“What magazine?” my mother asked, raising her eyebrows in confusion. Oh, good, so I still had a few more days to live.

“We’re here to discuss your grades, Miss Decembers.” Mr Grey intervened before I could let slip anything else. Relieved, I took a seat beside my mother and let Mr Grey continue. “You recently got an A minus in your biology test, Miss Decembers,”

I mentally cursed. “An A minus!” my mother gasped, clutching her chest dramatically as if it was the end of the world. “Why didn’t you tell us before? How dare you hide this, you ungrateful-”

“She wasn’t aware of this piece of information until now, Mrs Decembers,” Mr Grey divulged icily, his gaze cutting through both of my parents.

I shivered.

“Either ways, we are very ashamed of our daughter-”

“She’s a straight As student. There’s nothing about her that you should be ashamed of. The only thing you should be ashamed of it making your daughter feel less when she’s the best,”

My heart did a quick somersault in my chest and I bit my lip, trying to not laugh at my mother’s expression.

I had a reason for scoring less: I was bedridden for most of the time and I had a lot of coping up to do. My perfectionists of parents didn’t believe it was enough of a reason to skip tests, much less get a C-minus in one.

“I was wondering with all this portion she’s missed out, perhaps she might require some tuitoring,”

“That would be a wonderful idea, Mr Grey!” My mother clapped her hands and put on her fakest sweet smile for the teacher. “Who do you have in mind?”

“Well, as you might be aware, I am rather new to this institute. So, I have no knowledge whatsoever of who is good at my subject and I cannot make any judgements from one test.

So, if you permit, I would love to personally tutor Miss Decembers till her grades improve. I suppose it shall help her maintain her score, however. Plus, I want to help her prepare for this year’s quizzes and Olympiads.”

My mother looked at my father, but it’s not to ask his opinion, but it’s rather to establish that she won’t be asking him and will be saying yes regardless of his thoughts. Fifteen years had taught me how to interpret their communications.

So, just as if I was a rare item being sold at an auction, my parents permitted Mr Grey to tutor me. Privately. In his home.

Do they even love me?

That offer just screamed “danger”. I mean, he was a new teacher, who knows how much reliable and he was young, single (I sure damn hope he was), and well, slightly even mysterious.

Sending their daughter alone to a strange man’s house, that was plainly dumb. However, I didn’t have it in myself to complain. I hadn’t exactly been subtle around Mr Grey either.

Ever since I had come back from the hospital he’d been acting different…distant. His actions felt weird. He had ignored me on the first day and there was no reason for him to choose to do otherwise on other days however I had rarely been ignored by the boys. I was attractive and I knew it.

So what if he had every woman at his feet? Not all were me.

Call it arrogance, or call me a major pick-me, I was confident about my looks and nothing in the world could ever change that.

We left after my parents thanked Mr Grey over and over again, more than necessary, but unlike the other teachers, Mr Grey didn’t fall to their feet or flush with the flattery, instead, he ignored them altogether, but kept looking at me to check whether I was uncomfortable.

As soon as we got into the car, my mother grabbed me by my hair from the passenger seat and pulled until I shrieked. “One thing you’re supposed to be good at, and you manage to fuck up in that as well!” she yelled, pulling harder.

“Claire, don’t create a scene here,” my father spoke in a low voice, and my mom let go of my hair after one final painful tug.

I gulped, sitting back, praying for the drive to be as long as possible to delay the inevitable.

When we finally arrived at our home, I took as long as possible to get out of the car, and entered the house with shaky legs. My mother slapped me as soon as my father closed the door behind us.

My balance went off immediately, somewhat due to my partially injured head injury, and somewhat from the force of the action. My hands immediately caught a small table by the side of the door, and I clutched it tightly, trying my best to not fall down.

My mother’s hand curled around my throat and she tugged me towards her with a brutal force I had rendered her incapable of bearing.

I staggered a little before giving in. There was no point in fighting, it never made things easier. A punch landed against my jaw, and I didn’t find the yelp that escaped my lips. If she knew that she’d hurt me, she would be satisfied. The sooner she got that satisfaction, the better.

From the corner of my eyes, I saw my dad pour himself some brandy, completely ignoring the scene unfolding in front of him, but the guilt in his eyes was unmissable.

He never intervened, and his justification was that my mother was only disciplining me, and he had no business interfering. My father only got mad at me when I got fat or got...ugly, as in if I were to get a pimple or something. Luckily, I religiously followed my skincare routine, and if something were to happen to my skin, I knew how to conceal it with makeup, so, my dad hitting me was rare and required little effort to avoid.

