Venezuela
I would save Cruz. I had to. I was the one who had pursued him in the bar, in the elevator, on the ship, everywhere. I was the instigator. I was to blame.
Me. Me. Me.
Pushing back the panic that threatened to overtake every ounce of logic in my body, I opened the door to Wilder’s suite with my key and found the production team gathered around the dining room table. Cruz followed me in, the backpack he’d refused to leave behind slung over one shoulder.
“Get out,” I said, my voice soft but deadly.
Bobby looked up at me, his eyebrows furrowed. “I’m sorry?”
“I need to talk to my brothers. Get out. Now.”
Pax took one look at me, and Cruz standing behind me, and stood up from the table. “You heard her.”
“We’re allowed to be here by contract,” Bobby started.
“If you use that contract word one more time I’m going to shove it up your ass,” Landon said, standing next to Pax.
“Leave or stay, I don’t care,” Pax said to Bobby. “We’ll just go to her suite where you’re not allowed.”
“Damn it,” Bobby muttered. “Clear the room!”
“That means you, too,” I told the other Renegades lounging in the living room.
Leah came down the stairs from Pax’s room, Rachel in tow. “Everything okay?”
“They can stay,” I told Pax.
The room cleared, and soon it was just Pax, Landon, Rachel, Leah, Nick, Cruz, and me gathered at the table, awaiting the confession they didn’t know was coming.
“Maybe we should sit down,” Pax suggested.
“No, I need to stand, but you might want to sit.”
“Jesus, is it always like this? I should have come aboard earlier,” Nick said.
I shot him a glare.
“I’m in trouble,” I said, and the atmosphere of the room changed instantly.
“Okay. What do you need?” Pax asked. No questions or accusations. He didn’t know if I’d cheated on a test or killed someone and needed help burying the body. He was in before I told him what I’d done, and I loved him for it.
“I’m in trouble,” Cruz corrected, standing next to me.
“Okay, we’re in trouble.”
“Trouble. Got it,” Pax said, leaning in.
“We’re?” Landon’s eyes narrowed.
“Here we go,” Rachel mumbled.
“Remember when I got arrested in Vegas for jumping off the High Roller?” I gripped the back of the chair.
“Yes, as does every lawyer who represents our company,” Pax drawled.
“Right. Did Brandon ever show you the paperwork? Tell you who I was with?”
Pax’s eyebrows furrowed, and he shook his head. “No. We were busy, and I trusted that he took care of it.”
“It was me,” Cruz said.
Every head swung in his direction.
“What?” Landon snapped.
“I’m the guy from the bar in Vegas. I jumped off the Ferris wheel with her.”
“You were the one found in bed with her?” Pax asked, his voice dangerously quiet.
“Pax…” I warned.
“Oh, Brandon filled me in on that bit, but I figured I sure as hell wasn’t one to judge who you chose to…” He shook his head. “And since you’ve been on board?”
“We’ve been together,” Cruz said.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Landon seethed.
“Seriously, Landon? You’re the last person to lecture anyone about falling in love with someone you shouldn’t. Even Leah was off-limits to Pax. I’m just following suit here.”
“Leah was my tutor. Not my teacher,” Pax corrected.
“Lay off her. I take full responsibility for our actions.” Cruz subtly stepped in front of me.
I scoffed, moving to the side. “No. I’m an adult. I wanted him, went after him, convinced him, fell in love with him. Got it? Does anyone else need any other details or want to berate me for my choices? Because I’ve had a hell of a lot less sex than any of you three. Sorry, girls.”
“No offense taken,” Leah said, sitting back.
“God, this explains so much,” Pax said, raking his hands over his face. “The way you knew things about him, how comfortable you are around each other, the way you’ve been sneaking off when we’re in ports…”
“Yup, guilty and guilty. Anything else?”
Paxton’s gaze flickered between Cruz and me before he finally sighed. “What do you need? What’s happened, besides…the obvious?”
“Dr. Gibson just walked in on me coming out of Cruz’s shower wearing nothing but a towel.”
“Now that’s an image I’m going to have to scrub out of my head,” Nick chimed in.
“Fuck,” Paxton seethed.
“Did you admit to anything?” Landon asked.
“She saw me practically naked,” I threw back.
“Doesn’t matter. Did you admit to anything?”
Cruz and I locked eyes for a second in silent conversation. Had we? She’d implied we were sleeping together, but he’d never agreed.
“No. I said that she wasn’t a student when we met, but that was it.”
