He sighed and looked around. “I want to do what’s best for you. If Raine says it’s okay, then I’ll tell you what I know. Fair enough?”
I nodded, knowing what the topic of conversation would be for our session with Eli tomorrow. And I promptly changed the subject. “Are you excited about your interviews?”
Eli proceeded to tell me what he knew about each school and the residential areas surrounding them. “Honestly, I’m pretty nervous.” There weren’t many chinks in Eli’s armor, and if there were, I didn’t tend to see them.
We’d moved through the villas and the gardens and taken up residence on a bench near the edge of the property. I didn’t spend much time out here. It was too easy to get lost in thought, and most days, I tried to stay busy to keep my mind from going idle. Now, with Eli, there was nothing I wanted more than to lose myself as the sun kissed the horizon and day welcomed night.
“What’s there to be nervous about? You’re great at your job.” Regardless of my personal opinion of Eli, Dr. Paxton was a phenomenal teacher, and any school would be lucky to have him. “Is it the girls?” I narrowed my gaze and tilted my head to the side. “I bet it’s hard to go into a new flock each year and pick out the eligible ones, huh?”
“You think that’s funny?”
I did. Which was why I laughed, continuously. “A little.”
He prodded me in the side which fueled my giggles, but when he finally responded, his answered silenced me instantly. “Because if I don’t get one of these jobs, I won’t be in Nashville.”
I reached up and captured his jaw in my hand. “Eli. Don’t put that kind of pressure on yourself. There are tons of schools around here and tons of time to find the right one.” My thumb stroked his jaw and the five o’clock shadow that resided on it. “You keep telling me not to worry, and when this is over, we will figure things out. Right?”
He swallowed, and his Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. “Yeah, but it’s my job to take care of you, Colbie. Your job is not to take care of me.”
“Is that some primitive notion you have going on in that ruggedly handsome head of yours?”
Eli smirked, and mischief danced in his eyes. “You think I’m handsome?”
I dropped my head back with a laugh before facing him again. “Depends. Me Jane? You Tarzan? If so, then no. If by take care of you, you mean the two of us lean on each other and provide for each other in all ways—not just financial—then yes, I find you incredibly hot.”
He kissed my lips and then talked against them. “Then you leave me no choice but to accept this liberal attitude. I will bury the caveman in favor of partnership.”
I pulled away, smiling. “I think you’re mocking me.”
“Meh. If we were home, I’d be trying to get you naked. Here, I just want you to know how much I love you.”
The bell chimed in the distance, and I felt my face fall.
“What was that?”
“The chapel bells. It’s our call for dinner….”
“And my time to leave?”
I nodded as tears filled my eyes. I didn’t want him to go. I never wanted him to go.
Eli’s tongue passed over his lips, and his eyes met mine when he cupped my jaw. “Baby, I’ll be back. Every chance I have, I will be here. Don’t cry.”
“I just hate to see you go.” My words were as broken as my heart.
Eli healed a part of me that no one else could touch. He wasn’t my cure, and he wasn’t a fix. He was simply a piece of my heart that I didn’t like living without.
He wiped my tears and pulled me to my feet. The warmth of his hands on my hips and his lips on my mouth would have to be enough to tide me over. His fingers dug in as his tongue swept past mine. The tingle grew between my legs, and I wanted nothing more than to connect with him. His fingers dipped under the hem of my shirt, and his palms splayed against my back. Searching, soothing, tracing. His touch was everywhere. Thankfully, he was stronger than I was and broke the kiss. “Mmm. What I wouldn’t give to taste you right now.”
I glanced around. We were isolated and alone. No one knew we were out here. I could have my clothes off in seconds, and his would follow. The bench would work. The two of us could reconnect. The vision ran through my head like trashy porn, and that turned me on more than the idea of sinking onto his length. The possibility of getting caught made my heart race, and a reckless abandon tried to take over my spirit. “We better go before I take you up on that.” I panted, standing next to him.
My chest heaved, my pussy was wet, and I was beyond ready to get out of Bright Horizons. Sadly, that wasn’t going to happen today or even next week. And if I didn’t play my cards right, the little freedom I’d managed to garner over Eli’s visit this week would be lost. And that was a consequence I couldn’t risk facing.
“Come on, Eli. We better get back.”
21
Eli
It was mid-April before I began to receive offers from the schools I’d interviewed with in Nashville. I’d started to sweat, worried that I wouldn’t hear from any of them. As much as I wanted to take one of the positions at the private schools, the public school had better pay and state benefits. It wasn’t just me I had to worry about.
Right now, I didn’t have to decide about health insurance to include Colbie, but I didn’t want to have to change jobs when that was a concern whether that was two or five or fifteen years from now. What I did have to consider, however, was my income covering all of our household expenses and anything she needed.
We’d talked extensively about her moving into on-campus housing instead of living with me, and at the end of the week I’d spent visiting Bright Horizons, all of us—Raine included—had agreed that it was too much freedom for Colbie starting out. I had no problems with that; in fact, I loved that I would get to be the one to care for her and provide for her. Her parents were the wildcard.
