Professor Off-Limits

The Slip up

ALEENA'S POV

The message had been sitting there since yesterday, and I kept glancing at it like it would disappear if I ignored it long enough.

But it didn't. Nothing I ignored ever disappeared.

I finally opened the follow up text my mom sent sitting cross legged on my bed.

“Allie darling, I hope you're doing well. You didn’t respond to my previous text when I told you I was seeing someone. I have been seeing him for a little while now—I didn't want to tell you until I was sure it was something real, and I'd love for you to come meet him, whenever you have time. No pressure, sweetheart. I just want you to know him.”

I read it twice, then a third time—slower now like the words might rearrange themselves into something easier to sit with.

Something tightened low in my chest, and I couldn't name it cleanly. It wasn't jealousy exactly because I had never once wished my mother a life smaller than she deserved.

My mother had been alone since my father had left us—alone through every shift, every overtime hour, every silent dinner where it was just the two of us, making the very best of our lives, and she had always tried to fill the hole my father left when he decided to abandon us.

I should have been happy for her, but instead I was scared. I didn't want my mother to get attached to someone and get hurt at the end. I didn't want to see another man in my mother's life take the role of a father, because honestly, I was done with that.

But my own pain shouldn't prevent my mother from being happy.

I set the phone face down on the bed, and stared at the ceiling instead.

I’d respond to her, but not now.

—

I didn't know how long I drifted off, but when I finally opened my eyes, Mira was back. She was sitting on her reading table across the room, her textbooks open in front of her, though I guessed she had been going through her phone because she leaned in on the chair, her legs crossed, scrolling on her phone.

She must have heard the rustling of the sheet, then she glanced over at me.

"Hey sleepy head,” she said, studying my face. “You good?" she asked, setting her phone down.

"Yeah." I forced the corners of my mouth up, hoping it would read as something real. "Just tired."

She studied me a beat longer than the answer probably warranted, but she didn't push. Instead she stretched, arms over her head. "You working tonight?"

"Yeah." I sat up properly, glad that it was a subject I didn’t have to lie about or avoid.

"What's it actually like?" She tucked one leg under herself, genuinely curious now, the way she got when she had decided a topic was safe enough to dig into. "Is it as bad as it sounds? Please at least tell me the pay's decent for putting up with drunk strangers screaming for their tabs."

I hesitated for a moment. I hadn't really told Mira the details of the bartending job, or how I got it in less than five minutes, or how the pay was five times all the listings I had found on that site.

"The pay’s decent.” I said finally. “Fifty bucks an hour, plus tips too."

Her eyebrows shot up so fast it was almost funny. “Fifty?” She pushed the textbooks aside and rested her elbows on the table, supporting her head. “Allie, that's insane. That's, like—" she did the quick math in her head, mouthing numbers "—that's more than what any site would offer per hour. The least I had seen was thirty."

"I know." I couldn’t help the small tired smile that was pulled at the corner of my mouth. “It's the only way I would pay for the appeal faster, and save some cash too.”

"Is there still a slot?" Her grin turned mischievous, the playful version of her I hadn't seen much of lately. "I might apply. Imagine us working together, making bank, living our best broke-college-girl-turned-rich lives." She said, tilting her head as she day-dreamt.

I laughed—I actually laughed, surprising myself with how real it felt. "Oh, Mira,” I said in between laughs. “I don't know if the Velvet Room has more slots because if they did, they’d be ripping themselves.”

Mira’s face changed instantly, and the playfulness wiped clean off it like it was never there. “Wait,” all the warmth from earlier was stripped off her voice, and it came out sharper than I had ever heard it. “The Velvet Room?”

"...Yeah?" I sat up straight, the smile on my face fading, and unease creeping in where the laugh had just been. "Why?"

"Allie, you can't work there." She said bluntly, her whole posture going rigid in a way that made my stomach twist.

"What? Why not?" I frowned, searching her face for an answer, and for a second I caught something flicker behind her eyes—something that wasn't quite panic, but sat close enough to it that I noticed.

She opened her mouth—closed it, then opened it again. "It's just—” she shook her head, picking up the books that fell to the floor. “I've heard things. About that place." The words came out too fast, too smooth, rehearsed in a way real worry usually wasn't. "Bad things. You should find somewhere else. I'll help you look, I swear, we'll find something better—"

"Mira." I kept my voice even, even though my pulse had started climbing. "What things?"

"Just—" she waved her hand in the air, vague and unconvincing. "Trust me on this one, okay?"

I didn't trust it, not fully. But I didn't have the energy to dig deeper tonight, not with everything else already sitting on my chest like a second job I never applied for.

