Howard's fingers dug into the cold metal of the balcony railing. Below, the scene played out with a casual intimacy that felt like a personal insult.
He watched Tisha... the woman who had just treated him like a minor inconvenience... laughing at that bastard like he was the funniest man alive.
He had told himself he didn't care about their relationship. He had dismissed the boy as a temporary distraction, a minor hurdle.
But seeing the dynamic live, amidst the heavy, expectant silence of the faculty lot, was a different reality entirely.
The way they stood. The way they argued over the keys with a casual, practiced intimacy. It wasn't the stiff deference of a student and a professor. It was the friction of two people who knew the heat of each other's skin.
A sharp, jagged jealousy stung him, deeper and more primitive than he expected.
