Page 20 of The Sunday Brothers Novellas

CHAPTER THREE

PORTER

I had always been an early riser—a habit that came from growing up on an orchard where there were chores to be done before school.

Getting up early had served me well when I’d started working my way through college as a barista.

But the fact that I was waking up to warmth and silence this morning, rather than drafty windows and my roommate’s Sabaton playlist blaring at full volume, was the first clue I wasn’t in my own bed.

Eyes closed, my mind raced through the events of the previous evening, but my memories got a little hazy after the fourth shot of tequila.

I remembered frantic-mad . I remembered lots of drunken giggling.

I remembered Steve, the rideshare driver.

I definitely didn’t remember deciding to hook up with anyone or even crash at their place.

Besides, no one I knew had pillows quite this comfy.

I cracked one eye open, and the rustic log walls immediately reminded me of where I was.

Professor Theodore Hancock’s cabin.

Shit, right . I’d come to call out my sworn enemy with an angry sonnet.

There’d been vomit, which was humiliating, and a tree had fallen right near me, which had been scary, and then…

nothing. My mind hit a big, black roadblock of self-protection, like the bits I couldn’t remember were too disgraceful for me to process at the moment.

I stifled a groan. One thing was certain: Dr. Hancock would waste no time filling me in on whatever events had led me to be his uninvited overnight guest. He’d use that very precise, cultured, ironic tone he always took on when he was dressing someone down—the tone that made me want to laugh appreciatively even while I squirmed—and he’d do it while wearing his customary disapproving frown.

I closed my eyes again and flopped onto my back.

Really , I thought, as I scratched idly at my bare chest, no one should look so good while frowning . It’s a weird kind of superpower ?—

I felt warm breath against my face and gasped. “Holy motherfucking shit!” I whisper-yelled.

I slid my gaze to the right and found the breath belonged to a man curled up in bed beside me. A sleeping man whose face was mere inches from my face. A messy-haired man who looked a whole lot like my normally very-put-together former professor.

Oh. My. God.

Thankfully, I was one of the lucky few in my family who didn’t experience terrible hangovers on the rare occasions when I overindulged, because if I was the type who woke up queasy and half-dead, I’d have passed out right then and there.

I’m in bed with Doctor Hot-Cock.

It was like something out of one of my more fantastical fantasies. The kind that, even while I was dreaming about them and jerking off to them, I knew were too far-fetched to ever actually happen. Except this time it had … and I’d apparently been too drunk to remember a damn thing.

Wasn’t that some next-level, Dante-esque, divine justice bullshit ?

If Theo Hancock’s hands had been on my naked body… if I’d heard him moaning and panting… if I’d worshipped his dick… if I’d witnessed his cum-face… and I’d forgotten ? Oh, God. Was there anything worse?

Pretty quickly, I realized that yes, there was, because… Jesus , what if he hadn’t come at all? What if tequila-dick had struck right in the middle, and I’d had to “it’s not you, it’s me” him? What if he’d had to pity-cuddle me and tell me that this happened to a lot of guys?

Suddenly, I did feel queasy and extremely close to passing out.

My first instinct was to bolt out of bed, but I worried that the moment I moved an inch, it would wake him and begin the most awkward morning-after of my life.

Of course, remaining in the bed and pretending to be asleep until he woke up on his own was guaranteed to be equally awkward.

Frozen, I could only stare at the man beside me helplessly.

Theo Hancock was the most gorgeous professor on campus, hands down.

Everyone talked about him like he was Henry Cavill and Shawn Mendes rolled into one, and…

yeah, okay, I was part of “everyone.” Even though he was my mortal enemy, the man who’d failed me in what should have been the final, final semester of the longest college slog in history, he was so fucking sexy that if he started an OnlyFans where he sat around reading poetry as foreplay, I’d be his first subscriber.

I was so far gone over him that even his grumpy scowls turned me on…

Which was kind of a problem when the man was your professor.

Last semester, I’d found myself getting tongue-tied in his presence from the very first day, not just because of how he looked but because of who he was to me—the guy who’d made me fall in love with words.

