From a young age, Maya Hamilton was a wild party girl who loved nothing more than letting loose and doing whatever she wanted. Jace Parker was an irresponsible frat boy who had a thing for party animals; they were perfect for each other—until out of the blue he dumped her by text. Now, two years later, they meet again as student and teacher, and Maya is hiding a life-altering secret from Jace!
Age Rating: 18+
Not all about You by Delta Winters is now available to read on the Galatea app! Read the first two chapters below, or download Galatea for the full experience.
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1
From the author of Back Into Darkness.
From a young age, Maya Hamilton was a wild party girl who loved nothing more than letting loose and doing whatever she wanted. Jace Parker was an irresponsible frat boy who had a thing for party animals; they were perfect for each other—until out of the blue he dumped her by text. Now, two years later, they meet again as student and teacher, and Maya is hiding a life-altering secret from Jace!
Age Rating: 18+
Original Author: Delta Winters
“Liz, I have a job, okay. I really don’t need your charity,” I whine down the phone as normal on a Monday morning. Come to think of it, normal on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and basically every other morning.
Not to be mistaken with someone who is ungrateful for the help my cousin offers, she can tend to get overbearing at times.
I’d rather accept her time than her money, not that she has more than the average woman in her mid-twenties anyway. “I gotta go.”
“No, Maya—”
“Bye,” I interrupt before hanging up and sighing in relief as I slip my phone into my school bag.
“Mel?” I call out.
My elderly neighbor’s head pops out from the kitchen, splatters of food smeared over her shirt and a bright smile illuminating her face.
“I’m heading out. I’ll see you at four, okay?”
She nods quickly before ducking back into the kitchen upon hearing small noises.
I chuckle a little before slinging my bag on my shoulder and skipping out the door.
Rushing down the stairs of the complex, I snatch my mail out of my box, stuff it into my bag, and dash out to get to school on time.
As a college student aiming to keep my scholarship, my attendance and focus in classes have to be the best I can make it. Which is a challenge in itself.
And the fact I have no mode of transport, and a limited cash supply, means I must leave my apartment early enough to walk. Most of the time, brisk walking turns to jogging or even a run.
By the time I arrive at the depressing school doors, I’m greeted with the tense air of angst and jock confidence.
As the stereotypes go, the football stars of the school huddle together, sharing pictures, tossing a ball about, and chatting up girls right at their lockers.
Sounds of giggles and loud male voices overpowering the quiet thoughts of the forgotten and loners. Me, of course, being one of them.
I don’t have time for a personal life, outside of my work and my responsibilities and education. Thus, my friends are close to none. Or, none is more accurate.
There are guys who like to bother me who sit near me in my classes. I’m someone who doesn’t belong to a particular group.
To maintain my 4.0 GPA, I spend my lunches doing homework plus extra work outside on a table of my own. And a few people pester me a little.
Having had very little social contact at this college I’ve been attending for a year, some are a little curious about the loner girl. But I have other things on my mind.
And my education is extremely important to me.
As I head into my first class, History, taking one of the many empty desks by the windows opening out onto a dreary day, I unpack my stationery and begin to stick my nose into my history textbook.
“Ahem!” A cough comes from in front of me. I lower the book to peer over it and glimpse at a few of the guys who like to harass me about my life and find out anything.
With the amount they know about me, they believe there’s mystery surrounding me, and gossip that students eat up at this school. And, well, they’re not that wrong.
“Hello,” I greet before casually resuming my reading, hoping for them just to disappear like ghosts, or for me to disappear for the time being and no longer have to deal with any social contact.
If only I could just attend college without anyone else but the professors. I believe I would learn much faster, too.
Of course, there is always online school, but I like real libraries and interactive learning. Before the guy can speak, the professor waltzes into the class, closing the door loudly in order to gain the attention of the class, and proceeds to draw on the blackboard with confidence and dominance.
Although I can only see his back, his broad back, I can already tell he’s young, probably straight out of college or almost that. His hair is a sandy blonde color, very similar to a guy I knew, once.
A guy from a long time ago, or what feels like it. It’s been almost two years. And even though I try to move on, my memories of him still remain. How can they not?
He was my first love and changed my life in a massive way. An astronomical way.
“My name is Mr. Parker, your new history professor,” he declares in an incredibly familiar voice as he turns around and I see an incredibly familiar and heart-wrenching voice.
I take in a breath as my eyes catch sight of his face: the guy I once loved, still love, standing at the front of the class, my new professor.
Light stubble covers his jaw and his light blue eyes flicker across the faces of his new, perhaps first, students. Until they catch mine. And his entire body freezes.
And everything around us feels as though it stops.
And his eyes fill with emotions I can’t understand anymore.