My mom, though, was a different story. She needed academic excellence and proper behaviour, and it required a lot of effort to hold up to her standards.

I had learned cooking because of her, had never let my grade fall below an A, took etiquette classes, and whatnot, but she was a hard woman to please.

By the time she was done, I was a mess on the floor, worse than usual because she taken out the anger of fucking a man while they weren’t at home (at least that was what I assumed, I still couldn’t remember) and the fact that I was in the school’s magazine again.

She called me a slut and asked me to do whatever I had to, to earn Mr Grey’s favour so he’d push me forward to all the interschool competitions. As if he wouldn’t otherwise. I was the best there was.

My father lifted me up, slowly, and in an oddly gentle way before putting me on the couch. He dialled the number of our family physician, the guy he called every time after one of these incidents. He didn’t ask too many questions, for once, and kept his mouth shut.

He spoke to the doctor and ended the call briefly before speaking to me in a warning tone, “You fell down the stairs,”

If my father hadn’t been funding the school for years, my teachers would’ve said something, but as they say, money curropts the best of the hearts, or whatever it is that they say.

After some painful patching up, I was back in my room, lying on the bed, watching the ceiling like it was the most amusing thing, thinking about life.

Well, not life, to be precise, but a certain brown-haired teacher with gorgeous grey eyes. If only I were a few years older…

I huffed before getting to my feet and calling Rhys. “How’s the most handsome man on the planet doing?” I asked him the second he picked up the phone.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“You,” I answered in a flirty voice. I heard him groan on the other end before speaking in a warning tone,

“Jan…”

“Can you get Mr Grey’s number? Please?”

He sighed before replying, “He’s our teacher, Jan,”

“For less than a year! Plus, I am in love, Rhys, who are you to deny true love?”

“You have been falling in love with a new guy every week for the past three weeks. And every time it’s ‘true love’, as you like to call it. Last week it was Justin, Pete, the week before that, and Cole before that one,” Well, in my defense, my hormones were getting fucked up, and I blamed the pill I had recently started, but who was I kidding? It wasn’t the pill’s effect that I faced with Mr Grey.

“It’s him, I know he’s the one,” he let out another groan before saying,

“That man’s hot as fuck. He probably has a hot girlfriend, he would never as much as look twice at you, so stop being delusional and get some shit done, will you?”

That was the harshest he had ever been to me, and his words turned me silent for a moment. “I am sorry,” I whispered into the phone before ending the call.

He called again, and I answered it only to say, “Look, I’ve to get some shit done, okay? I’ll talk to you later,”

If Rhys realized how much he’d hurt me, then he didn’t show it. He gave a quiet ‘okay’ before letting me hang up.

I fell back on the bed, clutching my head. Thinking about boys kept my head off everything, it was my escapism.

I forced myself to my feet, then felt myself sway for a moment due to how less I had eaten in the day, before gripping the chair and sitting down.

Food could wait.

I pulled out a granola bar and munched on it, tying my hair up and staring down at the pile of homework on my table waiting to be done.

Five hours later, I decided to take a small break. I had skipped dinner, not wanting to see my mother’s face and pretend that nothing had happened like she always wanted.

I opened Instagram and let my restrain crack before searching the name ‘Caspian Grey’. His profile was a black and white close up of his face and holy hell, that man was photogenic.

I scrolled down, and realized that I was going to hell for having the thoughts I was having while looking at his pictures.

He had pinned a photo of him in a suit, and while I did see him in one everyday, it did nothing to stop my eyes from widening.

A photo was of him standing shirtless with his hand in his hair, and I moaned by merely looking at him. The perfect figure with six-pecs, no less, and lean arms bulging with muscles, antithetic, if I am being honest, but it is what it is.

I scrolled down until I found a video of him with someone who looked too similar to him to be anything but his brother, and I played it to see what they were doing.

Mr Grey had a broad smile on his face and was tackling his brother as they both laughed, unaware of the video being shot. His eyes looked into the camera and I clicked on the video to pause it to get a good look at him, but the video kept on playing. I clicked again and again and again till I saw a heart pop up on the screen and dread crawled into my stomach and I threw my phone away as if it would undo the damage.

Fuck fuck fuck.

That’s it, I was going to be awarded ‘Stalker of the Year’.

I suppressed the panic and turned back to the screen in front of me with a paused video of an online tutor. I clicked on play and hoped that he wouldn’t notice.

He had to have hundreds of stalkers anyway, right?

Apparently, no, because when I went to set an alarm before going to sleep, I found a message from an unknown number that read,

 Looks like I have found myself a stalker.

Hope you didn’t mind that I returned the favour, Noctiluca.