Clara’s an Angel, and Kant Can Go to Hell

She makes her living in front of a camera. He writes Kant on the blackboard. And one Friday night, he has to step in for his buddy.

Clara is twenty-eight, and she’s always doing the math. Five hundred euros for one night in a shuttered gym, minus rent, minus the debt collector, minus whatever keeps her sick mother going. On weekdays she works register three, her name tag spelled Klara with a K. When she can’t take any more, she raises her left hand. She rarely does.

Jack Hofer teaches German and history at a Catholic high school. He checks the front door twice, sets his beer glass dead center on the coaster, and above his desk hangs Immanuel Kant: Never treat a person merely as a means. His friends drag him along anyway. And when Rudi, the loudmouth, chokes under the spotlights, suddenly it’s Jack standing in front of her.

What happens next, even the cameraman forgets to film. Afterward, Jack says just one thing: “Only if you want it too.” A little before two in the morning, she calls him. For a thousand euros, she tells herself.

A guest bed with hospital corners. Meatloaf with his parents, who react nothing like Clara fears. A silver anklet. Until midnight at the school gala, when every teacher’s phone starts buzzing, and the man who quotes Kant stuffs her things into garbage bags.

So who’s the angel here, and who’s the hypocrite?

Her on camera, him in the classroom · Too big for everyone but her · A family nothing can shock · Loudmouth friends with even bigger hearts · Humor, heart, and serious heat · Guaranteed happy ending

🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Explicit, raunchy, and laugh-out-loud funny: a novel for adults that has you howling one minute and swallowing hard the next.

18+. Explicit content and crude language; a parent’s addiction and death, implied childhood abuse.