"Okay," I said instead—quietly, and I watched something in her shoulders loosen at the word.

But I filed it away with everything else I didn’t have room to examine right now. I wasn’t going to quit my one day old job because of Mira’s paranoia. I had been at the Velvet Room, and nothing looked fishy there.

Mira was definitely hiding something from me, and I would find out what. But not now.

—

I left for work a few minutes after Mira had said she was going for a drink with her study group.

I didn't tell her I wasn't quitting my job—I just left. I would deal with that when I got back.

When I got to the club, it looked exactly the same as it did the previous day. But every few minutes, I caught myself scanning the room like I was looking for something wrong, a justification to Mira's claim, something that would explain it.

But I didn't find anything. Just normal guests laughing and drinking, some dancing, the other workers weaving through the crowd, serving and clearing up the table—totally ordinary and nothing fishy.

“Maybe she's just being protective,” I told myself, weaving a tray between two crowded tables. “Or maybe some ex of hers works here, or she heard a rumor from someone at a party, or—”

I ran out of maybes somewhere around the second hour, and the unease just sat there instead, unresolved, humming underneath everything else I was carrying tonight.

By the time I clocked out, I had decided that it didn’t matter. I had survived two nights there without any bad incident, so Mira’s sharp reaction could wait until I was done with gathering the money for my appeal.

—

I got back to the dorm, and luckily, Mira wasn't back. She must have probably gotten drunk, and stayed over at wherever she went.

But that wasn't my problem right now. I already told myself I was skipping class that morning. I couldn't afford to see Lorcan's face after a long day I just had, and I didn't want to have to perform in front of fifty students, and a professor who watched me like he had been waiting for me to slip so he could swoop in.

I woke up by ten that morning and headed to the campus cafe to get something and clear my head for a while.

The campus cafe was warm and half-empty this early, the smell of burnt espresso and cinnamon thick in the air. I found a corner table, ordered something I didn't really want just to have a reason to sit there, and let myself exist quietly for the first time in days.

But unfortunately, it didn't last.

"You never liked coming here when we were dating, so I didn't peg you for a cafe person," Xavier said, dropping into the seat across from me like he had been invited, setting his own cup down with an ease that made it clear he had decided this conversation is happening whether I wanted it or not.

"I'm not really in the mood, Xavier." I said, sipping my bubble tea, looking out on the campus through the glass windows.

"Relax." He leaned back into his chair, his arms crossed loosely, an easy half-smile on his face that almost looked like the version of him I used to actually like, before all of this. For one unguarded second, I let myself believe it might just be that. Simple and harmless.

Then the smile shifted, just slightly, something sharper working underneath it.

"Didn't take you for the type to go after professors, Marsh." He tilted his head, watching my reaction with the kind of attention that tells me he already knew exactly what he was doing. "Guess dating me really did lower your standards for a while."

Heat rose fast up my neck, but I kept my face level, refusing to give him the satisfaction of watching it land. "Careful, Xavier. Jealousy's not a good look on you."

"I'm not jealous." He shrugged too casually, and I guessed he must have practiced that a hundred times in front of his mirror. "Just observant."

I didn't answer that. I just took a slow sip of my drink instead, using the motion to buy myself a second to steady out.

Internally, whatever ease I felt a minute ago cuddled fast, cold and unpleasant in my stomach. He saw something at the club—enough to build a joke around it, enough to needle instead of confront.

And somehow, the slow drip of it felt worse than if he'd just said outright what he thought he knew.

Xavier was still leaning back, still wearing that same insufferable half-smile, when the air in the cafe shifted before either of us even noticed why.

Then a shadow fell across the table.

I looked up, and my stomach dropped.

Lorcan.

The one person I didn't want to see that morning.

He didn't sit. His eyes just moved between me and Xavier, unreadable, cool, assessing—the same look he usually gave a paper he was deciding how brutally to grade.

"I want to see you in my office," he said finally, his voice even, giving nothing away. "This afternoon."

Xavier straightened in his seat, some of his earlier smugness draining out of him fast. "Both of us?"

"Both of you." Lorcan's gaze lingered on me half a second longer than the sentence required—unreadable, and gone before I could decide what it meant—and then he turned and walked away without waiting for either of us to respond.

Xavier stared after him, genuinely thrown for the first time since he sat down. "What was that about?"

"I have no idea," I said, and for once, it was the truest thing I had said all conversation.

Whatever Lorcan wanted with the two of us in the same room, I already knew it wasn't going to be simple.

And the fact that Xavier looked just as lost as I felt, didn't make it any less unsettling—it just meant neither of us was ready for whatever was coming.