Her tuition and acceptance to Vanderbilt weren’t conditional upon her parents’ approval. She’d gotten a full academic ride. That, however, did not cover activity fees, campus identification, parking stickers, much less clothes, cell phone, insurance, or anything else that came up. And if she didn’t take the housing, she didn’t get the meal plan. Every penny counted for the next four years if her parents cut her off. And at this point, neither one of us knew which way they’d lean.
While I’d been to multiple counseling sessions on several different occasions since Colbie had first invited me, her parents hadn’t attended a single one. Her brothers—other than Caleb—still had no idea she wasn’t backpacking across Europe. I rolled my eyes every time I heard that. Colbie was not into the great outdoors. Anyone who’d ever spent more than five minutes with her could have deduced that. I just kept my mouth shut whenever it came up at school. No one was the wiser that I knew any differently, and the staff all seemed envious of her freedom. If only they knew.
Jess had even made an appearance at Bright Horizons on visiting day last week. The two were on their way to mending fences, but it would take effort and time. Colbie still didn’t know where she stood in class rank—Raine had agreed with me that imparting that knowledge wasn’t beneficial to her recovery—so there was a part of her that held a smidgen of resentment toward Jess, who also knew and wouldn’t tell her. It had taken little effort to convince Jess that Raine was right. Until Colbie accepted the fact that she might not be at the top of the class, there was no benefit in her knowing where she ranked. It actually had started to help her work through those emotions with Raine, who had promised to give Colbie the information she wanted once she believed that Colbie could handle either outcome. Colbie wasn’t there.
There were parts of me that worried about her coming home to spend any time in Brogdon. Even though Colbie was now aware of her triggers, the things that sent her into the panicked state that craved perfection for acceptance, she hadn’t been able to face some of them. Her parents and brothers were top on that list of red flags.
Between now and the
end of May, dealing with those issues was at the top of Colbie’s treatment priorities, along with her self-image. She was a work in progress, but I’d learned through this that most people are. Every time I went in for a session with her, I ended up with as much to work on as Colbie did. I’d never realized how many emotional withdrawals people made without replenishing themselves with deposits, especially women. They thought their reservoir was limitless, that the bounty would always be refilled. Colbie had siphoned every resource she’d had into a tank she’d hoped would feed everyone else. Not only had she not gotten what she wanted out of that, she hadn’t even come close to getting what she needed.
So with three offers in hand and three schools to choose from, I made the decision to wait until I could talk to Colbie tonight. Part of creating an overflow in her well was ensuring she not only thought but knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I valued her insight.
I closed my laptop as my AP class started handing in their work and filing out of my classroom. Jess took her time packing up, and I sat back, waiting for her to come out with whatever was on her mind. She zipped her bag and lifted it from the floor to her shoulder.
“Dr. Paxton?” She had my attention, so I wasn’t sure why she addressed me. Jess adjusted the strap to her bag and fiddled with the buckle.
“What’s up, Jess?”
Anytime she talked to Colbie, I usually heard about it from Jess the next day. She tiptoed around Colbie’s treatment and recovery, not knowing what to share about life here and what to spare her from. And with that uncertainty came insecurity. No one other than Raine and I knew that Jess had talked to Colbie. And Jess did everything she could to keep Colbie’s secret, including lying to—or evading—her boyfriend. Caden was still just as clueless as he’d been the day Colbie left.
She sighed and continued to fidget. “Are you really leaving?” Her eyes met mine after she’d asked the question.
It shouldn’t have surprised me. I should have thought that Colbie would tell her best friend her plans for next year. Nevertheless, I hadn’t considered that, and it caught me off guard. I wasn’t going to sugarcoat things or mislead Jess. There was no reason to; she wouldn’t be here anyhow. “I am.”
Jess glanced at the door and squared her shoulders. “For Colbie?”
That was a trick question because it didn’t have a simple answer. “Yes and no.” I swallowed and thought she deserved more. “More yes than no.” I leaned forward and put my forearms on the desk. “I can’t hold her back, Jess. And the things that brought me here don’t really exist.” I shrugged one shoulder.
“You don’t think it would be best for her to come home for a while? Maybe delay Vanderbilt for a year?” She worried her bottom lip with her teeth, and I prayed she didn’t cry.
There was a lot of information I was privy to because of Colbie’s counseling sessions that I wasn’t certain needed to be or should be shared with anyone. “Have you asked Colbie about that?”
She shook her head and continued to gnaw on her lip. If she weren’t careful, she’d chew a hole into it. “I don’t want her to think I’m questioning her. But I’m worried. I think it’s too much, too soon.”
In the split second that I had to make a decision and the few minutes I had to discuss this, I opted to support Colbie while encouraging Jess to talk to her friend. “Her counselors are in agreement that a change of scenery is best.” I wouldn’t elaborate any more. “You should talk to her. Let Colbie explain why she doesn’t want to come back to Brogdon.”
Jess gasped. “Ever?”
“To live. Probably not.” That was as honest as I could be. I tilted my chin toward the clock. “You don’t want to be late.”
