Chapter 19: Conflict of Interest

Tobin's POV

On Monday morning I knocked on my director's door with my résumé in my other hand.

Ciara had told me about the cream envelope a Sutcliffe driver left at her father's shop, and she hadn't opened it yet.

She was a gray-haired woman with a mug that said World's Okayest Boss.

She had run admissions at Westmere for twenty-two years.

"Seymour. You look like a man about to confess."

"I am."

"Sit."

I sat.

"There's an applicant named Ciara Keogh," I said.

"Architecture. I held her seat on the fifteenth when her fiancé tried to withdraw her."

"I remember. I heard the fuss from my office." She almost smiled. "Good work."

"I've been seeing her since the twenty-third."

The mug stopped halfway to her mouth.

"Seeing her."

"She was admitted on April 28.

"We met on May 13, and I never touched her file after the deposit."

"I'm sure you didn't."

I put the résumé on her desk.

"I told her two weeks ago I'd bring it up with you in private.

"I'm late. I'm sorry."

She looked at the paper and didn't pick it up.

"Tobin. Do you love her?"

"Yes."

I hadn't known I was going to say it.

It sat in the room, flat and plain, and it was the truest thing I had told anyone in a year.

"Well," said my director. "That's inconvenient."

"I know."

"Take your résumé back."

She slid it across.

"You're recused from her file, her housing and her financial aid, from today, in writing.

"You will not sit in a room where her work is graded."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And you'll stay out of her dorm."

"She's in a dorm?"

"She will be in August, if she'd like one."

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Fiancé Stole My University Acceptance Letter from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.