In my other classes, I’d write the kind of off-the-cuff essays that came naturally to me, but in Professor Hancock’s class, I’d been so desperate to impress that I’d researched every single word before I wrote it, called in favors from friends and my new almost-brother-in-law, Gage, to edit and proofread for me, worked twice as hard as I ever had before in my entire academic career.

But with every paper I submitted, Professor Hancock would scowl a little deeper, grade a little harder, and make more pointed comments about coming to his office hours for assistance—as if I could sit that close to him without having an expulsion-worthy reaction.

Every time, I’d double down to prove that I was worthy and didn’t need extra help.

The harder I worked, the worse I failed, until I was mad— frantic-mad —with self-doubt and anger, and a disapproving scowl became his default expression when he looked at me.

It had sucked .

Now, though, with his scowl all smoothed out in sleep, he looked… younger. More carefree. The serious mien that wrapped around him like a black shroud most days was gone.

Seeing him up close like this was a bit of a revelation—one that made it hard to hold on to my frantic-mad anger…

or any anger at all. He had two tiny scars at the edge of his jaw that looked like a miniature pair of skis.

Faint laugh lines bracketed his eyes, proving the man must have a whole other existence where he was something besides the strictest, sexiest professor in the entire English department.

Was it strange that I’d never wondered about what his private life was like?

I mean, yeah, maybe I’d been curious about how he was poised to become the head of the English department when most other department heads were fifty, at least. And there’d been rumors about a boyfriend years ago that made me wonder how many sonnets a guy would have to memorize before he was good enough to pass muster with someone like Theo Hancock.

But I’d never tried to picture where he lived or who he lived with.

I’d never wondered what music he listened to or what made him laugh.

Now… I found myself insatiably curious, not just about the whats but the whys.

Looking around the space, it was clear he lived by himself. The cabin was off the beaten path, significantly isolated away from the tiny but buzzing college town of Hannabury, Vermont. And it only had one room. One bed. Two kitchen chairs, yes, but only one easy chair and a footstool.

But why was the handsomest man in the entire county single?

Why would he live in a place so isolated?

Why pick a house so small you couldn’t have friends over, or a desk to work at, or a sofa ?

Why read sonnets about love and friendship with such passion and fire and then live in a way that made it almost impossible to experience it?

Dr. Hancock— Theo— made a noise in his sleep, and his eyebrows puckered together in a frown, almost like he could sense my curiosity and it made him uncomfortable.

He kicked a leg in my direction, and I steeled myself not to jump at the feel of his skin against mine… but all I felt was vague warmth.

Curious, I looked him up and down and realized belatedly that he’d fallen asleep on top of the coverlet, with only a throw blanket covering him, almost like he was trying hard to preserve his modesty…

or mine. A hint of flannel peeked out where his knee was cocked to one side; he was definitely wearing pajamas.

So, okay. Had there been no sex? Or really quick sex followed by a fastidious cleanup?

The blanket situation suggested no sex, which was a relief—mostly—because it meant no impromptu tequila-dick apology soliloquies would be required this day. But it was also curiously disappointing.

Deep down, I’d hoped that the tequila I’d ingested had helped me say something meaningful to Professor Hancock that I couldn’t articulate while sober.

Something like, “Thanks for being an inspiration, and I’m angry at you for failing me, but mostly I’m angry at myself because I wanted you to be impressed by my writing so you’d know the work you do is meaningful. ”

But, like, better and smoother than that, obviously. Possibly something in haiku form. Something eloquent enough to get him to push me into his bed and ravish me.

Instead, it seemed likely that I’d passed out and he’d been stuck dragging me into his bed since the snow had prevented him from sending me off in a cab.

Chalk up another failure for Porter Sunday.

But even as awkward and ashamed of that as I was, my fingers still itched to touch the guy.

I wanted to smooth over the place where his brows had puckered.

To brush back a strand of golden-brown hair that had gotten tangled in his eyelashes.

To drink in this precious, fragile moment, this privilege of seeing him up-close and vulnerable, since clearly I would not get this opportunity again.