Redemption

by R. R. Banks

  The doctor who was standing in the room with us looked at Andrew with an almost pitying expression on his face.

  "See? He isn't making sense. He doesn't know what he's saying."

  But he did know what he was saying. I knew exactly what he meant. It was something that I had said to him countless times during our relationship. Any time he was picking out clothes. Any time he couldn't decide what to wear when we were going out, or to a dance at school. Anytime that he got dressed up for me, I would tell him that. He was trying to tell me in a way that I would understand that he was still there, he was still in there. I clung to that moment with near desperation. I held it close to me, letting it convince me that it would all be OK, that he would get better, that he would come back. We were only able to stay with him for a few days before we needed to come back home and return to our lives. A few weeks later he was finally discharged and came home. I hoped that in the familiar environment surrounded by his family and with me by his side, Michael would come out of it. That day never came. Instead, six months after his discharge the police found him under an overpass, a weapon in his hand.

  He was gone. He would never recover from that. Never again would I see a lucid moment or a glimmer of who he had been. While his body kept going, who he was, the person who I loved so much, was no longer there. He had dissolved away under the illness and it seemed that no one around me could really, truly understand what that put me through. It was in many ways worse than a death. He was still there, breathing, his heart beating, and his body walking through each day. But he would never again be the person I fell in love with or who I had built my future around. What had happened within his mind had not just taken Michael away from us, it had taken everything that I saw for my life. I had been standing on the very brink of all that I had wanted unfolding in front of me, and giving me a future I was so excited to explore. Then suddenly all of that disappeared and I was standing on the edge of emptiness.

  That had paved the way for a series of disastrous relationships after him. Each one with a man who seemed stronger and more powerful, but only proved to be controlling, cold, unfeeling, and even cruel. My mother had watched me go through each of those relationships, trying to support me and help me to see what I was going through, what I was putting myself through. I couldn't imagine how painful it was for her to watch her only child so lost. I admired her strength and courage. Each of those relationships had only built on the one before, eventually leading me into a rushed marriage to the first man who I thought showed me tenderness and compassion. Within a matter of weeks of our wedding day, I learned that he was the worst of them all. I hadn't stayed. I hadn't lost myself completely and what strength and courage I didn't have, my parents had for me. They saved me. They ensured that I got through that and that I still had a life ahead of me. But though neither of them would ever say it, I knew that deep inside of them they were disappointed. They had hoped as much as I had that my marriage would be the fairy tale that I had been hoping for and that it would whisk me away into a life of happiness and fulfillment. Now I was two years beyond my divorce, and there were times when I loved the life that I had made for myself, even if it was just me and The Reverend, but there were other times when it seemed that I was no closer to happiness and fulfillment than I had been that day when I signed those papers that gave me back my life.

  I was so young and yet in my years, I had managed to live more life than many women twice my age.

  My mother gently lifted The Reverend out of her lap and put him aside so that I could lay down and put my head where he had been. She gently ran her hand through my hair and we remained in silence for several long minutes.

  "Do you remember when your father went zip-lining?" she finally asked.

  I nodded.

  "Of course, I do. I was terrified that something was going to happen to him."

  "But it didn't,” she said. “But he never would have known that if he had let everyone around him control his thoughts and had listened to the voice inside him that said there was always a chance he could be hurt. He would have just stopped and stood there and looked at the zip-line and wondered what was on the other side. Instead, he found out."

  Chapter Thirteen

  Garrett

  "She's done it. She's finally done it this time. She ruined my life."

  I came out of the kitchen tossing a round of pizza dough back and forth between my hands and looked at Jason questioningly.

  "Did something happen at baseball practice?" I asked.

  "Yeah, something happened. Miss Martin happened."

  The mention of her name made my heart tighten, but I tried not to show it. I still hadn't told Jason that I knew Gwendolyn. I figured that there were some things that were probably best left unsaid.

  "What did she have to do with your baseball practice?" I asked.

  "I got all the way through practice only to have Coach call me over at the end and tell me that I wasn't going to be able to play in the game next week."

  I gestured for him to follow me into the kitchen so that I could keep making dinner. I put the dough onto a pizza stone and finished shaping it before adding a swirl of sauce. It was a recipe that I had picked up from my early years of firefighting and I still considered it the best thing that I made.

  "Why can't you play in the game? You said that you've been doing so well at practice. Your coach even said that you were going to get to start at that game."

  "Exactly," he said. I could hear the anger in his voice, but it was also trembling with emotion that he was fighting not to show. "I was supposed to start. They're going to be scouts there from some of the top schools. Now they're not going to be able to see me play."

