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“I’ll help you when you come back,” Zach offers, shocking me. Emotions I haven’t felt in a long time flood through me. I nod my head.
“Maybe I’ll take you up on that, brother,” I say. “I might have to find this Courtney person when I get back and see if she knows anything. I promise I’ll come back.”
“Don’t make it a couple of years,” Zach says. I feel the sting of these words. I really have abandoned my family. Maybe they care more than I realized. I look at Zach and Callan, and the longing to stay scares me enough to ensure I’ll do the opposite.
“No. I won’t be that long,” I say, all joking gone from my tone.
Zach and Callan nod at me and I walk from the room. I know I’ll be back. But first I need to get control over what I’m feeling. I walk away from my brothers and through the front door. Leaving is something I know how to do incredibly well.
Chapter Three
Courtney
I’m daydreaming as usual, sitting in my stuffy office. It would shock my students if they knew exactly what I dream about. A girl has to have fantasies even if on the outside she doesn’t look like it. People would be horrified by what lies beneath the surface of most of the strangers they pass in the streets.
On the outside, I have dark hair always pulled tightly into a bun on the back of my neck, and deep chocolate eyes hidden by wire-rimmed glasses, worn more to look like a legitimate professor than out of need. I’m only twenty-eight, so being a college professor I have to do whatever I can for my students to take me seriously. My normal attire is a pencil skirt or slacks, a loose-fitted blouse and blazer, and sensible shoes since I walk miles each day on the large university campus.
I’m a history professor and mostly love my job. I’ve never understood those who don’t appreciate the romance and trauma of history. So much of it’s fascinating, and no matter how many years I study the world’s roots, I’ll never come close to touching the vastness of the subject.
I love the real world, but I’ll always dream. In my mind I’m raiding a tomb in a lost city, my hair billowing over myshoulders, guns tied to my sides, men gazing at me in awe. In my dreams I look like Lara Croft, not the uptight professor I am. My siblings always tell me I’m too neurotic. If only they knew what I dream about.
With a sigh, I force myself to focus as I grade papers. Teaching undergraduate classes is the way to earn my stripes, but someday I’ll be teaching upper-level classes, the ones studentswantto be in, not forced to attend with undergrad requirements.
Until I’m here long enough though, I’ll teach a subject I love and do it with a smile. And when I think I can’t take another day, my dreams will save me. There are parts of history that horrify me. The utter depravity of mankind can be so cruel, and those in power always seem to have a dark side. I want to be aware of what happened in the past so I can help shape a better future.
A quick tapping on my door makes me jump before I look up, inwardly scolding myself. Students rarely visit me during office hours. However a tomb raider would never get nervous over an unexpected sound. Maybe someday I’ll go on an epic adventure. I get nearly three months off in the summer. Most professors get to go to wonderful places. I’m stuck in a small apartment in rainy Seattle.
A starting professor makes enough money to live, but not enough to travel the world, and though my parents aren’t even close to being poor, there’s no way I’m asking them for money. I’m going to make it on my own no matter what it takes. This is why I worked my way through college, and why I’ve eaten a lot of ramen noodles over the years. I constantly remind myself there will be gold at the end of my rainbow. And if it were easy for me to get where I want, I wouldn’t appreciate the journey nearly as much.
“Rise and shine, the cavalry’s here,” my sister, Jenny, says and rushes forward, her pink dress too much for me to handle inmy dim office. She comes over and plops down on my desk with no regard to what she might knock off. When my sister enters a room, it’s like a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day. She’s been this happy from the moment she came into the world. Her first smile took her exactly sixty seconds after being born, as if she was telling the world to look out because she’d arrived.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“We’ve come to save you from this dull place,” Jenny says.
“I don’t think it’s dull at all,” I tell her.
“You better come with us, Sis, you know Jenny won’t take no for an answer,” Rich says as he next steps through my doorway. I grin at him.
Rich might be my baby brother by four years, but the man towers over both Jenny and me, standing over six feet with linebacker shoulders. He played football all through college and was drafted into the NFL. He turned them down. He said he was too pretty to mangle his body for a few bucks. I’m secretly glad he did. I watched every game he played, biting my nails to nothing as I watched him hit and be hit. When he broke his arm during one game, I was a mess. He laughed it off, then got plenty of attention from all of his adoring college fans. He wasn’t at all torn up about it.
“I don’t have a long break,” I tell them. I’m sort of lying. I don’t have class for a few hours, but I do have a lot of grading to do.
“Nope, I looked at your schedule. You have three hours,” Jenny says with triumph. I let out a sigh. They don’t give up when they’re on a mission.
“Fine. I guess I’m hungry,” I admit as my stomach growls. Jenny reaches over and pulls off my glasses before I can stop her. She slips them on her nose, then laughs.
“Why in the world do you wear these ugly things? They’re just glass.”
“Because I need the students to take me seriously,” I say as I try to get them back.
“Well, you don’t need them while we’re out. I kind of like them. Do I look like a naughty librarian?” she asks with a chuckle as she leans back and makes duck lips.
“My eyes,” Rich shouts as he turns. “Never do that pose in front of me again.” A shudder of disgust runs through him, making both Jenny and me laugh.
I give up and stand as Jenny wraps her arm in mine. “Please come shopping with me, Cor, we need to get you some better clothes. These are atrocious,” she says as she picks at the sleeve of my blazer while I lock my office door.
“I dress professionally. I can’t dress like you and be mistaken for a student,” I tell her.
