by Ella Frank
“Then what? Daniel died for nothing? Who told you that?”
Defensive, I shook my head. “No one.”
“Bullshit,” Grayson fired back as he frowned at me.
I could feel myself wavering. He knew I was lying. He’d met my mom and dad. It was obvious to anyone that we weren’t one big, happy family, but to someone as smart as Grayson? It wouldn’t take long to work out that the only thing keeping the Lancaster’s functioning were lies and unrealistic expectations.
“We’re not done with that, okay?”
I’d seen him in this mode before. It was teacher mode, and I knew he wouldn’t let it go, but right now he was after the…more.
So I gave it to him.
“Daniel looked right at me that day. I ran down to the crosswalk between the high school and the elementary school. There were other kids around, laughing and talking as we waited for the light to change. For some reason, I looked over the road at him, and it was like time stopped. I couldn’t even hear the crosswalk signal as it beeped and then he was just—gone.”
“Jesus,” Grayson cursed as his fingers tightened on my waist.
“Maybe if I’d been on time?” I suggested, not really expecting an answer.
“It could have still happened. You don’t know, and you never will.”
I lowered my eyes to my hands and fidgeted as tears began to fall. Trying to get a hold of myself and failing, I looked back at the man studying me with concern.
How do you explain to someone that you not only let yourself down, but everyone who ever believed in you? And how do you trust them with that secret without offering up what is left of your broken heart?
The answer is simple, you can’t. So instead, I gave Grayson the shattered pieces that remained.
“He was my baby brother. I couldn’t get to him…I couldn’t save him. I just stood there with everyone else, as the truck…”
“Oh, Addison. Hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to say any more.”
Grayson pulled me into his arms so our chests were flush against each other. Heart to heart.
I ran my hands around behind his neck and hugged him to me, discovering that once I’d started talking, I couldn’t seem to stop. It was kind of like the tears that I couldn’t seem to get under control.
“One minute Daniel was standing there, and the next…the next, he was on the ground…just lying on the road. He wouldn’t open his eyes…wouldn’t look at me, and there was blood…so much blood around him. I just needed him to say something, anything…but he never did and then she took me away.”
“Who did?” Grayson asked as my tears fell down onto his shoulder and back.
“Miss Shrieve. She took me away from him…forced me to let him go.”
I pressed my face into his hair and took a deep breath, trying to calm myself.
“One, two three. One, two, three. The crosswalk signal beeping was all I could hear after that, over and over. I started counting, trying to focus on anything but what was in front of me.”
Grayson pulled back slightly, and his eyes held mine, steady and serious. “So the counting is a new habit? Since the accident?”
It was time to trust and offer up the final pieces of me.
“Yes. It helps calm me when I get nervous or anxious...like a safety blanket, I suppose.”
He reached for my left wrist and circled the watch there. “The same with the constant time check?”
“Yes and no.”
I looked down and touched the timepiece.
“Doc tells me it’s an obsession…it’s something I need to do without even realizing it, probably because I was running late that day. See, that’s what was so funny the first day in your class. I couldn’t believe I was late. I’m obsessed with time. Everyone knows that. I always need to see it or hear it…and now I sound like a crazy person.” I laughed, but it sounded out of place in light of the current topic—hell, maybe I was crazy. “Shit.”
“No, no. Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what? Be embarrassed that I’m so fucked up? I don’t even know what it’s like to be normal anymore. I don’t even know who I was before that day.”
Grayson took my shoulders in a tight hold and shook me gently—trying to get me out of my own head.
“Addison, no one could go through all of that and come out the same. Who’s asking you to be that girl? Child or adult, that doesn’t make you crazy. It makes you human.”
“Yeah?” I mocked, feeling my crazy morphing into misplaced anger. “Tell that the to the rest of them. Tell it to my father, who avoids me unless he needs someone to slap around, or my mom, who comes to every track meet just to make sure I win. Because if I don’t…what was the point of me being late that day? The only way I made it through these last two years was to be someone else. If I am the best and the most popular, how can anyone pity me?”
Grayson took my hands and gently squeezed them. “I think for most, it’s the easiest emotion to feel when someone is—”
“Damaged?”
“I was going to say suffering.” Grayson ran a hand up through his own hair and cupped the back of his neck. “That’s why you’re attracted to me, am I right? Because I didn’t know you back then?”
“Honestly?”
“Yes, Addison. I want you to be honest, please. Always.”
“At first, yes. But not now.”
“Why, what’s changed?”
“I told you. When you look at me, you see more.” I cradled his face in my hands and let my eyes roam over him. “And when I look at you, I see for the first time the possibility of everything.”
“Fuck,” he swore under his breath. “How do I fight against someone like you?”
“You don’t. I can be good, Grayson. I can behave. Just say you want me. That you want to be with me always.”
“How?” he asked, circling my wrists. “How could this ever work? We’d have to sneak around. We’d barely see each other outside of school.” He shook his head like he couldn’t believe he was even contemplating it and touched me under the chin. “Do you want that? Can you live like that? Always watching what you say and when you say it? Not ever being able to tell anyone anything?”
