Chapter 43
CHAPTER
ON THE ELEVATOR to the second floor, Luc kisses me, and then his hands are in my hair, our bodies pressed tight.
The food is forgotten as the glass door opens.
We creep past Frank, asleep on his bed (Sally had a long walk this morning and is snuggled in her cozy cave at my place), and up the staircase to his bedroom.
There’s a king-sized bed with a tan linen comforter, soft navy-blue wool carpet on polished concrete.
Black-and-white photographs of the sea, Frank sitting proudly on a rock, a winding road up a steep mountain, and his nephews’ smiling faces dot the walls.
Luc watches me look around, doesn’t make a move, like I’m a deer he’s afraid to startle.
There’s a laptop set on his desk. Paranoia scratches.
I close it. The worry that Aletheia is still running, watching, eavesdropping, digging for dirt, will fade in time.
Luc asks, “What now?”
Suddenly, I’m self-conscious. I’m no longer twenty-one and haven’t had sex with a man who really wanted me in years. Fears that Mackenzie was right, that I’m boring, routine, unimaginative; worries that Kiki and Val’s analysis of me being a prude crowd in.
“I’m nervous,” I admit.
Luc takes my hands, the tips of his long fingers on the soft skin along the inside of my wrist. Who knew that was an erogenous zone?
“We don’t have to do anything that—”
I kiss him. “I want to do everything.”
And we do …
I haven’t spent an afternoon in bed with a man in forever, and it feels indulgent, and damn sexy.
We drift off after the best orgasm of my life, find each other again, kiss deeper, take more time, touch, taste, discover, come again, in a way that’s more intimate than I’ve ever experienced, then doze in a tangle of arms and legs.
When I wake, Luc is sitting up and reading something on his phone.
“Hey,” I say and smile at him.
Luc doesn’t smile back. “What’s going on with Aletheia?” he asks.
His voice is flat and my nerves fire. I sit up and pull the sheets around my naked body. “Why?”
“There was an article in Tech-Today, a webzine out of Palo Alto, about a hacker named Aletheia who outed a boy on LivLoud. Kid had herpes. LivLoud’s support is still trying to figure out how to shut Aletheia’s account down. What happened, exactly?”
My skin flushes. “It’s complicated.”
Luc frowns. “Seems clear. Your program hacked into a private account. It spread damaging, salacious information and personal photographs.”
“Aletheia was trying to help me.”
“By exposing that boy?”
My knee-jerk reaction is to go on the offense. “Wess isn’t a child. He’s a senior and almost eighteen. He was putting girls at risk, including Circe.”
“The end justifies the means?” Luc demands. “I thought you were better than that.”
“It was wrong, okay? My program didn’t have enough safety measures. I don’t condone Aletheia’s actions. She overstepped her code.” But deep down, I wanted her to.
“She?” He shakes his head. “Don’t you mean it? And I told you that your program bordered on dystopian. That it was potentially very dangerous. I warned you to put in safeguards.”
“I did, but—”
“But what?” he challenges.
“I temporarily eliminated them.”
“Why would you do that?”
Circe’s photo. “It doesn’t matter now. The point is that I should’ve done more to curb her—It’s power. You were right. Aletheia was too risky from the start. After what happened with Wess, I deleted the entire program.” From the look in his eyes, it’s clear that it’s too little, too late.
“I’m your professor,” Luc says, getting out of bed, pulling on a pair of shorts. He paces the room. “Sending out naked photographs? That could easily be construed as distributing pornography.”
“I never intended—”
“The law doesn’t give a crap about your intention.”
My chin trembles. “What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to understand the gravity of what you’ve done. Beyond the obvious, what you did reflects on me and my reputation in the tech world.”
“I thought you’d left that world,” I say, confused.
“A scandal would make it impossible to go back.”
A wave of fatigue washes over me. “So, you do want to go back.”
Luc throws up his hands. “I didn’t say that.”
“Actually, you just did.”
He pulls on a T-shirt. “I have no idea what I want, okay? But this isn’t about me. It’s about you, lacking the judgment to understand the Pandora’s box you created, then opened.” His entire demeanor has morphed. All warmth is gone, the blue of his eyes iced over.
“I guess I’m not that smart after all,” I say quietly. And my gut was wrong.
“Penn—”
“Enough.” I grab my clothes, dress quickly, utterly humiliated. “I’ll get out of here.”
“Okay.”
A tear escapes. I’m pathetic. “I thought—”
“Yeah,” Luc says, his voice rough, cheeks ruddy. “So did I.”
Get used to it, Mama J reminds me. This is life.
I tug on my sweatshirt. “I won’t be back for the remaining classes.”
He nods. “That’s for the best.”
I take the stairs two at a time, trip on the last one and hit the floor.
Pain stabs beneath my kneecaps. Frank comes over to lick my face, make it better, but I ignore him, regain my feet, stride to the elevator and press the button, desperate for the silver doors to open; to get out of here.
I smack the button again. “Come on, come on.” My neck itches and I glance over my shoulder.
Luc watches from the top of the stairs. The elevator doors finally open, and I face the back wall until they slide shut behind me, then let the sob in my chest rip free.
Once outside, I take huge gulps of air. A text pings.
Circe: Can I come over?
Me: Everything okay?
Circe: No