“Rob, where are you?”
“I think it’s called La Reforma or something like that?”
Fuck. I went into Lerner Hall and up the stairs to my office. Only one establishment would have the word reforma in it, but I waited for him to say it. I closed my office door behind me. He was going to make me late for my next class, but I didn’t want anyone to overhear my conversation with him.
“They’re just holding me because I don’t have cash on me to pay the stupid fine,” Rob said. “Can you figure out where to send $10,000 to get me out?”
I sunk into my desk chair. “Why’d you get arrested?”
“There’s a water shortage here. People are dying. I was doing my part.”
He wasn’t doing his part if he was rotting away in jail. And I hadn’t asked him what cause he was currently aligned with. “But why are you in prison?”
“There was a protest.”
A peaceful protest didn’t get you locked up owing ten grand.
“It got a little more intense than I realized it was going to be,” he added when I didn’t respond.
I opened my laptop and typed in “protests in Costa Rica.” Tons of news articles popped up. But they weren’t about peaceful protests. “A riot?” I asked. “You took part in a fucking riot in a foreign country? What the hell were you thinking? You’re lucky you even got a phone call.”
“Are you going to bail me out or not?”
I wasn’t surprised by the anger in his voice. He didn’t need a lecture. Sitting in a foreign prison was probably enough of a wake-up call. “I’ll figure it out. Please tell me you’re coming home when you get out.”
“I don’t have a home.”
There was an awkward silence. I could invite him here. I certainly had the room. But I was finally learning how to be happy again. I didn’t need my brother coming here messing up my fresh start. Rob wasn’t exactly a great influence. I sighed. That wasn’t true. I was pretty sure I was the bad influence, not him. No, I wasn’t sitting in a jail cell right now. But I was fucking my student. I couldn’t exactly judge his moral compass when mine was clearly broken.
“I gotta go,” he said. “My phone time’s up.”
Before I could say goodbye, the line went dead. I dropped my forehead into my hands. I was a shitty brother. It would have been easier to hand this task off to Ian. He’d be able to figure out where to wire the money and make sure Rob got out of jail okay. I’d wanted to take the morning to plan out Penny’s perfect date. But I had time for both. And Rob always made time for me when I needed him.
Chapter 27
Monday
My brother’s chaos had taken longer than I’d realized. The only thing I’d had time to do myself was send Penny a dozen non-friendship roses while I was on hold with some bail bondsman. Luckily Ellen had grabbed everything I needed for my date without even asking any questions. And I knew if someone had given me that shopping list, I definitely would have had a few questions. Dr. Clark hadn’t told me to stop dating Penny. And Ian had warned me but then dopped it pretty fast. And now Ellen was picking up things for a date without any questions. I was surrounded by a bunch of enablers. No wonder I wasn’t able to stop.
I pulled up outside Penny’s dorm just in time. And any ideas of stopping this quickly evaporated. She was standing there in a pair of jean shorts and a tank top and she had a big canvas bag. I smiled. I was pretty sure she’d figured out where we were going.
She looked surprised by the fact that I was in a red convertible with the top down. She knew I had money, so she probably wasn’t surprised that I had more than one car. I had a feeling she was surprised by the fact that I had the top down even though there were students milling about that could easily see me. But after my morning, I didn’t give a fuck who saw us. No matter what I did, it wouldn’t be as bad as anything I’d done back in New York. Or as bad as anything my brother had done in Costa Rica. So who cared? We were just two adults in need of a little more time together. Besides, my sunglasses helped hide my face. And I’d kept a low profile here. No one had ever seen me in this car. No one here knew who I really was.
I leaned over and opened the door for her from the inside.
“New car?" she asked.
It did still have that new car smell I loved. "No. But I haven't driven it much." I let my eyes rake over her body. Her shorts had ridden up when she sat down, exposing even more of her long legs. She was smiling so brightly and I had a feeling that she’d never ditched class before. She wasn’t that type of girl. But she’d done it for me. Which made my smile grow as I pulled away from campus.
"So, where are we going?" she asked. The wind was blowing through her hair and I was finding it hard to focus on the road. All I wanted to do was pull over and have my way with her.
"I think you can probably guess,” I said.
"Well, it's not raining, so I'm not sure where we could get caught in the rain. But we've been caught in the rain before, so maybe you're skipping that portion. Which means you're probably going the feel of the ocean route. So I'm guessing that we're heading to the beach!"
I smiled at her.
"You should have warned me though. What if I hadn't worn a bathing suit?"
"I was actually hoping you would forget it." I’d been really hoping.
She lightly pushed my shoulder as she laughed.
I pulled onto I-95 and the noise of traffic filled my ears. I pressed down on the gas, cruising between cars to pass them on the highway.
"You're going to get a ticket!" she yelled over the roar of traffic.
I slowed down a little so I wouldn’t scare her, but I was still going faster than most of the other cars. I liked to do things fast. But if she needed me to go a little slower, I could. I’d already been trying to do that for her. "You don't break the rules very often, do you?" I asked, even though I already knew the answer. There was something about a good girl that did bad things only for me. Apparently it was my weakness. Because here I was, when I definitely shouldn’t have been.
"Not really. But I do sometimes."
"Give me an example."
"You."
I laughed. "Besides for me."
"Well. One time...no, that was okay. Well there was another time...hmmm..."
"Maybe you're right about me then,” I said. “I am a terrible influence on you."
"Yeah, you're the worst."
"Then I'll have to learn to behave myself better."
"I guess so."
I tried not to let our playful words get to my head. Because the truth was, I was the epitome of a terrible influence. And I was pushing it aside because I felt alive when I was around her. She was the best thing that had ever happened to me. I stared at the road in front of us. The best thing? Really? I took a deep breath. Fuck. I was in so over my head here.
"I don't actually want you to behave around me, Professor Hunter. I like that you're a bad influence on me. I think you're just what I need."
I smiled. She even knew when I needed reassurance. "Penny, I couldn't behave myself around you even if you begged me to." I pressed my foot down harder on the gas and turned on the radio to drown away my thoughts.