Quiet Temptation

PART II: Chapter 10

PART II

7 months later, Fall 2018

Chapter 10

Martina

The crisp late summer air greets me as I wake up ready for my first day of fall semester. I spent the summer at Legacy, hoping to get ahead on my track to my business degree.

I push the covers off my bed in the apartment I now share with Gwen. I go to my closet and eye the few outfit choices for the day.

Today will be a good day.

Today will be different.

I am between two different outfits. I hold the tops up to Donatella where she's perched on her princess cat tree.

"What do you think, Tella?" I ask.

Her green eyes consider me, blinking a few times.

"This one?" I hold up the pale pink top.

She meows in response.

I grin and nod my approval, "Agreed. Excellent choice!"

This semester will be different.

I'd been kind of a shell of myself the last several months. When I got back in February after Marcel's death, I cut myself off socially from everyone and everything. It was easy to do with my bodyguards always looming and the pressure from my father.

I ate, slept, and breathed school in hopes of distracting myself from the death of my oldest brother.

That's mostly why I enrolled in the summer semester too.

There were a lot less students here over the summer, so I didn't really have a choice to be social anyway. Even if I'd wanted to.

Colm Tomlin is no longer a problem for me, either.

He and his brother have left school to go back to Limerick to take over for their father, as they ally with Cal in Dublin.

There was a period there when I returned that Colm was trying to weasel his way into my life. Thankfully, with all the security, no one could get very close.

I did manage to talk to Rocco.

I apologized for ending things the way I did and told him I hoped we could be friends. He was surprisingly generous in his response. He must have pitied me because of Marcel. He told me he was always there if I needed him.

Isabel, Katya, and Jen weren't as generous. When they'd see me around campus, they pretended not to know me.

I was fine with that. I'd become accustomed to my loneliness. I was almost starting to prefer it.

Besides, I had Gwen. Gwen Callahan had become one of my closest friends. She was there for me through the late nights where I'd cry myself to sleep over the loss of Marcel. She didn't bat an eye when my father demanded I find an apartment.

She simply told me she'd go wherever I go.

And then there was Parker...

Everything was purely platonic, but he checked in on my often. He was splitting his time between Chicago and helping Cal out in Dublin all summer. I saw him several times here and there. It was always with a group of people so we could never really talk, but he texted me almost everyday to talk.