I couldn’t even look him in the eye as I recalled what happened yesterday.
Too close, I had been too fucking close to giving in.
Instead of being the teacher who inspired the desire to learn, I was the teacher inspiring my students—no, one student—to want me.
As if that was okay on any fucking level.
“Son? What is it? You seem…troubled.”
Erasing the revulsion from my face, I tried to assure him. “Nothing, Dad. It’s nothing.”
He squinted at me and tried a different tactic. “Is it the new school? Are the teachers giving you a hard time?”
I rested my elbows on my knees and clasped my hands between them.
How could I tell him, no, it’s an eighteen-year-old girl giving me trouble. He couldn’t understand because neither could I.
“Nope, just the usual. Oh, and my father is sick, you may have heard.”
With another congested cough, he shook his head on the stark white pillow. “Don’t try and bullshit a bullshitter. I’m sick, not stupid.”
“Dad, just leave it alone. It’s nothing you need to worry about.”
There, if I said it was nothing, then it was—
“You’re lying to me. I taught you better than that, son. My students didn’t lie to me, and I’ve never let you either.”
Yes, that was the whole fucking problem. He had taught me better than that, and I was about to let him down.
“Is it a girl?”
Just that word alone had my palms sweating. Girl. Yes, it was definitely a girl.
“What’s the problem? You’re successful, and you take after me, so we both know you’re good-looking. You want my advice?”
For the first time in a long while, my father laughed at what he thought was a lovesick son. He had no idea I was cursing myself on the inside.
“I told you, I’m fine.”
I forced myself to keep the connection with him before he closed his eyes and exhaled.
“Life’s unexpected, Gray. Hearts come and go. If you want hers, then take it.”
I suppose that was easy to say when you didn’t know whose heart was up for the taking.
Seven-thirty arrived, and so did we. Three pillars of the community, all immaculately dressed and all without a single thing to say.
“Reservation for Lancaster,” Mom announced as though we were royalty.
The girl standing behind the hostess table looked around my mother and waved at me. “Hi, Addy.”
I had no idea who she was, but manners prevailed when my mom pinned me with her answer correctly look.
“Hi.”
She beamed at me as if I’d just agreed to be her new BFF and then returned her attention to my mom.
“Okay, Mrs. Lancaster, right this way.”
We were ushered inside and about to walk past the bar when I spotted him. He was standing at the counter watching the television that was mounted on the back wall.
I stopped in place, and as my father ran into me, he cursed, “Shit, Addison.”
That was the moment that Grayson saw us.
It was the first time Mr. McKendrick met my parents.
Present…
Doc snaps my attention back to him with a sharp click of his fingers.
“Addison, as adults we become burdened with different kinds of responsibilities. When do you believe we are ready for that?”
Once again, I find myself sitting opposite Doc as he tries to pull from me the answer he seeks. He does this, as always, by asking questions I don’t give a shit about.
Tick, tick, tock.
How am I supposed to know about adult responsibilities when my only examples have been so quick to abandon all of theirs?
That isn’t the real question here. No.
The real question, disguised so poorly by the adult in the room, is age.
There it is.
Only three letters, yet it’s a word so big that it can ruin a career, tarnish a reputation and destroy a life. Forever.
“He was thirty-two.”
His age.
“You were eighteen.”
My age.
“That wouldn’t be illegal, except...”
Tick, tick, tock.
He’ll be waiting a long time for me to finish that statement.
I have time. He doesn’t. Doc needs me to talk. To trust him with all of my secrets and all of his because without those words, they have nothing. I look this adult in the eye, and he knows. He isn’t going to get anything from me.
I know where my responsibilities lie, and it’s nowhere near him.
Chapter Nine
Past…
I could tell by the way he glanced at the door that Grayson’s first thought was to run. I guess I couldn’t blame him. It was my first thought too. But while he wanted to run to the exit, I felt the irresistible urge to run to him.
He was dressed in dark jeans and a red shirt with his hair pulled back and tied at the nape of his neck. Everything about him appealed to me—including the flash of paranoia that crossed his face, so subtle only I noticed.
Knowing he had no immediate means of escape, I turned to my dad and stated clear enough to penetrate his alcohol-induced mind, “That man over there is my new history teacher. I’m going to go and say hello, if you even care.”
My father, I guess I could still call him that even though he’d checked out of our lives a little over two years ago, stared down at me. “Don’t talk to me like that, Addison.”
“Yeah, whatever.” I paused and looked back to where Grayson was paying for a pizza. “I’m going.”
“Addison, get back…” he tried, but his words faded as I made my way through the tables. I reached the end of the bar just as Grayson turned to exit.
“Well, tonight just got a whole lot more interesting. Hello, Mr. McKendrick.”
She appeared untouchable. So immaculately put together that she almost didn’t seem real. Her curls hung loosely over her shoulders, and her mouth was painted the same color as the rosy blush tinting her cheeks.
Taking in the rest of her ensemble did nothing to alleviate the heat spreading through my veins. Standing in front of me was a walking contradiction.
Wearing a pink summer dress with short sleeves that cupped her shoulders, Addison should have represented sweet, innocent even. However, the words that left her mouth, and the eyes that found mine, were anything but.
I was losing this battle.
As I stood beside her with her parents making their way over to us, I made sure my focus remained on her face.
“Hello, Addison. I see you’re here with your parents. Hi, I’m Mr. McKendrick, Addison’s history teacher.”
I held the pizza box out in front of me to stay at a distance and angled my body away from hers. Her mother, an attractive lady in her early forties, gave me a much more thorough once-over this time around. When her eyes came up to meet my own, recognition dawned.
“Ahh, yes. Now I remember. You were at the track meet yesterday.”
With that wonderful reminder, I became light-headed.
Am I really standing here doing this? Discussing the track meet with Addison’s mother as if I hadn’t watched her daughter orgasm only inches away from me?
I felt like I was going to throw up.
“So you’re new to the school?”
The deep, skeptical voice broke through my paranoia. Nodding my head at who I assumed was Addison’s father, I confirmed his question without having to speak. Thank fucking god.