I agreed.
A teacher should never fear for her own life like I did today.
But, saying that, I knew that Bryan Abrams was a troubled kid.
Out of all the students that I had in the class with me, I’d never have expected that of him.
“I’ll talk to him first,” I disagreed. “There’s something more going on there. Abrams doesn’t normally act like the other ones.”
At least, when I’d met him originally, he didn’t.
Now? Now he was different. I wasn’t quite sure what to think of him and his actions lately.
I knew that there was something more going on, but again, I didn’t know what. He wouldn’t open up to me, and it was beginning to make me frustrated.
Today could’ve been so bad. What was worse was it could’ve not only hurt me, but it would have ruined him.
And I wasn’t ready to give up on the kid just yet.
“You’re not talking to him,” both my brother and Croft said at the same time.
I tucked my computer under my arm, grabbed up the stack of papers that were on the corner of my desk, followed by my keys that were in my top drawer, and then started out the door.
“I’ll do whatever I want to do,” I said as I shouldered past Croft who hadn’t bothered to move out of my way. “Because you’re not the boss of me.” I paused when he caught my hand. Looking over my shoulder, I said, “You lost the right to touch me. Now let go.”
He must’ve seen just how serious I was because he dropped his hand and stared at me as if he didn’t know me.
Without another word, I left the room, heading straight for my friend, Alfie’s, room.
Maybe they wouldn’t follow me.
Sadly, I wasn’t that lucky.
CHAPTER 2
I don’t get why I’m not losing weight.
-Raleigh to Croft as she’s double fisting two donuts
CROFT
“What the fuck?” Flint growled as he stood there watching the empty room his sister had once occupied.
“My sentiments exactly,” I grumbled.
Flint looked at me as if I was the one to cause her outburst.
“You know, she used to be sweet.” He paused. “Until you fucked-up.”
He pointed his finger at me accusingly.
“I didn’t fuck up,” I argued. “I did nothing wrong! One day, we were supposed to go out on a date, and the next she’s looking at me like I’m the anti-Christ, and I’d eaten her last cookie.”
Flint shook his head. “I don’t know what you did, but you need to fix it. I miss my sister.”
I did, too.
I wasn’t sure what the hell that I’d done to cause her to be so angry with me, but he was right.
I needed to figure it out.
I’d just finished a big case that I’d been working on with Karen, a woman that worked with us that was looking to make it a little more official, and it was time that I focused on what I’d screwed up. I.e., my relationship with Carmichael.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” Flint asked as he flipped the lights off to the large room that we’d literally walked into and broken up the fight of all fights.
“I’m here because I’m making my yearly donation to the baseball team,” I answered. “The Heartguard shirts.”
Flint was nodding at me with understanding.
My brother, Gavin, had actually died on the baseball field just a few short yards away.
When he was playing baseball, he’d gotten hit in the chest with the ball by a fly pitch. The pitch had hit his chest at just the right time to stop his heart, and he’d died there on the field while we waited for the paramedics to arrive.
Ever since, I’d donated Heartguard shirts to every single baseball player on the team of Gun Barrel Senior and Junior High in addition to other teams in the area.
That’d just so happened to be why I’d shown up here today and had caught up with Flint as he was heading inside. Only, he’d gotten a call from a couple of teachers that’d said there was a fight that’d broken out in the theater department. Which had then spurred both of us on to get there as fast as we could.
We’d arrived just in time to see that kid, Bryan Abrams, about to take a huge swing at Carmichael’s head with a fucking computer.
Flint had gotten there just in time to stick his large hand out and stop the computer before it could make contact with his sister.
He’d then sent every last fucking one of the little assholes to the principal’s office. But only after he’d put the Abrams kid in handcuffs and walked him out to his police cruiser.
I’d followed behind, pissed as hell, wondering how in the hell one lost control that bad to want to harm a teacher.
When I’d followed Flint back, it was to walk into the room to hear Carmichael rip Flint a new one for intervening.
Which led us to now.
“Was she serious about being pissed at you?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking. “Because what the hell would she have done if you hadn’t arrived? I’m fairly sure she would’ve taken that hit to the face.”
The idea was sickening to me.
Anything happening to Carmichael, even a fucking hangnail, was abhorrent.
Just the idea of her up here, in this hellhole, having to deal with asshole children who didn’t care about her in the least, was giving me hives.
I’d been neglecting to think about her since our “almost” date, since she was so effectively freezing me out.
I’d heard my sister, Raleigh, Camryn, and Flint talking about it over the last couple of months, but I’d been too damn busy to really give it much thought.
But seeing it with my own eyes?
I was now going to deal with this if the school wasn’t.
“She’s mad because she has no control over this class,” he answered as he gestured to the back door where that kid was still in the back of his cruiser. “She’s a little fucking sprite of a person, and the kids walk all over her. She tries to gain control, and they just push back even harder. I’m honestly not sure this teaching thing is something she’s cut out for. At least not at this level.”
I semi-agreed with him.
Sure, she was small.
And by small, I meant only five foot one, if that. She was beautiful and curvy, but the teenagers were all taller than her.
Like everyone else, they thought that she resembled a doll—which she did.
She had that porcelain white skin, black curly hair, and bottomless pit lavender eyes—and yes, I do mean lavender—that she almost looked unreal.
She looked like she’d shatter at a sharp-pitched noise.
“She could handle her own if she had the right class,” I confessed as we pushed through the double doors out of the theater building.
I came to a sudden halt when I saw Carmichael engaged in conversation with a tall, lanky man that was wearing glasses.
He was laughing and holding on to the computer that the kid had almost taken her head out with.
“Who’s that?” I found myself asking.
Honestly, I was quite proud of how level-headed I sounded.
“That,” Flint said, “is her new friend. The computer geek.”
I felt something in my stomach tighten at his words.