  "You still haven't told me what Miss Martin did that made it so that you can't play in the game."

  "She failed me."

  "What?"

  "We had a test at the beginning of the week and we just got our grades back. She failed me. Coach told me at the end of practice that test grade pushes my cumulative grade too low for the school to consider me still eligible to participate in sports programs."

  I knew that he was telling me the truth and because that series of words was one that never would have come out of my son's mouth unless they had been said to him directly.

  "I don't understand," I said. "Your grade in one class is enough for the school to not let you play baseball?"

  He nodded.

  "It's a new policy. Rather than just looking at total GPA, you are required to maintain certain grades in all of your classes. If they drop under that grade at any point, it's immediate suspension from any participation in team activities other than practices until the grade comes up. That means that I'm not allowed to play in any of the games until I'm able to get my grade up in that class. We don't have another test for another three weeks. If there aren't any quizzes or projects or anything that can boost my grade, that means that I have to miss all of the games during that whole time. Coach could bench me for the rest of the season."

  I grabbed my phone and scrolled through my contacts. I found the coach and called him.

  "What's going on with Jason not being able to play next week?" I asked when the coach answered.

  "Before the end of practice this afternoon I was told that his History teacher alerted the office that his grade had dropped below the threshold for student-athletes. I had to let him know that because of the grading policy and according to his teacher saying that there's no way he'll be able to lift his grade up by the game, he won't be able to play in it."

  "Just like that?" I asked. "No warning or anything?"

  "There's nothing that I can do about it," he said. "I'm not the one who has control in this situation. The restrictions were put in place by the school and I can't change them. Trust me, I have tried to figure out a way that I can work around it. I want Jason out on that field next week as much as he wants to be out there. But there's really no way. The only person who can change the situation at all is his teacher
. If she'll change his grade, he can play. "

  "Alright," I said. "Thank you."

  I hung up the phone and dropped it back onto the counter. I looked over at Jason where he stood adding toppings to the pizza. He looked at me with hopeful eyes. I could see how much this meant to him and how unexpected it was. I was furious. Now it just seemed like Gwendolyn was being petty for the sake of being petty. She could have at least given him a few extra points just to push him over the threshold, so he was able to play. I knew that I needed to do something about this.

  The next afternoon I didn't bother to stop at the front office before heading through the hallways and into the Humanities wing. Students were still streaming out of their classrooms and they stepped out of my way as I stalked toward Gwendolyn's classroom. She was standing at the desk going over a paper with one of the students and she looked up at me when I walked in.

  "Why are you doing this?" I asked.

  Gwendolyn looked at the student beside her.

  "We will finish going over this next class, OK?"

  The girl nodded and took the paper, tucking it into the thick notebook in her arms and scurrying out of the room. Gwendolyn crossed the room angrily and closed the door before turning to me.

  "How dare you come in here like that?"

  "I needed to talk to you, yet again, about the way that you are treating Jason."

  She crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes at me.

  "And what is it that you think I'm doing this time?"

  "You failed him and now he's not able to play in the game next week."

  She gave a short, mirthless laugh and walked back over to her desk. She picked up a folder and flipped through the pages inside, taking one out and flattening it on the surface of the desk in front of her.

  "I didn't fail him. He failed."

  I looked at the paper that she had put on the desk and saw that it was a photocopy of the test. She had slashed at it with a red pen and scribbled comments in the corners.

  "How many questions would he have needed to get right to not fail?"

  "Does that really matter?"

  "It does. Because you could have shown a little bit of heart and given an extra credit question or two to help push him over."

  "Are you seriously standing here telling me how to do my job again? First, you tell me that I shouldn't punish him when he's disrespectful and doesn't do his work, and then you tell me that I need to just pass him for the hell of it?"

  "It's not for the hell of it," I said. "Do you have any idea what you're doing by making it so he can't play next week?"

  "I didn't make it so that it was anything," she argued. "He's the one that did it."

  "Stop being so fucking passive-aggressive. You know exactly what I mean. You talk a big game about how you think that he needs to apply himself so that he can be successful, but did you have any idea that he is incredibly talented? Did you know that his coach says that he has exceptional potential? Did you know that there are scouts that are going to be at the game that could be watching him?"

  "He's only a sophomore," she said.

