There was no response.
"Penny?"
Silence. But she had to be there. Ian would have called me if she’d left.
"Penny, it's me. Can I please come in?" Please, just let me in. I pressed my hand against the door, as if that would make me feel closer to her. Please.
The door slowly opened. She was standing there with tears streaming down her face, somehow still looking beautiful.
"Oh, Penny." I grabbed her face in my hands and wiped her tear-stained cheeks with my thumbs. All I wanted to do was fix this. I needed her reassuring smile. I needed to know that we were okay.
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
"I needed to see you."
She sniffed. "Don't you have a class?"
She wasn’t shoving me out the door. This was good. "I cancelled my classes for the rest of the day."
"But, Professor Hunter..."
"The most important thing right now is that we talk." I closed the door behind me. "I think it's safe to say that something is bothering you."
"How did you know which room was mine?"
"Your name is on the door."
"So you walked around the whole building looking at all the doors for my name? Are you trying to get caught?"
"Everyone's in class. And you're avoiding talking to me. If you don't tell me what's wrong, it's impossible for me to fix."
"I don't want you to fix anything." She turned away from me.
"Penny." I walked over to her and turned her toward me. "Just tell me what's wrong. I mean, I gathered from your speech that I'm a lying cheat who's ugly on the inside. I'd like to know why you think that. Because I thought that we were in a good place. Unless you were talking about someone else." If Tyler hurt her, I was going to fucking kill him.
"On Saturday you asked me if I had looked you up online and you were really mad. So I was thinking maybe there was more to find out about you."
"So, you googled me?" I tried to keep my expression neutral. How much about me really was online? Probably a lot. But not the worst of it.
"I just wanted to make sure you were telling the truth."
"I would never lie to you, Penny." I grabbed both sides of her face again. Yes, I hadn’t told her about Isabella right away. But I’d never lied. I just withheld information. There was a difference. And I was in this with her. I was done holding back. I’d tell her anything she wanted to hear.
She shook away from my grip. "I found an interview with Isabella that makes it seem like you were lying. And it was only from a few weeks ago."
Was that all? A silly article with my crazy ex? "You can't believe everything you read in tabloids."
"This one seemed pretty convincing."
Jesus, what had Isabella said? "So what did it say exactly?"
"That you two have never been happier. And that the rumors of your split were completely fabricated."
I sighed. How was this supposed to work if Penny believed a tabloid over me? If we were going to be together, our life would end up being in the limelight no matter how hard I tried to protect her from it. "I told you that it hasn't been a smooth process. She won't sign the papers. She's being incorrigible."
"She said in the interview that you were waiting for her to decorate your apartment."
I stared down at Penny’s tear-stained face. I knew how bad that looked. My place was so empty. Like I was waiting for my wife to decorate it. "She's lying."
"Then how did she know your apartment hadn't been decorated?"
Breathe. All these accusations stung. I thought I trusted Penny. But when she acted like this…I wasn’t sure how I could. I thought about Tyler leaving her building and I crossed my arms over my chest. "Because she's been there before." But it doesn’t matter. It was forever ago. Why the hell are we talking about this? I already told you everything.
"What? Why?"
"She came a few months after I moved here to talk about our relationship. Or lack of one I guess."
"I don't know if I can trust you."
"And I don't know if I can trust you." I didn’t mean to snap, but fuck this. I’d already told her about Isabella. And Penny was the one hiding information from me, not the other way around.
"Why? I haven't done anything wrong."
Breathe. "I saw Tyler Stevens coming out of your building when I pulled up."
"He just came to drop off my stuff that I left in class.”
I raised my left eyebrow.
"After I found your wedding ring, I told myself we were over. I was in so much pain. I had never felt so broken before. So I started to think about my relationship with Tyler. I thought maybe it could be more than a friendship. He's always wanted it to be more. It just seemed like the right time."
Fucking hell. I was done with the games. Maybe I was wrong about her. Maybe she wasn’t as mature as I thought. I wasn’t some college kid looking for a good lay. I was falling for her. I had fallen. And I was in a stage of my life where that actually meant something. Our age difference had never felt like a big gap until this moment. My mind was telling me to walk away. I was too old for this bullshit. But I stayed where I was. I didn’t have the strength to walk away. Fuck, all I wanted to do was beg her to forgive me. And I hadn’t even done anything wrong. I took a deep breath and leaned against her bed. "You're dating him?"
"No. I thought I wanted to. But I was still confused about you. I've been a mess if you can't tell. I still don't know how I feel. Things seemed easy with Tyler. You just have so much baggage. I think I was just trying to get over you."
"By getting under someone else?" I gripped the side of her mattress. I remembered walking in on Isabella with another man. I was pissed back then. But this feeling right now? This was worse. Because I was pretty sure I was in love with Penny. And she didn’t feel the same way. Maybe she never had.
"It didn't go that far, Professor Hunter. And it never will. Tyler found out about you and he wants nothing to do with me."
Fuck. I was hoping I’d been wrong about that. That his speech was about some other rich guy he hated.
Her gaze met mine. "Tyler looked at my phone. He saw that I had missed calls from you."
"You had me in your phone as Professor Hunter?"
"I'm sorry. I don't think he'll tell anyone." It looked like she was about to cry again.
God, she was driving me to madness. But I didn’t want to see her cry. I pulled her into my chest. The sweet smell of cherries was everywhere. She’d made a scene in front of the class, did God-knows-what with Tyler, and told him about our relationship. She was a freaking mess. But so was I. And nothing she did could ever be as bad as what I’d done in my early twenties. I continued to hold her in my arms, breathing easier than I had all day. All that mattered was that she was here right now. And I wasn’t strong enough to walk away from her. I didn’t want to. I couldn’t.
"Can I walk you out?" she asked.
What? I pushed her shoulders back slightly and looked down at her. "You want me to leave?"
"No."