“Don’t stress about it. Once he understands the situation, it’ll be alright.”
She tightened her arms over her chest.
“Lizzie, why are you so upset?” I could see Lizzie throwing a fit and dropping a bunch of f-bombs, but not sitting there and crying. It wasn’t like her at all.
Her chin bowed to the floor. “I just… Derek made me feel like I could do anything. I finally didn’t feel stupid. I finally felt like I could be something, you know? And then I do my best and my teacher says I’m doing it wrong and I’m cheating…and I’ll be lucky to pass the class with a C-.”
I felt like someone had just punched me in the chest. I felt sick, listening to my daughter describe the moment her dreams were shattered. “Your teacher is wrong, Lizzie. Derek is right.”
“Well, Derek doesn’t give me grades. Derek doesn’t get me suspended.”
“I promise you won’t get suspended, Lizzie. We will sort this out. Your teacher is just an…” I couldn’t restrain myself anymore. I lost my patience and blurted out the truth. “Asshole.”
Lizzie turned to me, smiling slightly through her tears.
There was my little girl. I moved my arms around her shoulders. “Derek told you the truth, honey. You can be anything you want to be. But unfortunately, some people like to stand in the way of that. Some people like to put down others to make themselves feel better. Derek likes to lift people up—and your teacher doesn’t.”
“Why?” she whispered. “Why do people like to be…mean?”
I shrugged, at a loss for words. I didn’t understand why people could be so cruel. “I wish I knew, honey…but I don’t.”
Math was her last class of the day, so I planned to pick up Lizzie from school and confront her teacher. If that motherfucker thought he could accuse my daughter of being a cheater, he had another think coming.
I didn’t ask Derek if I could leave early until it was time for me to go. I knew he would let me go, but I also knew if I talked about it too much, I would either start crying or screaming. And I also didn’t want him to think he was at all responsible for what had happened.
He stood alone at his table while Jerome and Pierre worked on something in the rear. Tall, muscular, and sexy, he stood over his laptop, his defined muscles stretching the sleeves of his sweater.
I walked up to him, my anger subdued slightly at the purely gorgeous man who could make me come every single time we were together, while barely touching me. “Derek?”
He looked up, so invested in his task, he hadn’t heard me approach. “What is it, baby? I’m in the middle of something, so is it important?” He was much better at accepting distractions than he used to be. Back in the day, he used to lose his shit—badly.
“Yeah, I just need to leave early. Is that okay?”
“When?” One eyebrow cocked.
“Now.”
He studied my face, like he didn’t know what to say. He probably had a million options in his head but didn’t know what would be appropriate. “Is everything okay?” I never left early, so he was probably concerned something was wrong.
“Yeah. I just need to meet with Lizzie’s teacher, but I’ll see you tomorrow.” I turned to walk away.
“Baby.”
I stilled then turned back around, sighing as I did it.
He was around the table and directly in front of me. “What is it?” His eyes shifted back and forth as he looked at me, as if he could see the unease in my facial features, see the ferocity that wanted to break out of my chest.
I wanted to lie and say it was nothing, but I couldn’t, not when he was looking at me like that, like I was his priority. “Lizzie is having a problem with one of her teachers, and I just need to get it sorted out.”
“Which teacher?” His eyes narrowed farther.
I didn’t know what to say.
He got there on his own. “Her math teacher? Baby, what happened? What’s the problem?”
I inhaled a deep breath before I answered. “She turned in her math assignment, and he said she didn’t do it the way she was supposed to, so he marked her answers as wrong and gave her an F. Then he accused her of cheating and said if she did it again, he would report her to the principal.”
Derek had no reaction. His expression was frozen in time, taking all of that in with poised stillness. Seconds passed until half a minute was gone. Then his eyes darkened in a way I’d never seen before, his anger coming out in a silent form…which was somehow more lethal than if he screamed.
He turned to Jerome and Pierre. “I have to go. Lock up when you’re done.”
“What?” I blurted. “Derek?”
He turned back to me. “I’m coming with you.”
“Derek, you don’t need to do that—”
“Yes, I fucking do.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me with him. “Now, let’s go.”
Derek was silent the entire way.
He looked out the window with his jaw tight, his eyes hard like he couldn’t see anything past his anger.
“It’s not your fault, Derek.”
“I know it’s not my fault.” He wouldn’t look at me, as if I were the one he was angry with.
“He’s just stupid—”
“Exactly.”
“When we explain—”
“Oh, I’ll explain, alright.”
We arrived at the school then walked to her classroom. The bell rang when we were a few doors down, and students immediately filed into the hallway. A couple kids we passed looked at Derek and recognized him. “That’s Derek Hamilton…”
Derek didn’t seem to hear because he didn’t look.
When I reached the door, Derek didn’t even let me go first. He just stormed in there and pushed past the last kid who tried to walk out.
Lizzie stood there and stilled when she saw Derek enter the classroom. “Uh…”
Derek ignored her and went for Mr. Franklin, walking up to his desk, tall and proud, staring him down like an opponent in the ring rather than an educated professional.
Maybe I shouldn’t have let him come.