  "It doesn't matter how young he is," I said. "They're looking at him. The longer that they look at him, the more they'll be thinking about him. That means that he could have top schools trying to get him during his senior year. He could even start a professional career. This one grade might not mean anything to you and you might think that you're making some sort of meaningful moral stand, but what you're doing is putting his future at risk. He's going to miss so many games that it might be the end of his season if another player takes his spot and starts doing well. Do you have any idea what that would do to him?"

  My breath was coming out of me in hard pants and I could feel the heat rushing up my body. I was standing only a foot away from her and I could see the flush across Gwendolyn's chest and smell the hint of her perfume.

  "He needs to be held accountable," she said. "You need to stop coddling him."

  "And you need to stop being so unreasonable," I said.

  She narrowed her eyes at me.

  "Don't tell me what to do."

  I closed the space between us in one step and grabbed her around the waist, yanking her up against me so hard she gasped when her body crushed against mine. I closed my mouth down on hers, kissing her ruthlessly. I forced my tongue into her mouth and held her tightly against me, pressing my hips forward to ensure that she could feel my cock growing harder. It strained toward her, craving her, and I nudged it into her belly insistently. I used the pressure of my body to force her back toward the desk until she was leaning back and then tore my mouth away from hers.

  Grabbing her by her hips, I turned Gwendolyn around and shoved her forward until she bent over the desk. I stepped back and gathered the skirt of her dress in both hands. I leaned forward over her as I pushed the skirt up over her hips and held it in a tight ball on her back.

  "I hate these dresses that you wear," I growled into her ear.

  I reached into my pocket and fought the condom out of my wallet where I had taken to carrying it weeks before and had never removed it. Tearing it open with my teeth, I rolled it into place. I used my free hand to try to pull her panties aside, but there was too much fabric covering the dripping opening. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the handles of scissors sticking up out of the pen holder. I grabbed them and cut her panties, tearing them away from her body as soon as they hung free. Without another moment of hesitation, I plunged into her. Gwendolyn gasped and arched up, propping herself onto her elbows and hanging her head. I knew that she was trying to stay as quiet as she could, holding back her sounds so that no one in the halls or the nearby classrooms could hear her.

  I didn't want her quiet. I didn't want her controlled.

  I grabbed onto her shoulder and used it for leverage to fuck her as hard as I could. Her ass bounced with each hard thrust and I growled, taking my hand from her shoulder to smack one cheek and then squeeze it, digging my fingertips into the lush flesh so I could keep up my pace and intensity. I had no intention of slowing down and within seconds I felt my entire body tense just before I exploded into her. I impaled her with a final thrust and felt her collapse around me in an orgasm that left her shaking and gasping for breath. I pulled out of her and zipped my pants back up. Balling up her cut panties in my hand, I walked out of the classroom and back to the parking lot.

  Gwendolyn

  I still felt raw, my emotions confused and tangled the next day as I sat behind my desk looking at the test paper in front of me. I had never felt something as explosive and earth-shattering as my encounter with Garrett the day before. I felt completely consumed by him. In one instance I was infuriated by him and wanted nothing more than for him to be out of my sight. Yet my body tingled with desire for him from the first moment that I saw him walk into the classroom and my passion and need only grew the longer he stood there in front of me. I wanted him nowhere near me and yet I wanted him inside me. His power and dominance were breathtaking, and I felt myself submit to him.

  But it wasn't just Garrett that had affected me. Jason touched something within me, swaying me in a way that I never thought that I would have been able to be swayed. I had spent so much time thinking that I was doing what was right for him and putting so much effort into reaching out to him and trying to push him toward the achievements I thought he needed. While I was doing that, though, I was overlooking the most important thing about him, and that was who he was as a person. When Garrett said that this one choice could take Jason's potential from him, could alter his entire future, I felt a stab of pain go through me. I knew what that felt like. I had felt it for myself and I had seen it in the eyes of a person who lost himself and a family torn apart by it. I couldn't let that happen to Jason, even if it wasn't the same. He was too young to be told that his dreams were worthless or that the future he saw ahead of him would never be his.

  When class ended I waited until most of the students were out of the cla
ssroom before getting Jason's attention. I gestured for him to come up to my desk, not wanting those students who hadn't yet left to notice. He sauntered up to me and I waited until we were alone to point at the test paper in front of me.

  "You know what you did wrong on this test," I said.

  His face hardened and his lips pressed tightly together, but he nodded.

  "Yes," he said.

  "And you know as well as I do that you could have done far better than this if you would just have applied yourself a little more."

  "Yes," he said.

  I could hear the aggression in his voice, but I commended him for the control he held over himself. There was a change in him, and I appreciated how hard he was trying not to lash out.