Jess nodded, and for a moment, I saw the similarities in Jess’s and Colbie’s appearances. The girls could be sisters, although their personalities were night and day. She stopped at the door and turned back. “I hope you know what you’re doing. If not, you’ll end up destroying her.”
I didn’t have a clue what I was doing other than trying to plan a life with the woman I loved. It all sounded cliché and stupid when I said that out loud. Colbie was young, a baby by most standards. We had an uphill battle in front of us. If she were following me, I would absolutely question my motives for taking her away from family. The opposite, however, made the reasoning far more pure. “Do any of us ever truly know what repercussions our actions will have?”
“Probably not, but most of us don’t hold someone else’s lives in our hand, either. I’m just worried about her, Dr. Paxton. That’s what friends do. And since I’m limited in what I can say, do, or ask on every front, I have to challenge what I’m able to. I can’t help but feel at fault for a lot of this. Right or wrong. Beneficial or not. I cost her a lot, and the only thing that will make that suffering worthwhile is if she gets a happily ever after or a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.” Jess was a good girl and a better friend. She’d made mistakes, but I wasn’t foolish enough to believe Colbie hadn’t made some where her friend was concerned as well.
“The only thing I can assure you of is that she is my number one priority. If she wanted to be here, I would stay. I’m not her reason for going.”
Jess nodded and took a step into the hall.
I called after her. “Talk to her, Jess. It will help you both.”
“I will, Dr. Paxton.”
My phone buzzed on my desk as Jess went to her next class. Colbie’s face lit up the screen when I reached for my cell. “Hey, beautiful.”
Since she’d moved out of the dorms a couple weeks ago, I heard from her a lot more often. When she had free time, she was allowed to use it differently than she had been in the dorms. Colbie hadn’t really made any friends at Bright Horizons other than Emily and Raine, so her free time typically fell to schoolwork, Jess, and me.
“Did I catch you at a bad time?”
I closed my classroom door to have a little privacy. “Not at all. I’m glad you called.” I took my chair and opened my laptop to go over the offers I’d gotten.
“Oh yeah?”
“Well, I’m always happy to hear your voice, but I didn’t want to have to wait until tonight to talk to you.”
She groaned on the other end. “That doesn’t sound good.”
I chuckled. “Don’t assume the worst. It’s actually good news.”
“You won the lottery?”
“I don’t play the lottery.”
“You should. It benefits Georgia’s education system.”
“Noted. If I should ever teach in Georgia again or have a child in a Georgia school system, I’ll make sure to buy a ticket. As it stands, I will be relocating to Tennessee and want your help deciding which offer to accept.”
Colbie squealed into the receiver, piercing my eardrum. “You got an offer?”
“Three.”
“Eli, that’s fantastic. You got an offer from each school?”
“I did.”
She clapped in the background, and I couldn’t stop the smile that spread across my lips and made my cheeks hurt. Six months ago, Colbie wouldn’t have been the type to squeal or clap. She had been reserved and modest, never wanting to stand out in the crowd. Now, her eagerness and happiness curbed any sense of embarrassment she might have over someone witnessing her exuberance. “Which one did you pick?”
“None of them.” The line went silent, and I pulled the phone away from my face to see if the timer had stopped. “Colbie?”
“Why not? Did you decide against moving?” And as quickly as joy had sparked, it was squashed.
“Of course not. I didn’t want to make the decision without you.” That wasn’t a line to make her happy. It might have benefited her recovery, but it was the truth regardless of what it did for her self-esteem or her ego. “I got the last one this morning.”
“Which one do you want to take?” The innocent happiness in her voice made me realize that I didn’t really care which one as long as it kept me near her.
I told her about
the three schools. We’d discussed each one after my interviews while I’d been in Nashville over spring break, but she listened dutifully again. Then we compared salaries, and the public school’s was more robust, as was their entire compensation package.
“The insurance and retirement plans are better with the state.” I didn’t expect Colbie to see the value in these things because she’d yet to have to pay for insurance, and no one in high school thought about retirement.
“The fact that you pointed that out tells me that’s not the job you want, Eli. So which one do you think is the best fit?”
I proceed to list the pros and cons of each offer, and Colbie kept bringing me back to what I wanted, not what I thought had the best long-term possibilities. “I have to think bigger than what I want, Cole. It’s not just me I’m considering.”
“Huh-uh. You’re not pinning a decision to be unhappy on me or our relationship.”
“I’m not—”
“Nelson Hall.”
“What?”
“That’s the offer I think you should take.”
Obviously, I hadn’t made myself clear. Maybe I needed to send her the offers so she could read them herself. “Colbie, that’s the offer with the least stability.” Financially, contract, promise—they couldn’t guarantee anything beyond one school year. It paid the least of the three. They had the smallest campus and student body.
“It’s also the one you want.” She was right, even though I’d tried my best to conceal a preference.
While they were a relatively new school, they had a lot of money backing their endeavor. They had a huge endowment for arts, and those were the kids they catered to—those with money and talent. Their library rivaled that of any college, and I’d be heading up their creative writing department, which not only included fiction but poetry. These kids were the cream of the crop, and they had their parents’ support. Nelson Hall also ran a summer program and needed a teacher who could take over at the beginning of June.
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