“I just want to be with you, is that so wrong?”
“No. But the law says otherwise. My position as your teacher makes this impossible. Right or wrong? I don’t know which is which anymore.”
“This is right. Right here. Just you and me. Anywhere else and it wouldn’t even matter.”
“Yes, but we aren’t anywhere else, Addison. It is what it is.”
Grayson caressed my hair and then repeated the gesture several times without saying anything.
How could something so simple be so comforting?
“I wish it were that easy. There’d be no problems if you were out of school.”
Sitting back slightly, I placed a hand against his chest. I was starting to feel frustrated. I couldn’t help my age any more than he could help his occupation. “But I’m not, and you’re here anyway.”
His eyes latched onto mine, and the beating of his heart sped up as if I’d just reminded him of whom he was with.
“Yes. I’m still here. That should show you how much I’m willing to risk.”
I traced one of his brows and promised, “I will never betray you. Not ever.”
Grayson closed his eyes and tipped his head back to face the sun, and I couldn’t help but lean in and place my lips against his throat, trying to soothe his obvious agitation.
“I never knew.” He took my lips in a kiss that was as tender as it was passionate before he spoke again in a state of astonishment. “I never knew that I’d risk everything, even my freedom, just to touch someone. Just to touch you.”
“And now that you know?”
“Now I have a choice to make.”
* * *
One year.
If I’d met her only one year later or waited a fucking year—none of this would be an issue. But that wa
sn’t the case.
As I held the girl sitting in my lap, I knew I’d crossed lines and broken laws. The shocking thing was, I didn’t care anymore.
“What are you thinking? Tell me,” she encouraged as she fingered my hair gently.
“I’m trying to decide what we should do.”
Addison frowned. “We? I can make my own decisions, Grayson. I don’t need you to make them for me.”
“Yes, but they may not be the right ones.”
“And yours are?” she accused as she moved off my lap and away from me. “You’re not doing anything differently than I am.”
Lunging forward, determined to make her listen, I pushed her back on the grass and hovered over her.
“No. I’m not. I’m naked in the middle of a field with a student. My student. I need to think for a fucking minute. I feel like I’m three steps behind because I never thought I’d be standing here to begin with. God, when did this become my life?”
“Let me ask you something,” Addison posed, her blue eyes full of sincerity. “If I wasn’t your student, what would you want?”
After the story she’d just told, my answer was easy and honest. “To take you away from here and start over somewhere new.”
A beautiful smile, one that I’d never seen, appeared on her lips. She seemed like a completely different person. “I’d go with you.”
“For a day?” I asked skeptically as I played with her hair.
She covered my heart and vowed earnestly, “Forever.”
I blinked down at Addison and was reminded that by law she was still a girl and ultimately…
“You are my student, Addison.”
As she nodded, I wondered where we would go from here.
“So, what do you want?”
Before I knew what I was saying, “I want Brandon gone” was out of my mouth and hovering between us.
She lifted up and kissed the corner of my mouth. “That’s easy.”
“I want you to graduate.”
Kissing the other corner, she promised, “That I can do.”
I tangled my fingers through the back of her hair and held her in place as I looked her in the eye and made it very clear. “I want to help you.”
“I want that too.”
She touched my cheek, and as her eyes fluttered closed and her black lashes swept her creamy skin, I couldn’t help but kiss it and confess, “I never want you to stop needing me.”
When her eyes opened, she softly kissed my mouth and asked, “Then what choice do you have left to make?”
She was right, what choice was there?
Right or wrong, it had already been made.
Chapter Nineteen
Past…
“Addy! Hey! Wait up, would you?”
Brandon.
He’d been calling out and running after me in the parking lot, and I’d been pretending not to hear. With my earbuds in and my iPod off, I was safe. When we reached the west corridor, however, he grabbed my arm, and I was out of options.
“Hello!” he shouted, waving his hand in my face.
I pulled the white cord of my earbuds so they popped out and flashed my failsafe sweet smile.
“Brandon? I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you.”
“Obviously,” he sneered and pulled his bag strap up over his shoulder. “Where the hell have you been?”
How to answer that? Hmm...with Grayson, you know, Mr. McKendrick?
“I’ve been slammed with homework and then training for state. Plus Mom—”
“Shut up.”
My eyebrows rose in surprise, and I put my hands on my hips. “Excuse me?”
“Stop lying.”
He’s right. But he didn’t know that, and he had no proof. I didn’t like his mood, so when he took a step forward, I backed up.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” he accused. “Ever since the weekend.”
I raised my chin and fired back. “That’s not true. I text you last night.”
“We need to talk? That doesn’t count!”
“Well I’m sorry you don’t think so. I’ve been busy.”
“Too busy for me?”
“Too busy for anyone!” I yelled back, drawing the attention of the other students. One who just happened to be a smirking Jessica.