Lizzie turned to me. “Mom?”
“Take a seat, honey.” I patted her on the back before I moved to the desk. “Mr. Franklin, I’m Lizzie’s mother, and I—”
“Your first response to a student’s success is to assume they’re cheating?” Derek’s voice was louder than usual, deeper than usual, but he wasn’t yelling. He was menacing, his brown eyes furious.
Mr. Franklin slowly rose to his feet, wearing a wrinkled collared shirt and round glasses on the bridge of his nose, probably two decades older than Derek. “Um, who are you—”
“Lizzie is a brilliant young woman who just learns differently. There is no right or wrong way to learn something, and just because she’s doing it in an original way doesn’t mean she’s wrong. It means you’re closed-minded and lazy. It means you’ve failed as an educator to do your job and inspire her, not demonize her.”
Mr. Franklin shifted his gaze to me.
“I’m the one talking to you, asshole.” Derek blocked his sight with his body and kept his eyes trained on him.
Lizzie’s eyes widened to the size of baseballs.
Derek turned to Lizzie. “Give me your assignment.”
Mr. Franklin was still, like he had no idea what to do.
Lizzie quickly pulled it out of her backpack and handed it to Derek.
Derek snatched it away and looked down at it, scanning through the problems. “She got all of them right.” His voice dropped for a second, like he was full of pride, a slight grin coming on to his face. He turned back to her and gave her an affectionate look before he turned back to her teacher. But once his eyes were on Mr. Franklin, he picked up right where he left off. “She got all the answers right. She deserves a goddamn A. Not an insult.” He threw the paper at Mr. Franklin.
He stepped back slightly. “Guy—”
“Dr. Hamilton. Don’t act like you don’t know exactly who I am.”
; Oh my god, this was bad…
Lizzie’s eyes widened again, and she turned to me, trying to suppress her smile.
I wanted to cover my face and hide.
“I’ve got two PhDs in engineering and physics, I teach a class of advanced engineering students at NYU, I own my own aeronautics company, I built a rocket for NASA, and now I’m working on their next rover. I think I understand this shit better than you do. I taught her in a way that was easier for her to understand. Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it’s wrong. The answers were right. She showed her work on her paper. It’s not her fault that you’re too stupid to understand it.”
Mr. Franklin looked like a kid trying not to piss himself. “I’ll call security—”
“I have a better idea. Why don’t we go to the principal’s office and discuss how you failed a student because of your own incompetence? I’m sure they would love to hear what I have to say about it.”
Now Mr. Franklin was silent.
“Maybe you got into teaching for the free summers and the pension, but I would hope that you’re here not only to educate students, but to inspire them, to nurture them. You didn’t reward Lizzie for thinking about the same problem in a different way, for pursuing her own avenue of trying to understand this material when your instruction failed her. You vilified her instead because you made it so there was no chance she could rise on her own. You should be ashamed of yourself. Go home tonight and think about who you want to be. You want to be this asshole who doesn’t respect your students? Instead of making an assumption, you could have asked her, you could have had a discussion with her to learn how she improved. But no, you chose to threaten her instead. She didn’t cheat, asshole. She just has a teacher who gives a damn, who wants her to succeed, who wants her to build fucking rockets if she wants. Instead of spending your time failing students, spend your time helping them earn A’s. Spend your time showing them that they aren’t stupid, that they can earn their way through with flying colors. I can promise you that Lizzie is getting an A this year and not because she’s a cheater, but because she’s smart, resilient, and hardworking. Get in her way again, and you’ll answer to me.” When Derek finished his tirade, he turned around and walked out of the classroom, like he needed to leave the area before he did something really stupid.
I didn’t know what to say because Derek had covered everything on his own. My instinct was to apologize, but I didn’t because I had nothing to apologize for. This man failed my daughter as a teacher, and I wasn’t responsible for Derek’s behavior—and I didn’t disagree with it either. I turned to Lizzie and cleared my throat. “Come on, honey.”
She left the desk and walked out with me, doing her best to hide the big smile on her face.
When we stepped out of the classroom, Derek was farther down the hallway, like he needed some space to cool off after he’d just chewed out a seventh-grade math teacher.
The door shut behind us, and Lizzie exploded. “Oh my god, Derek is the man! Did you see the look on Mr. Franklin’s face? He looked like he wanted to shit himself in that stupid chair. God, I wish I had recorded that on my phone. Derek ripped him to pieces! That was seriously the most badass thing I’d ever seen.”
I didn’t berate her for the cussing because I knew she was fired up, getting her revenge on someone who assumed she had no integrity. I let her have this, let her feel good about herself after Derek had just complimented her left and right…and made her believe in herself again.
Derek waited for us on the sidewalk near Ronnie’s SUV. He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking down the sidewalk and through the buildings to the city beyond. A fall breeze gently pulled at his sweater. The change of scenery subdued him slightly, but he still had that irritated look in his eyes, like he was still furious over the shit that had just hit the fan.
I approached him, my arm around Lizzie.
He took a while before he turned to look at us, as if he didn’t know what my reaction would be. He did just make a huge scene when he wasn’t even Lizzie’s parent.
