She Used Me for a Dare… Now I Own Her Mother

Chapter 371: The Drivers Seat

Tisha looked at Alex, then back at Heena, the mischief in her eyes now a cold, burning flame of triumph.

”Speaking of which...” She began, her voice dropping into a tone of theatrical incredulity. ”Where exactly is that husband of yours, Heena?”

”Huh?” Heena stiffened, the name hitting her like a physical blow.

”Howard?” she managed, her professional mask flickering for a treacherous second.

She looked back at Tisha, seeing that sharp, mischievous smile, and a flicker of genuine panic flared in her eyes. Her fingers curled instinctively around the edge of her desk.

She couldn’t understand what Tisha was playing at, or what that bastard was currently doing in the dark.

’Did he really not go to her?’

Before she could craft a dignified lie or a deflective remark, Tisha leaned in further, her eyes dancing with a cruel sort of playfulness.

”Don’t tell me he left you here to drown in all this paperwork entirely on your own,” Tisha continued, her voice dripping with mock sympathy.

She paused, letting the words land, then shook her head with an exaggerated sigh.

​”Honestly Heena, If I were your husband, I wouldn’t have left you for a second. Certainly not for some tedious departmental matter.”

Heena’s mouth fell open... just slightly, just enough to betray the fact that she had absolutely no framework for processing Tisha Wells calling her attractive in front of a student.

The Ice Queen didn’t give compliments. She certainly didn’t give these kinds of compliments.

Before Heena could formulate a response, her traitorous peripheral vision caught Alex tilting his head. His gaze drifting over her with a quiet, assessing calm... as if Tisha had made a claim and he was simply verifying it.

He didn’t nod. He didn’t comment. He just looked at her briefly, thoroughly and then returned his attention to the bookshelf beside him as if the matter had been settled to his satisfaction.

Heena’s face burned. She looked down at her desk, suddenly fascinated by a paperclip she’d never noticed before.

​”He’s... gone,” she said, the word coming out flatter, more hollow than she intended. She cleared her throat, trying to inject some of her usual academic steel back into her voice.

”He had to attend... something urgent.”

The lie was thin enough to read through, and from the way Tisha’s expression softened... just a fraction, just at the edges... Heena knew she hadn’t fooled anyone.

A beat of silence passed. Gentle. Almost kind.

”Well then,” Tisha said, rising from her chair and slinging her bag over her shoulder with a finality that suggested the decision had already been made. ”Come with us. Alex is driving me home, and he’ll drop you off on the way. There’s no sense in you sitting here in the dark waiting for a man who’s clearly ’occupied’ elsewhere.”

Heena opened her mouth to decline... the reflex was automatic, the polite professional rejection she’d deployed a thousand times, but Tisha cut her off before the first syllable could form.

”Don’t overthink it, Heena. It’s late, your car isn’t here, and I’m not leaving you to wait for a cab in an empty parking lot.” She tilted her head, a half-smile playing at the corner of her mouth. ”Besides, he’s a very good driver. I wouldn’t trust just anyone with my safety.”

Tisha turned her head slightly, her eyes glinting with that same sharp awareness as she looked at the young man beside her. ”Isn’t that right, Alex?”

Alex didn’t deliver a speech. He just stood, hands easy at his sides, and offered a simple nod.

”It’s no trouble, Mrs. Sterling.”

Heena looked at Alex. He was already standing, hands easy at his sides, waiting without pressure. He didn’t add to the pitch. He didn’t reassure her or try to convince her. He just stood there, patient and unhurried, as if her answer, whatever it was, would be fine with him.

And somehow, that absence of pressure was more persuasive than any argument could have been.

Heena glanced at the curriculum on her desk. At the cold tea. At the empty corridor beyond her office door where Sterling’s footsteps had disappeared over an hour ago, heading toward a woman who was now standing in front of her, offering a ride home.

She reached for her glasses. Folded them. Placed them in their case.

”Okay. Let me get my bag,” she said quietly.

***

The corridor was empty, their footsteps echoing off the linoleum as the three of them moved through the Finance wing toward the parking lot exit.

Heena walked between them... Tisha on her left, Alex a half-step behind on her right... and tried to ignore the strange, electric awareness of his proximity that seemed to sharpen with every stride.

