for what you said in class. That thing with Jessica.”

He sighed. “It was getting pretty hostile.”

“Yeah. I don’t know what I’ve done in this class to make her dislike me, but I seem to irritate her just by breathing. Anyway, thank you.” She turned to leave.

“Oh. I almost forgot.” He shuffled through a stack of papers and pulled out the essay she’d written last week, about Jason and Medea. “I passed these out at the beginning of class. Before you got here.”

She stared at the A-plus scrawled in red at the top. “Wow. Really?”

“The grade is well deserved. I can see you put a lot of emotion into what you wrote.”

“Because I really did feel it.”

“A lot of people feel things, but not everyone can express those feelings as well as you do. After what you said in class today, I’m looking forward to your paper on The Aeneid.”

She looked up at him, and for the first time she registered the fact that he had green eyes, the same color as Liam’s. He was not as tall as Liam, nor as broad shouldered, but his eyes were kinder. For a moment they just looked at each other, both of them hunting for something to say but not coming up with a single word.

Abruptly he broke off his gaze and snapped his briefcase shut. “I’ll see you at the museum next week.”

CHAPTER 6

TARYN

“Goddamn, he gave you an A-plus?” Cody said as they walked across the quad. “I worked my ass off on that paper, and I only got a B-plus.”

“Maybe you didn’t feel the theme deeply enough.”

“Star-crossed lovers?” Cody stared straight ahead. “Oh, I feel it well enough,” he muttered.

She was still beaming, still high. Professor Dorian’s praise was like jet fuel pumped straight into her veins, and she was bursting to share the triumph. She pulled out her cell phone to call her mother, even though Brenda had probably just crawled into bed after her night shift at the nursing home. Only then did she notice that her mother had sent an email. The subject line made her stop dead in the center of the quad.

Time for you to come home?

She opened the email. It was several paragraphs long. As Cody watched her, as other students streamed past her like schools of fish veering around a stone pillar, Taryn read and reread what her mother had written. No, her mom couldn’t possibly mean this.

“Taryn?” said Cody.

She dialed Brenda’s number, but the call went straight to voice mail, which of course it would. When her mother went to bed after her shift, she always muted her phone.

“What’s wrong?” said Cody as she hung up.

Taryn looked at him. “My mom says if I apply to grad school, it has to be in Maine.”

“Why?”

“The money. It’s always about the money.”

“Is that such a disaster? Going back to Maine?”

“You know it is! Liam and I had it all worked out. We’re staying in Boston. It’s what we planned.”

“Maybe his plans have changed.”

“Don’t,” she commanded.

Taken aback by her glare, Cody fell silent. He glanced up at the clock tower and said, timidly, “We’re, um, going to be late for class.”

“You go. I’ll see you later.”

“What about those essay questions? I thought we were going to work on them together.”

“Yeah, sure. Tonight. Come over to my place.”

He brightened. “I’ll bring a pizza.”

“Okay,” she muttered, but she wasn’t looking at him; she was still staring at her phone. She didn’t even notice when he walked away.

Her mother sounded exhausted on the phone. It was four in the afternoon, and for a nurse’s aide who worked the graveyard shift at Seaside Nursing Home, it was the equivalent of the crack of dawn, but Taryn couldn’t wait any longer to speak to her.

“You don’t seem to understand how important this is,” Taryn said. “I can’t go back to Maine.”

“And what are you going to do after you graduate?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m thinking about grad school. My grades are good enough, and I’m sure I could get into some school here.”

“There are perfectly good schools here in Maine.”

“But I can’t leave Boston.” I can’t leave Liam was what she was thinking.

“Not everything we want in life is possible, Taryn. I’ve tried to keep up with your tuition payments, but you can’t get blood from a stone. It’s been hard enough for me, keeping up with this second mortgage. Now I’ve got nothing left to borrow against, and I’m already working double shifts. You have to be sensible.”

“This is my future we’re talking about.”

“I am talking about your future. About all these loans you’ll have to pay back someday, and for what? Just so you can brag you went to some fancy college in Boston? What about my retirement? I haven’t saved a penny for myself.” Brenda sighed. “I can’t do this for you anymore, honey. I’m tired. Since your father left, it seems all I ever do is work.”

“It won’t be this way forever. I promised I’d take care of you.”

“Then why don’t you come home? Come home now and live with me. You can get whatever education you need up here. Maybe get a part-time job to help pay for it all.”

“I can’t go back to Maine. I need to be—”

“With Liam. That’s it, isn’t it? It’s all about being with him. Being in the same city, the same school.”

“A degree from a good school makes a difference.”

“Well, his family can afford it. I don’t have that kind of money.”

“We will someday.”

Another sigh, this one deeper. “Why are you doing this to yourself, Taryn?”

“Doing what?”

“Betting your whole future on a boy? You’re so much smarter than that. Didn’t you learn anything when your father walked out? We can’t rely on them. We can’t rely on anyone but ourselves. The sooner you wake up and—”

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

“What’s going on, honey? There’s something going on. I can hear it in your voice.”

“I just don’t want to go back to Maine.”

“Has something happened between you and Liam?”

“Why do you think that? You have no reason to think that.”

“He’s not the only boy in the world, Taryn. It’s not healthy to spend all your time mooning over him, when there are so many other—”