Lizzie smiled at him. “Mom said we can go eat. You want to come with us?”
Derek stared at her for a few seconds, surprised by the invitation.
“I usually let Lizzie pick, but since you’re the hero of the afternoon, you choose.” I wasn’t worried that Derek would be scared, not when he’d already shown his affection for my daughter by exploding in the classroom. Maybe he was protective of all students and education in general, but he’d said a lot of wonderful things about my daughter and inspired her to care about school again, and that made me hum with life. The quickest way to a woman’s heart was through her kids.
“Yeah,” Lizzie said. “Mr. Franklin looked like he wanted to cry.” She snickered at the memory.
Derek continued to stare at her. “I lost my temper back there… I’m sorry about that.”
“Sorry?” Lizzie asked incredulously. “That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. He’s the worst teacher ever. On the first day of class, he made this stupid speech…” She deepened her voice to sound like an old man and waved her finger around. “I fail half my students every year, so if you don’t want to be in the bad half, I suggest you work hard.” She rolled her eyes, and her voice returned to normal. “He’s on a power trip.”
Derek didn’t smile at her impression. “Now I don’t feel so bad…”
“Don’t!” Lizzie said. “He sucks. So, where do you want to go?”
Derek turned his gaze to me, silently asking me if this was really okay or if he should make an excuse to get out of it.
I gave him a nod.
He turned back to her. “What about pizza?”
“Ooh, good choice,” Lizzie said. “Let’s go.”
It was too early for dinner, so the pizzeria was pretty quiet. The three of us sat at a table, Lizzie and me sitting side by side, while Derek sat across from Lizzie. He was tense and quiet, like he was stressed by the situation since there were no textbooks or worksheets between them. His eyes wandered around the restaurant most of the time, not looking at me like he usually would because it might be obvious to Lizzie that he was more than just my boss.
Lizzie drank her soda from the straw. “Did you really mean everything you said?”
Derek’s eyes shifted back to her. “I always mean what I say.”
“I meant about me, to Mr. Franklin. You think I can get an A?”
“Absolutely.” His eyes softened like the question was ridiculous. His stiff posture changed, and his arms moved to the surface of the table, getting a little closer to her. “When I saw your answers on your worksheet, I wasn’t necessarily surprised, just proud. I don’t know who told you that you’re incapable of doing anything you want, but they’re wrong. You can do anything you put your mind to.”
“Even build rockets…?” Lizzie was showing a different side to her that I’d never seen before. She had this attitude of indifference, like she didn’t care about anything, especially schoolwork, but now, she was vulnerable, showing that she did care about her grades and education. She never did before because she just assumed she would never excel at it.
“Of course. Do you want to build rockets?”
She shrugged. “Maybe… I don’t know. I like the option, though.”
“Every single option is on the table, Lizzie. You’re starting high school soon, so those will be the four years in which you need to prove yourself the most.”
“And you can help me with that?”
Derek didn’t hesitate. “Of course I can.”
It was hard to sit there and act like my dream wasn’t coming true, that Derek was bonding with my daughter, and more importantly, my daughter was bonding with him.
“Where did you go to school?” Lizzie asked.
“High school?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Holden.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I’ve never heard of that high school.”
“It’s a private s
chool,” Derek explained.
“Ooh.” She nodded slowly. “Got it. Where did you go to college?”
“I went to Harvard for my undergraduate degree in physics and engineering, and then I got my doctorates at Stanford.”
Lizzie stilled at that revelation, her eyes wide. “Whoa…”
Derek took a drink of his water then looked away, as if he was uncomfortable with the praise. He was so humble it was ridiculous. He went out of his way to hide his accomplishments rather than flaunt them…unlike most people.
“I wish I could go to places like that,” she whispered.
“Who says you can’t?” Derek countered.
She shrugged. “You’ve got to be a genius to go to those schools. And you’ve got to be rich.”
I would normally join the conversation, but I thought it was better to stay quiet and let the two of them talk.
“You’re incorrect on both,” Derek said. “Admissions cares more about uniqueness and dedication to community, what sets you apart from other people. It’s not just about grades. And in terms of financing, there’re always scholarships, and if you graduate from those kinds of institutions, you’ll be able to pay back student loans easily, so I wouldn’t worry too much about financing.”
“Did you get scholarships?” Lizzie asked.
He nodded. “I did. And as a graduate student, your tuition is often free, and you even get a stipend—depending on what you’re studying.”
“Whoa, I didn’t know that.” Lizzie was fascinated by Derek. I hadn’t anticipated her being so inspired by him.
“Your mother has a graduate degree also,” Derek said.
“Yeah, but it’s not in rocket science,” Lizzie said with a laugh.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said quickly. “She has an undergraduate degree and a master’s degree. Very few people have advanced degrees like that. Your mom is a successful professional who can support a family on a single income in Manhattan. That’s pretty impressive.”
I smiled at his compliment.
Lizzie turned to me. “I never thought about it that way before.”
The Boy Who Has No Belief (Soulless Book 7) Page 12