“Okay, then the only evidence she has is a student in your bedroom, which…you know…is pretty damning, but it’s your word against hers.”
“I’m not calling her a liar,” Cruz snapped. “Not to save myself.”
“Not to save Penna’s reputation? Because she’s in the middle of this goddamned documentary, and your shit is about to hit the fan.”
“I would never ask him to lie for me,” I said. “He wouldn’t be who I loved if he did. I can take whatever gets thrown at me.”
“You shouldn’t have to!” Pax yelled. “He should have protected you. Left you the hell alone until you were off this ship!” He turned to Cruz. “Is that what she is to you? Some fun while you’re here? A little student fling to pass the time?”
“Pax,” I warned.
“That’s enough!” Cruz slammed his hands on the dining room table. “You love her, and because you do, I’ll let you get away with that jackass comment. But don’t you dare ever imply that she means less to me than Leah does to you. It won’t end well for you.”
“And this is why I didn’t tell you in the first place,” I said to the guys. “You’re fine having me keep your secrets, clean up after your messes, but the moment I wind up in one of my own, you turn into judgmental nuns. I’m not here to ask for penance. I don’t need your forgiveness, because I have nothing to apologize for, and neither does Cruz.”
Paxton leaned back in his chair, Leah reaching for his hand.
“You really jumped off the High Roller with her? After knowing her what? Twenty minutes?” Nick asked.
“Yeah,” Cruz answered.
“Why would you do that?”
“Because she needed me to, which is pretty much the answer to any question you could possibly have for me right now.”
“You had me within weeks,” Leah said softly to Pax. “We both knew we shouldn’t, that it could jeopardize your entire documentary, and that didn’t stop us.”
“You seriously seduced me while I was dating your best friend,” Rachel reminded Landon. “Not sure we should be casting stones, glass houses and whatnot.”
“You’re supposed to be the sensible one, Penna,” Pax said, his shoulders slumping. “You have always made the sound choices.”
“Well, love makes you do crazy things.”
“Okay, well, we can’t do anything until we know what Dr. Gibson is going to do. I own the ship, but not UCLA, so everyone sit tight. Landon’s right. She has no other evidence besides what she saw.”
The door opened, and we all turned to see Bobby walk in, red-faced and panting with Victor on his heels. “Those asswipes,” he cursed.
“What’s wrong?” Pax asked, standing.
“The dean just confiscated my entire editing room and all our tape.”
“They can’t—” Landon started.
“They can,” Nick countered. “You guys signed an agreement that the university could preview all tape to ensure you weren’t filming a Girls Gone Wild—Study At Sea edition.”
“Okay, well, you guys were careful around the cameras, right?” Pax asked.
“Yeah. We were never together on set, or always super hidden,” I told him.
“That’s not entirely correct…” Victor said slowly.
“What?” Bobby snapped.
“Excuse me?” Cruz stepped forward, and Victor backed up.
“A couple of us knew she was sneaking off, and we wanted to make sure we had all the footage we could possibly need—not that we’d use it, of course. But…”
“But what?” I snapped.
“We followed you. In every port. Chile, Buenos Aires. All of it. Once we knew what you two were up to…well, there’s some pretty damning footage in there.”
Cruz’s fist flew, slamming into Victor’s face with a cracking sound that didn’t bode well for Victor.
“Not everything about her life is up for grabs, asshole! You had no right. In fact, you violated about a dozen of her rights!”
“He told us to get the best possible footage!” Victor yelled, pointing at Bobby with one hand while he cupped his nose with the other.
“Of the stunts! The bar! The ship!” Bobby shouted back.
“You’d better go, Victor,” Pax said softly, and the smaller man ran.
“It’s only a matter of time before they know,” Cruz told me, his face and posture strong but resigned.
“What do we do?”
Cruz picked up his backpack and slung it over his shoulder. “Come with me. We need to talk.”
“Thanks, guys. I don’t think there’s anything else you can do,” I told my friends. Over their protests, I took Cruz’s hand. He led me out the sliding glass door onto the balcony that connected the backs of our suites and into my own.
I felt separate from my own body as he sat us gently on the living room couch, my hand resting in his. What was going to happen to him? What had I done to him?
“They’re going to come for me as soon as they find the evidence.”
“I know. I’m so sorry, Cruz. I should have stayed away from you.”
“Stop,” he said, cupping my face with his hands. “I am the one responsible.”
“I ruined you,” I whispered, my eyes prickling.
He kissed me lightly, as if it were the first time—or maybe the last.
“Never. All you’ve ever done is make me better. If anything, I wasn’t careful enough. I failed you.”