Scoffing, Brandon replied, “Yeah, right.”
“What did you say?” I demanded, and then he slammed a fist into the locker by my head, causing me to jump.
He leaned in close, his tone menacing as he whispered, “I said yeah, right. Are you fucking someone else?”
I swallowed and made sure to keep my eyes on the pissed off guy in front of me. Never one to back down, I lied. “No. But I won’t be fucking you anymore.”
Brandon rammed his other hand beside my head and hissed out, “You’re a liar. Do you think I’m fucking stupid?”
“I’m not lying.”
Brandon laughed, and the sound was mean. “I followed you.”
Oh shit. Immediately, I thought of Grayson.
“What do you mean you followed me? Do you know how creepy that sounds?”
Act calm, I told myself. Don’t say anything incriminating.
“Creepy? I’d rather be creepy than a fucking idiot because my girlfriend is screwing around. So who is he?”
Shaking my head, I tried to imagine what he might have seen yesterday, but I couldn’t ask without sounding guilty. So instead, I feigned ignorance. Maybe if he was annoyed enough, he’d tell me.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yesterday, Addy!”
Again, he slammed his hands by my head. A few people stopped, but when they saw us together, they mustn’t have wanted to get involved because no one bothered approaching.
That was nice to know if I was in danger.
“I didn’t do anything yesterday. I went home.”
“No, you didn’t. I told you, I followed you all the way to the highway.”
Fuck, this was not good.
One, two three. One, two three.
This was not good at all.
“But I had to turn around and go to practice. I sent you ten messages, and all I fucking got was, we need to talk!” He punctuated his angry words with another punch to the locker door.
“Brandon!”
The voice that boomed down the hall was so familiar to me that I would have known it anywhere.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing? Back up! Now!”
Brandon looked me up and down with contempt. “We’re done. This is over, slut.”
That was when Mr. McKendrick stepped between us. He didn’t even bother acknowledging me as he pointed to the opposite wall and ordered, “Shut your mouth and back off. Move it!”
Brandon’s eyes never left mine as he walked backward to the other side of the hall, where his ass hit the lockers.
“You stay there and be quiet, we’re going to have a little talk in a minute. Everyone else, get to class! This is not your morning entertainment program.”
Seeing his broad shoulders in front of me made me feel at ease. As always, with Mr. McKendrick I felt safe, as if nothing could hurt me.
“Are you okay?”
I focused on his face when he turned and walked closer to me. I touched the strap of my bag, needing something tangible to anchor me as I bit my lip.
“Yes, I’m fine,” I managed.
“Okay.” His eyes silently inspected me, and I could tell he wanted to say more but couldn’t. “Do you want to tell me what happened here?”
“She’s a liar. That’s what happened.”
I saw my teacher’s jaw flex as he gritted his teeth. Looking over his shoulder, he said in a voice that was hushed, yet still one hundred percent effective, “I thought I told you to be quiet. I will get to you in a minute.”
My eyes locked with Brandon’s as he crossed his arms, clearly pissed off that I was getting to talk first.
He thought I’d been sneaking around with one of h
is buddies, which would make him a fool, or worse, bad in bed. I wondered how he’d feel to know it was this man who’d come between us.
“What happened here?” Mr. McKendrick asked as he looked down at me.
I wanted to tell him that Brandon was now gone, but I didn’t want to risk the boy in question overhearing and speculating, so I shrugged nonchalantly.
“We broke up, he got angry.”
For a minute, his eyes softened and Grayson slipped through, before he was quickly pushed aside and my history teacher resurfaced.
“Anything else?”
“Like?”
“Did he hurt you?”
I shook my head and shifted uncomfortably on my feet. No, Brandon hadn’t hurt me, but he’d scared the hell out of me. It wasn’t the rough handling but the thought that he may have caught us, and more importantly—would he continue following me?
“No. I’m fine.”
I could tell he didn’t believe that for a second, and just as he was about to say more, he was interrupted.
“Addison? What’s going on here?”
Turning my head to the sound of the voice, I saw Miss Shrieve hurrying down the hall in our direction. She was dressed in a black pencil skirt and a pastel blue blouse, not her usual sweatpants—and suddenly, I felt like the student I was.
I was saved from having to answer because Mr. McKendrick did instead.
“Could you walk her to her next class, please? I’m going to have a little chat with Brandon over here.”
I knew there was nothing to worry about with him talking to Brandon, but that didn’t stop my anxiety and automatically I raised my arm to look at my watch.
Without missing a beat, his voice cut through my nerves as he promised in a soothing voice, “You’re fine. You have plenty of time. Go with Miss Shrieve, okay?”
I did as I was told and dropped my arm before walking toward my coach. She reached out to touch my arm as Grayson turned and stepped in front of Brandon.
“Come on, Addison. Mr. McKendrick will get to the bottom of it.”
Yes, I thought, but the problem was he was the “it” in that particular statement.
* * *