His eyes flash with the look he used to give me before, when he told me he loved me. We’d only been dating for four months total, but everything felt so important and heightened back then.
Those four months, when I was eighteen, seemed like the most significant thing to ever happen. And maybe it was, considering the consequences I’m living with now. Not that I can regret it.
I watch him force his eyes away so as not to draw attention to the familiarity between us.
Regaining the poised and assertive composure he held when he walked through the door, he coughs a little and begins the lesson.
Listening to his voice again is almost like soothing music to my ears, if I didn’t remember what he had done, and what a jerk he is. He broke up with me by text.
And then proceeded to ignore all my calls after.
I was naive back then, despite it not being too long ago; it feels like another life.
His eyes constantly flicker to me, which I notice out of the corner of my eyes as I avoid his.
I attempt to concentrate, but it’s incredibly difficult to focus on a lesson when my ex-boyfriend is the professor.
Jace. Jason Parker. A frat boy when we met. Now he’s my professor, in an ironed shirt and jeans to keep the outfit his style. His very attractive style that I’m not thinking about, or trying not to.
He’s undeniably, as much as I want to deny it, hot, and still affects me like he did before.
Before I was barely a senior in high school and he was a—what I thought—mature college guy, he showed interest in me that I absorbed like it was a drug.
And he loved that I adored him. I was immature, and he was too. But it was as if he were god, this impossible guy to be with that I had.
And when he told me he loved me, it was as if they were the most sacred words of all.
When we broke up, and I could finally see our relationship for what it was, I realized he wasn’t this heavenly creature. He was more comparable to the devil in all honesty, but he wasn’t that either.
He was just a guy, is just a guy. Our relationship was still good though, at least I thought it was. It was……intense. I’d spend all my time with him or thinking about him.
As I’ve realized I’ve been daydreaming the entire lesson, I continue to read my notes and catch up with what Jace, I mean Mr. Parker, has been saying. Once the class ends, his eyes are on me again.
I decide that I should have a conversation with Mr. Parker about boundaries and getting our business out in the open between us, and about changing classes.
After everyone has filed out, he carefully shuts the door and notices I’m leaning against his desk with my arms hugging my books to my chest. And my chest becomes exactly where his eyes look to.
I cough to get his attention and scoff as I roll my eyes at him. He’s still the same horny jerk, I see.
He takes a seat at his desk so I’m looking down to him and he attempts to touch my hand, but I snatch it away from him defensively.
This guy, this man, my ex-boyfriend. He left almost two years ago with one cowardly text.
He thought I was calling to give him an earful, to try and persuade him not to dump me or something resembling desperate. But I had something to tell him.
Something I had found out the day before that I was trying to get my head around.
The fact that I was pregnant with his child, his daughter.
And now he stands in front of me, my baby daddy.
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2
“Mr. Parker.” As I notice the slight grimace on his face at the formality of my voice, I sigh and take a deep breath. “Jace. It’s been a while. Why are you teaching here?”
“I can’t teach here now?” he questions a little harshly.
“No,” I reply bluntly and in the same irked tone.
His brows furrow in confusion at my hostility toward him, since I’d always worshiped the ground he walked on before.
“Is it incredibly coincidental that you happen to teach here, the colelge I went to after you left, or has this been planned for some reason?”
“If you forgot, my mom lives in this district, and I thought I’d live and teach close to her since I’ve spent too much time with my father. But if you think everything is about you, Maya, fine.”
A smirk grows on his face as he leans back in his chair smugly. “I love how I still affect you, Maya. After almost two years.”
“You do,” I admit, which startles him slightly. He thought I would play his mind games with him, his flirty mind games. But I’m different. Motherhood has changed me. He’s no longer the center of my world.
Maisie is. My daughter. Everything I do now is for her, and that won’t change, it can’t change. I love and care for her so much.
“Look, Jace, this is going to be the last conversation the two of us have as…anything more than a professor and a student.
“We should have had this a long time ago, when you texted me our breakup instead of, at least, the phone call I think I deserved.”
He gulps at my detached tone.
“Look, Maya—”
“Honestly, I think the text summed up how you felt and why you broke up with me fairly…concisely. I understand that you felt it wouldn’t work between us, with the age gap.
“But…it felt like you thought our relationship didn’t mean anything, that the end warranted just a text.”
“You know it meant more—”
“But I didn’t,” I interrupt him, looking into his eyes confidently and sincerely. “I didn’t know because you couldn’t even give me a call. It’s not impossible—you had a phone which was working, clearly.
“Look, I don’t want to spend any more words on the text, because I think it’s obvious why you broke up with me like that. We need to be adults.