“But your job…”
“Penelope, there is nothing about you that I regret. No matter what happens, do you understand?”
I couldn’t move—too terrified that the slightest motion would cause me to fracture into a thousand tiny pieces.
“I need to hear you tell me that you understand. I can’t leave here thinking you don’t know what you mean to me.”
“I understand,” I said because he needed me to. How could he still love me knowing what I was about to cost him?
“Good.” He hoisted his backpack onto the coffee table. “I need to tell you something.”
There was a knock at the door.
“Oh no,” I said, looking toward the harbinger of our doom. Too fast. It was happening too fast.
“Don’t answer that,” he pleaded. “The backpack has all my—”
The knocking came again, this time as a pounding that seemed to last forever.
“Penelope,” he called over the knocking, bringing my attention back to him.
“That has to be them!”
“Yes, I’m sure it is. Listen to me—the backpack. Please hide it for me. Keep it safe. Whatever you do, don’t get caught with it. Throw it overboard if something happens, but don’t let them find it.”
“What do you mean if something happens? What’s in it?”
“You can look, but it’s best if you don’t. It’s nothing I’m ashamed of, but it is illegal, and there is such a thing as plausible deniability. Promise me you won’t let anyone find it.”
The knock at the door grew to a pounding, the voice on the other side calling my name. Cruz took my chin in his hand, gently guiding my attention back to him.
“Promise me, Penelope.”
“I promise.”
He kissed me softly. “This will be over before you know it. I’m sure they just want to talk to me, and then we’ll figure out what we’ll do, okay?”
“Okay,” I agreed. Fear tightened my chest, making it nearly impossible to draw a full breath. “What if it’s not okay?”
“It will be. No matter what’s about to happen, we’ll be in Miami soon.”
The knocking ceased, only to be replaced by the swift click of the lock opening.
No. No, no, no.
“I love you,” he whispered.
“I’ll go with you,” I said as the door opened.
“No. You stay as far away from this as possible. You have to.”
“Dr. Delgado?” Dr. Paul, the dean of academics, called from the entry hall.
“Swear it. No matter what happens, you have to stay clear. Do not interfere. If I get the slightest idea you’re trying to take any blame, I’ll confess to things we never did.”
“That’s not fair.” I shook my head. How was this happening? Why so fast? Why now?
“Dr. Delgado,” Dr. Paul said with a sigh, standing in my dining room where he could clearly see us.
“I don’t give a fuck about fair. Agree. Now.”
He didn’t look away, even with the dean just behind me.
“Okay,” I said, knowing that even the nearly innocent picture we presented right now wasn’t helping matters any.
“Dr. Paul,” Cruz said, getting up.
“Dr. Delgado, if you’ll come with me—with us—we need to speak privately.”
There were two security guards posted in my entry, both eyeing Cruz like they had even a prayer of taking him down. Ignoring every instinct to the contrary, I kept my butt glued to the sofa, repeating my promise over and over in my head. I would not interfere. I would not take the blame.
“I understand,” Cruz said with a nod.
Dr. Paul motioned toward the door, and Cruz walked out, never once looking back.
The click of the door shutting felt final, as if my life would now be divided into three categories: before I knew Cruz, while our love was a secret, and whatever was about to hit me next.
I didn’t want the third phase to start, and the moment I moved, it would. Right now was limbo, that gray area between two eras. Every fiber of my being screamed that limbo was better than whatever was coming.
Instead of accepting my new reality, I sat there on the couch, my legs curled under me, staring at the backpack he’d left behind. He’d come for me as soon as they were done with him, and then we’d deal with everything together. It would be okay because Cruz had said so.
A knock at the sliding glass door sounded, and I looked up to see Landon and Pax. I nodded once, and they came in to sit on either side of me on the sofa, each taking one of my hands.
“Nick’s on the phone with the lawyers,” Pax said, his voice soft. “He’s trying to figure out if we can get them out of the editing room, but so far it doesn’t sound good.”
I nodded slowly.
“Dean Paul came to our room already,” Landon said.
I kept nodding, the motion soothing.
“What can we do?”
“Just sit with me until they come back?” They’d take me for an interview, or let me know what had been decided; either way, I didn’t want to be alone.
“We’ll stay,” Pax promised.
“Yeah, that’s no problem,” Landon agreed.
The door opened again, and Nick came in, parking on the other side of Landon. “There’s nothing we can do. We signed those agreements.”
“So it’s just a matter of time.”
“Yeah.”
