Read Spiral of Bliss 01 Arouse for Free Online Page B

yes, we need to talk. But stopping birth control and leaving things up to chance is a lousy way of going about it.”
    Of course he’s right again. That makes it no easier for me to contend with this sudden tangle of emotions.
    “Liv, you need to be sure about what you want and why you want it,” Dean says, his voice softening as he approaches me. “But there’s no hurry. The timing’s bad anyway.”
    “Why is the timing bad?”
    “I just started this job.”
    “Almost two years ago.”
    “Yeah, but I’m spearheading a whole new program with half-a-dozen other departments,” he says. “I’m organizing an international conference, I’ve got a book deadline, classes, journal editing. It’s a lot of work.”
    “It’s not going to get easier, Dean,” I say, “if that’s what you think has to happen before we even consider having a baby. We’re settled here, right?”
    “If the establishment of the Medieval Studies program goes well,” he replies. “If I’m not offered something better somewhere else. If I get tenure.”
    “So we just put the idea on hold until you know the answers to all those
ifs
? That could take years.”
    “It won’t take years.” He brushes my hair back from my forehead.
    “Then how long?”
    “I don’t know.”
    That is not a phrase Professor Dean West often uses.
    For a minute, we just look at each other. And then, because it seems like an earthquake is starting to tremble beneath our feet, I lean my forehead against his chest and spread my hand out to feel his heartbeat.
    Ugly thoughts pop and blister in the back of my mind. A shudder splits my heart. I try to breathe. Dean tightens his arms hard around me.
    “Okay?” he asks.
    The word
fine
sticks in my throat. This time, I can’t respond.

CHAPTER FOUR

     
     
     
    August 20
     
     
    he promise of autumn is in the air. Breezes sweep from the surface of the lake, trees rustle, and ducks waddle along the beaches. The tourists are leaving town, and university students bustle around with their backpacks and laptops. Dean is mired in planning fall semester classes, advising, department meetings, committees. We talk, but not about anything important. Not about us.
    I’ve agreed to work three days a week at The Happy Booker, and I volunteer for a few hours at the public library and the Mirror Lake Historical Museum. After an afternoon spent organizing an exhibition on colonial currency, I stop at a coffeehouse for a mocha. The scent of roasting coffee beans makes me think of my first few months with Dean.
    I was twenty-four years old and had been accepted to the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a transfer student. I’d spent the previous three years in rural Wisconsin, working at a clothing store and taking night courses at a community college to earn transfer credits.
    When my application was accepted at the UW, I’d packed up everything I owned and moved to Madison to start what I hoped would be a new life. The day I registered for classes, a woman at the registrar’s office gave me a hard time about the transferability of my community college work.
    I was upset, trying not to cry while pleading with Mrs. Russell to work out a solution.
    “There must be something we can do,” I said.
    “Miss Winter, the courses you took won’t cover the requirements,” she informed me.
    “But I wouldn’t have taken them otherwise. If I can’t get them to transfer, it puts me behind an entire semester.”
    “Look.” Mrs. Russell swept the papers into a stack and pushed them toward me. “It’s all in the catalog, if you have questions. We can’t retroactively allow the credits to transfer.”
    “I’m not asking you to do it retroactively!” I said. “This is my first semester here, and I’m trying to get my courses in order. If I have to take another foreign language translation class, then I’m already behind. And those classes are full already anyway.”
    “The courses you took aren’t equivalent to the