Rae’s phone buzzed in her jeans’ pocket, vibrating against her thigh.
At the front of the lecture hall, her abnormal psych professor was pointing to a graph on the huge projector screen and had her back to the class.
Rae eased the phone from her pocket and glanced at the glowing screen. The text from Wulf read, We will arrive at your dorm at 8:00 AM tomorrow morning.
Rae glanced up, her stomach clenching. Noontime sunlight shone hard through the windows and onto her cramped handwriting in her notebook on her tiny, student desk. Her chair was like a movie theater seat, except made out of hard, curved wood, with a clipboard attached to the right armrest.
Her abnormal psychology professor might notice if Rae texted back. Dr. Robbins was a stickler for cybermanners, which meant no texting in class, even though a hundred other students were scribbling notes in the echoing auditorium, too.
Rae dropped her hand to her lap and tried to text with just her left thumb while she took notes with her other hand. She typed, U don’t have to go.
She took notes on the disorder of the day, Trichotillomania, which is compulsive hair-pulling, for a few minutes, trying to pay attention. The professor clicked her projector remote that she had clipped to her jeans’ belt loop. An ascending graph drew itself on the screen, visible despite the glaring sunlight, and Rae copied it even though she would download the slides later.
Rae’s phone, which she had wedged between her thighs, buzzed, sending shivers up her legs.
Wulf’s text read: Mulligan might try something. It is settled.
Thank you, she texted back, surrendering the argument because Wulf was righter than he knew, despite that she would have done just about anything to keep Wulf and her family at least a hundred miles apart.
The drive to Pirtleville would take five hours, and the last three hours were nothing but an unobstructed view of cacti, scrub brush, rattlesnakes, and dirt.
They would have time to talk, because surely the emotionally reclusive Dom of The Devilhouse was too sophisticated to have fallen for anyone, let alone a backwater country girl from the unfashionable southern side of the wide, snake-infested desert.