I glanced at the guys and felt a little stronger. They’d been at my side for countless challenges—some we didn’t think we’d even manage to live through.
But we had.
And I would survive this, no matter what Dean Paul decided to do.
Even if they fired Cruz, I’d find him in Miami, or back in L.A. in a few weeks, and it would be okay. We could hire him for the Renegades in some capacity, or something. It would be okay.
“I should have told you guys. I’m sorry that I hid it from you.”
“It’s okay,” Pax said, squeezing my hand. “No matter how close we are, we all have things we just can’t share.”
“I really do love him.”
“I know,” Pax answered.
“And he loves you, Penna. It will be okay.”
I nodded quickly, like my head had become capable of only making that motion. “He is so much more than you guys even know. He went with me to see Brooke.”
Nick leaned forward. “You saw Brooke?”
I blinked quickly, shocked that I’d said it. But the cat was out of the bag, the horse out of the barn…whatever.
“I went to visit her when we were in L.A., but she wouldn’t see me. She won’t answer my letters, either. Or my phone calls. Apparently I’m a detriment to her recovery. After all, I’m still doing the very thing that caused her breakdown.”
“Oh, damn. Penna, I’m so sorry.” Nick rested his head on his hands.
I shrugged. “It’s fine. Everything’s fine.”
“We all know that it’s not,” Landon said, pulling me under his arm.
“No. It’s not,” I admitted.
“Do you want to talk to us about it? We love Brooke, too. The shit that went down didn’t change that.”
For months I’d silenced it, bottled it, and kept it from the very people who knew the situation the best.
“Yeah…yeah, I think I do.”
…
The sun streamed through the windows of the suite when I woke up, still lying on the couch in the same clothes I’d worn the night before.
The ship was moving, which meant we’d be in Aruba tomorrow.
I blinked the sleep out of my eyes and saw Pax crashed out on the floor, Nick laid out on the loveseat, and Landon lying across the two chairs like some kind of bendy bridge. A smile pulled at my lips until I remembered what had happened last night.
They never came for me.
I slipped on flip-flops and made my exit quietly. Once the door was shut, I ran for the elevators. Now that we’d been outed, it wasn’t like I needed to climb down the balcony anymore.
There was a group of students in the elevator, but no one looked at me any weirder than normal or pinned a scarlet A to my chest, so the dean must have kept it quiet so far.
I walked as calmly as I could through deck nine, but I hurried as I saw Dr. Westwick coming out of the shared suite.
My footsteps didn’t falter, but my heartbeat did as I made my way up to the door.
“Miss Carstairs,” Dr. Westwick said, with a raised eyebrow. “May I help you?”
“I was looking for Dr. Delgado.”
His eyes darted down the hall, which told me he was more than aware of what had happened last night. “That’s something you’ll need to talk to Dean Paul about. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m late for class.”
He brushed by me without another word.
That pit in my stomach grew deeper, and a sickening sense of foreboding took over. I tried to push past it, but with every step I took toward Dean Paul’s office, the feeling became heavier and more nauseating.
When I reached the administrative offices, I walked straight past Dean Paul’s blustering secretary and into his office.
He looked up from his desk, startled for an instant, but then his face fell into something too condescending for words.
“It’s fine, Peggy. I’ll handle her,” he told his secretary.
She nodded and left us, closing the door on her way out.
Dean Paul stood, and for the tiniest moment, I felt small, as though this man would crush me beneath the weight of his judgmental stare. Hell no. I wasn’t just Penelope Carstairs; I was Rebel, the only woman to hold an X Games medal in an all-male category. I’d done things this man could never comprehend in his wildest dreams, and he could only make me feel small if I let him.
My chin rose a good two inches.
“I came to see about Dr. Delgado.”
“Ah yes. I can see that you would. You’ll be happy to know that you won’t be expelled, though all your grades for his class will be reexamined by another professor who isn’t…tied to you.”
Expelled. It had never dawned on me that I would be kicked out of school, but for the moment, I just couldn’t bring myself to care.
“And Dr. Delgado?”
“He’s no longer with us.”
My heart sank. I really had cost him everything. No matter what happens, you have to stay clear. Do not interfere. I’d promised him, and the least I could do was keep my mouth reasonably shut. “I understand. Is there any way you would allow me to speak with him now that he’s not a member of the faculty?”
Dean Paul’s eyes quickly widened, then narrowed.
“I think you misunderstood me. Dr. Delgado is no longer on the ship. He was removed from the campus last night while we were still in port.”
And just like that, phase three hit me.
Cruz was gone.
