Page 31 of The Sunday Brothers Novellas

CHAPTER EIGHT

THEO

I was a liar.

After telling Porter I would only sleep with him once, I continued to use his body for my pleasure over and over for the next forty-eight hours. When the tree workers finally cleared my driveway Monday morning, it was time to take Porter home.

It felt like I was dropping off a part of me and watching it walk away forever.

Worse . Watching it walk away so it could linger at the periphery of my consciousness for the next few months, tormenting me with what I wouldn’t let myself have.

Never had I played it so cool. If my students thought I was stoic in class, that was nothing compared to the overly casual way I said goodbye to Porter Sunday.

“So. Good luck with everything,” I said as he opened the passenger door, letting in a blast of arctic air.

He stared at me. “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?”

I couldn’t get enough air in my lungs, and my stomach felt like it was full of restless vipers. I clamped my back teeth against the impulse to tell him to stay, to close the door and come home with me where he belonged .

“I mean it. I wish you all the happiness in the world.” I hesitated. “You deserve it.”

He let out a long exhale before meeting my eyes.

“Let me make one thing clear, Professor . I care about you. There is a spark here, a fucking fantastic one, and we both know it. This could be something incredible. Hell, it already has been. Don’t…

don’t screw it up because of your jacked-up ethics nonsense. ”

“My job security isn’t nonsense,” I said, losing the warm glow I’d had a split second before. “Neither is your degree.”

Porter reached out to take my hand, but when a group of students walked across the street ahead of us, he changed his mind and pulled his hand back. “I know. And I respect that. But there are only seven weeks left until I’m no longer a student.”

I opened my mouth to tell him I couldn’t make him any promises until then, but he stopped me with a quick kiss to my cheek after making sure the students had passed. “See you in seven weeks and one day, Professor,” he whispered. “And that’s a promise.”

He was out of the vehicle, hands in his hoodie pocket, sneakers squeaking across the snow, before I could say another word. I watched him as he walked up the path, as he jogged up the stairs, as he disappeared into the house.

Fuck , I was so screwed.

We’d talked about his temporary living situation. Finding a place to live for only one semester hadn’t been easy for him, and he was due to move out by New Year’s. He’d told me if he didn’t have a job lined up already, he’d need to move back in with his family in Little Pippin Hollow.

I didn’t want that to happen. Hell, I didn’t want Porter leaving Hannabury—leaving me —at all.

But neither did I want to hold him here with promises made when circumstances had thrown us together in a single bed.

I didn’t believe for a minute that a corporate job in the big city was right for him, but it wasn’t my choice to make.

I backed the car out of the drive and made my way to campus to prepare for the following day’s classes. Thankfully, Monday classes had been canceled also, due to the residual power outages and downed trees around town, so I had time to recover my equilibrium.

Assuming such a thing was possible.

Once in my office, I threw myself into work to force my brain to get over its little fairy-tale weekend.

This was the real world—my career, my never-ending list of papers to grade, the textbook I was co-writing with the head of the gender studies department on gender roles in Renaissance literature, the final exam that needed to be finished up.

Surely if I threw myself into the ocean of busywork, it would drown out the fire Porter Sunday had lit in my blood.

Five days later, I could say for sure that the flame of Porter Sunday was still blazing merrily inside me.

The man seemed to be everywhere on campus.

When I grabbed a salad between classes at the campus deli, he was at a table in the corner typing on his laptop, and I wanted so badly to know what he was working on.

When I knocked on Jim Burton’s door to ask him about a scheduling issue, Porter Sunday was in there for his office hours, and I had to bite back a sarcastic tease about how he’d managed to locate the English faculty offices at long last. And when I drove by the Hub one afternoon, planning to drop off some soccer balls I’d found on deep discount, Porter was outside with the kids, hanging handmade snowflake ornaments in the tree in front of the rec building.

Every time I saw him, he was ten times more beautiful than the last…

which was saying something, considering how fu cking beautiful I’d already known he was.

After being with him intimately, I was more aware of his body, his movement, the way his lips curled up in amusement.

Every inch of him made me squirm with a restlessness I couldn’t shake.

When I returned to my office after my lunch break, Jim Burton popped his head into my office. “Got a minute?”

“Sure,” I said, trying to get a handle on my dark mood. “What’s up?”

I followed him into his office, where he turned his laptop to face me. “Press release assignment in my Creative Non-Fiction class. Take a look.”

I peered at the words on the screen and knew immediately who’d written it.

The press release introduced the new full-time director to the Hannabury Youth Hub, and it was obvious the director was Porter himself.

The quotes he’d used in the assignment were hilarious, considering I knew he would have had to get actual quotes from classmates for it.

And his resume details, which I knew had to be accurate for this assignment, were even more impressive than I’d imagined, showing that he’d had a long and varied experience at various youth organizations and that he’d minored in Nonprofit Management and Social Innovation. This was news to me.

“This is… excellent,” I admitted with a smile. “Quite an improvement over the one he did for me last semester on the off-season appearance of the apple ermine moth.”

Jim nodded in satisfaction. “Something’s gotten into him the past week or so. He’s been even more engaged than ever.” He puffed out his chest. “I like to think I’m having an influence on the man.”

I fought back a laugh. “Certainly seems like it. That’s why we’re gonna miss you around here, sir,” I said, anxious to leave Jim’s office before my partiality for his student became obvious.

“There was another reason I wanted to share this with you, Theo,” he said, indicating the chair in front of his desk for me to take. “Have a seat.”