“You’re now my professor and I’m now your student, until my request for a transfer comes through—”
“Transferring?” he asks in a sudden alarm as he sits up straight.
“I was distracted in just this one class by you. And you do still affect me. And I still have feelings for you. It’s just a different kind of love. I loved how we once were.
“But I’ve grown up, and maybe you have too, and we’re different people now. And we have a different relationship.”
He blinks in stunned silence, staring at my face, searching it for something.
I raise my eyebrows at him in question, but he just continues to look at me like he’ll never see me again.
“I’ll get you the transfer form by the end of the day so you can sign it and give it to me tomorrow morning,” I declare after the deafening silence was starting to worry me.
Sending a small sad smile his way, I adjust the bag on my shoulder and head out, only for him to catch my hand at the door and turn me back to him.
“Maya…,” he whispers, his grip tightening around my wrist as he looks down at me.
I used to love how much taller he was than me, that it made him seem older and stronger and more incredible. But now, with him staring down at me with those familiar eyes, it makes me feel small like I was before in front of him.
But my life isn’t about him anymore, it’s about Maisie. And he’s her dad, technically.
“Let go of me if you have nothing to say,” I mutter, tilting my chin upward so I can meet his eyes. “Let go.”
His face moves in closer to mine and, as much as I want to run away, I can’t. My feet are frozen to the ground. My breath is caught in my lungs. My eyes can look nowhere but at him. And then his lips press to mine.
I melt. I melt into him. I don’t want to. But I can’t stop myself.
He’s the only guy I’ve ever been with. I had a couple of kisses before meeting him, but he was it. He is it. And yet, he left. And I have Maisie to think about.
And my decisions now have to be what’s best for her. Having Jace in her life could be a bad idea, as I decided years ago. But is that my decision to make?
Better yet, is that still my decision to make after all this time?
I immediately pull back, bashing my head against the door behind me, but at least halting this loss of judgment.
I grimace slightly at the impact but when my eyes connect with Jace’s again, it feels as though the pain just fizzles away as if it were never there.
But I force myself to blink it away, to blink it all away. He’s my professor now, and that’s all he is.
I reach for the door handle but he calls my name out again. I have to ignore it, I have to leave.
I flee from the classroom before anything else can happen and sprint toward the restroom to dry the tears I realized had fallen somewhere in there.
Before I can get there, voices in front of me block my path.
“Are you crying?” a popular girl screeches, more in a mocking tone than a sympathetic one, even though she suppressed an amused facial expression.
I dry my cheeks completely with the sleeves of my baggy sweater and look to the group in front of me.
“You just came out of Parker’s classroom? What did that hottie want that made you cry?” another girl asks beside her, hanging off one of the guys who was circling me earlier in class.
I know, having been here for a year already, that not making an effort to know these people’s names is practically criminal in the good manner’s world, but I have Maisie to focus on, and school.
“Maya, right?”
The guy who coughed earlier speaks up, sending me a boyish grin as he leans against the lockers. It resembles the grins and smirks Jace used to give me back when he was flirting with me, his charm dazzling me in an instant.
Quite pathetically, he really didn’t even need to flirt with me to get me to do anything he wanted. Yet, he wasn’t one of those guys who mistreated their girlfriends. Yes, we sometimes fought, like any couple does.
Yes, there was a time when his player ways would get the better of him and he flirted with other girls. He was a frat boy after all.
But thankfully, I don’t think he ever cheated on me, or even kissed another girl when we were together. All his friends were astounded by that fact.
“Yeah,” I reply nonchalantly, irked a little by people constantly bothering me here. Or maybe that’s because I’m especially irritable seeing Jace, I mean Mr. Parker, again.
“I have to go to my next class, excuse me,” I declare hurriedly and weave my way around them before they can even process any of that.
Honestly, I don’t know why they bother me. Since becoming a mom, I’ve…relaxed on the whole self-care thing.
Of course, I wash, brush my teeth, eat on occasion, and buy the essentials, but I still wear my pregnancy clothing which consists of baggy sweaters and jeans, and I don’t wear any makeup.
I barely get any sleep with my two jobs, school, and tending to Maisie.
I just tie my standard brown hair back into a ponytail or an easy low bun in the morning to keep it out the way, and so I don’t have to brush it.
I don’t know what’s so special about me that they continue to keep pestering me.
Maybe it’s because I brush them off like they’re not the most popular people in school and other students would kill to talk to them and hang around them.
But I used to hang out with people like that at my old school, which got me attending a frat party, and under the influence of Liz who went to Jace’s college, and that got me involved with Jace.
I love Maisie though, and would never take her back. She’s the light of my life, everything I live for.
Jace is her dad though. And now that he’s back, and I can actually contact him this time to tell him, should I tell him?
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