The evening air hit them as they pushed through the double doors. Cool, clean, carrying the faint scent of cut grass from the campus grounds.

After the stale warmth of her office, it felt like surfacing from underwater.

Heena took a breath. Then her gaze snagged on something in the faculty lot.

Sterling’s black Audi. Still parked in its reserved spot, the streetlight casting a pale orange glow across the hood.

She stopped walking.

Tisha noticed the pause, followed Heena’s line of sight, and tilted her head with a slow, deliberate curiosity.

”Heena.” Tisha’s voice was quiet but pointed. ”Didn’t you just tell me he went home?”

The words landed like a hand pressing on a bruise. Heena stared at the car, her jaw tightening, the lie she’d told ten minutes ago crumbling in the parking lot air.

”I...” She didn’t finish the sentence. There was nothing to finish it with.

Tisha stepped closer, her voice dropping low enough that only Heena could hear... though she made no effort to exclude Alex.

”That man is still somewhere in this building, Heena. And we both know it’s not for departmental business.” She shook her head, something hard and cold settling behind her eyes.

”I don’t understand how you put up with it. I really don’t.”

The words should have felt like an attack. They didn’t. They felt like someone finally saying out loud the thing Heena had been screaming inside her own skull for years.

Her face burned... not with anger at Tisha, but with the raw, skinless humiliation of being seen. Of standing in a parking lot next to a woman who knew exactly what her husband was, and a young man who was learning it in real time.

She couldn’t look at Alex. She physically couldn’t turn her head in his direction because she knew — with the bone-deep certainty of a woman who had spent fifteen years managing her own shame — that whatever she saw in his expression would break something she couldn’t afford to have broken right now.

”Let’s just go,” Heena said. Her voice was steady. Her hands were not.

They crossed the lot in silence. Heena’s heels clicked against the asphalt with a brittle, mechanical precision that betrayed nothing of the wreckage happening behind her ribs.

Then she saw the car.

It wasn’t what she expected. She didn’t know what she’d expected... some dented student hatchback, maybe, or a hand-me-down sedan with a cracked dashboard. What she saw was clean, well-maintained, and quietly expensive in a way that didn’t scream but didn’t need to.

She filed it away without comment.

Ahead of her, Tisha and Alex had stopped beside the driver’s side door, and from the set of their shoulders, it was clear a familiar argument was already underway.

”I’m driving,” Tisha announced, her hand extended, palm up.

”You drove last time,” Alex said, his tone flat and unbothered. ”And you took Garrison.”

”Garrison has character.”

”Garrison has potholes.”

”Give me the keys, Alex.”

”Ask nicely.”

Tisha didn’t ask nicely. She snatched the keys from his hand with a speed that suggested she’d done this before and pointed him toward the passenger side with a look that permitted no appeal.

Alex raised both hands in mock surrender, a grin breaking across his face that made him look, for the first time that evening, like the twenty-something he actually was.

And then Tisha turned... and tossed the keys to Heena.

They arced through the air in a lazy, glinting spiral. Heena caught them on reflex, her fingers closing around the cold metal before her brain registered what had happened.

She looked down at the keys. Then up at Tisha.

”What — ”

”You’re driving,” Tisha said, already moving toward the passenger side. Her tone carried the breezy, unchallengeable authority of a woman who had just rearranged the universe and expected everyone to keep up.

”I don’t — Tisha, this isn’t my car. I can’t just —”

”You know the roads better than both of us, you haven’t driven all day, and frankly, I want to sit down and close my eyes for five minutes.” Tisha opened the passenger door and slid in, pulling her bag onto her lap.

From the other side of the car, Alex leaned his forearms on the roof, looking at Heena over the top with an expression of amused resignation.

”She’s not going to let this go, Mrs. Sterling,” he said. ”Trust me. I’ve tried.”

Heena stood in the parking lot, keys in hand, the cool metal pressing into her palm.

The weight of them felt strange... not just metal and plastic, but something else. Permission. An evening that had already veered so far from the script she’d been living that one more deviation hardly mattered.

She looked back... one last time... at Sterling’s Audi, sitting dark and empty in its reserved spot.

Then she walked to the driver’s side, adjusted the seat, and started the engine.