As the head of the English department, Jim had been a well-respected mentor to many of us, and generally, I took every opportunity to learn from him I could. Reluctantly, I settled into the chair and watched Jim take his.

“I was so inspired by young Sunday’s assignment that I wanted to see if I could help bring more awareness to the Hannabury Fund, which oversees financing for the Hub, and perhaps make a private donation.

The work Sunday’s doing is important, and I’d like to see the events he outlined in this assignment—” He tapped his laptop screen.

“—become a reality. I figured it’d be a shame to lose him if he moves out of the area after graduation.

So I contacted Marsia Grossberg at the Hannabury Fund to ask where their funding came from… ”

I was pretty sure I knew where this conversation was going. “Oh? She’s a lovely person. Does good work over there,” I murmured.

He lifted an eyebrow at me. “She does indeed. Thanks, in part, to a generous endowment by a certain Sutton Family Foundation.” He tilted his head.

“The same Sutton Family Foundation that built the new physics wing of the science complex. The same Sutton family who gave us Professor Emeritus Darren Sutton from the physics department.”

“I’m not sure I understand what you’re getting at, sir.”

He snorted. “Cagey doesn’t suit you, Theo.

I recall you once mentioning that you’d inherited your home from your grandfather, a noted physics professor here at Hannabury.

At the time, I didn’t put two and two together.

But now that I think of it, you do share a resemblance.

Darren wasn’t any good at being cagey either. ”

I laughed and shook my head.

Jim tapped his chin with a stubby pointer finger. “It strikes me that a family with the kind of financial power to endow a physics wing might also be able to, say, enhance the program budget at the Hub.” He shrugged. “Just a thought, Dr. Hancock. Just a thought.”

“The Sutton endowment is earmarked for education,” I said instinctively, but he was right… and my gears were already turning.

When I’d told Porter that my grandfather liked to tinker with gadgets in his tool shed, I might have been slightly underselling the situation.

In truth, my grandfather had been an amazing inventor—one who’d held patents for creating various types of diodes and voltage regulators, whatever those were.

I also hadn’t mentioned that my grandmother had come from a family of wealthy investors.

Though they’d lived simply in faculty housing and on their acreage in the woods, it was by choice and not necessity.

They’d preferred to spend their money endowing the Sutton Family Foundation to fund various education initiatives.

The foundation wasn’t something I spoke about often.

In fact, I rarely even thought about it since thinking of my grandparents often conjured up a homesick feeling that had nothing to do with my physical home itself.

But technically , I was the director of the foundation, though I rarely changed the way my grandfather had allocated the funds.

And technically , the only stipulations my grandparents had put on the money were that it be used in Hannabury and that it be used for education.

I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of this before.

“Do you not consider the Hannabury Youth Hub to be a center of education?” Jim went on, unaware that I was already more than convinced.

“A place where children can learn dignity and confidence, independence and fun? How to be good citizens of this community and how to give back when they go on to bigger and brighter futures?”

Of course I did. And Jim was right: I could easily set up an endowment for the Hub that would cover the cost of a director and make sure the program was funded for years to come. It was exactly the sort of thing my grandparents would have wanted the money spent on.

They would have liked Porter Sunday. They would have liked him a lot .

“Would it be an unethical decision,” I began slowly, “for my family foundation to make a donation that financially benefits a student in our department?” Especially one I have feelings for?

He shrugged. “I don’t see endowing a youth program as financially benefitting a certain student. Who’s to say the powers that be will select Mr. Sunday as the director? You don’t know that for sure, do you?”

“I suppose not,” I agreed.

Technically, the Hannabury Youth Program was administered by the Hannabury Fund. And there was no way Marsia would deny Porter the director position if he wanted it. From what I’d heard, and what I’d observed myself at things like the Fun Run, Porter was the Hub. If they could keep him, they would.

I felt the world lifting from my shoulders. I could do this. My family’s foundation could make even more of a difference to the at-risk youth here in town, and by doing so, Porter might get a chance to implement the programs he dreamed of.

“Thank you for your advice, Dr. Burton. I appreciate it, as always.”

I stood and nodded to him before turning to leave. When I got to the door, Burton stopped me. “Oh, Theo? Did you ever meet Zahid Hasan? He worked with your grandfather in the physics department. Young guy. Came from MIT.”

“Maybe? Was he tall with glasses and a prominent Adam’s apple?”

Burton grinned. “That’s it. The type to wear pocket protectors like a walking stereotype.

Anyway, he fell in love with one of his graduate teaching assistants.

” He met my eyes. “Love at first sight. They waited until she was no longer a student before acting on it, of course. But he and Anne are married now, and they both teach at a university down in Pennsylvania. They’re research partners and a powerhouse in the department. ”

“Oh?” My palms began to sweat. “That’s, uh… nice for them. Not sure why you think I’d be interested.”

“Remember that you’re human, Theo.” He winked. “We all are. You’re not going to handle running this department very well if you don’t remember there’s more to life than what you can find in a four-hundred-year-old book.”

“‘ The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together ,’” I teased, quoting All’s Well That Ends Well .

Burton’s eyes danced. “I’ll do you one better from the same play, young Padawan. ‘ Get thee a good husband, and use him as he uses thee. ’”

I blinked at him, feeling my face go red, but managed to hold back my laughter until I was out in the hall.

Jim Burton had a point. And I would take it to heart.

But first, I had several weeks of work to do and plans to set in motion.