“H-how did you know that?” She licked her lips, drawing my attention to that succulent mouth of hers. That mouth I hadn’t tasted in well over three days, and it was driving me wild.
“Your brother let it slip that you didn’t work with the older age groups. I let it slip that you’d been taking over my sex-ed class.” I paused. “And it all degraded from there.”
She looked down at her hand, which was holding the bloody towel into place.
“I want to get better…and I’d also like to keep my job. I took it as a sign that this was my time,” she explained hesitantly.
I didn’t know what to say to that.
On one hand, I completely agreed with her. She needed to get over her fear. It wasn’t healthy.
But I also didn’t want her to ever be scared in the first place—no matter what the cause.
“They wouldn’t have fired you,” I promised. “I wouldn’t have let them.”
She laughed. “You didn’t even know me then, Ezra. I was still invisible.”
I winced. “I would’ve known that you were fired because you didn’t take over my class. I wouldn’t have stood for it.”
She smiled sadly.
“Well, it’s not like you need to worry about it anymore. I’m perfectly fine, and I’m working through my fears.” She paused. “And your class is full of boys that are sweet. The girls are even sweeter. I’m lucky.”
“Next year you might not be,” I admitted. “What then?”
She sighed. “Next year it might not matter because I might be hit by a random bus crossing the road, and I’ll no longer be of this planet.”
Her flippancy made me angry.
“Don’t.”
Her eyes widened. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t joke,” I said. “Not about that.”
The idea of her not being around anymore felt like a blow right to the heart.
I hadn’t realized how attached I’d become until tonight. Her sweetness. Her beauty. Her teasing. Not having it around me anymore scared the absolute crap out of me, which in turn terrified me even more at the intensity of my feelings for her.
I’d never felt like this before. This feeling was utterly new, and it felt like something that was making my heart feel like it might burst straight the fuck out of my chest.
“Let’s go,” I ordered, getting out of my seat. “I don’t want that getting infected.”
She laughed. “Isn’t alcohol a disinfectant?”
I gave her a roll of my eyes. “Sure, let’s go with that.”
Teasingly, she flipped me off, but the lightness and laughter shining in her eyes was much better than seeing the terror of moments before as we spoke about what had happened to her.
Needless to say, I’d do just about anything to see her smile.
Chapter 10
It’s lit.
-Thomas Edison
Raleigh
I got six stitches in my thigh and a shot in the ass due to my clumsiness.
The icing on the cake was Ezra watching me bend over and pull down my pants, a look of heat in his eyes.
Now, I was sitting in the front seat of his truck in front of my house, wondering if I could talk him into coming inside.
Unfortunately, I knew that the moment he walked around the hood of the truck and helped me out that he wasn’t going to stay. Even if I asked nicely.
He looked shaken after what he’d learned about my assault and hadn’t gotten rid of the look ever since my dad and Croft had told him about it.
To make matters worse, he’d literally watched me get stitches with horror written all over his face.
Which then, in turn, made me feel stupid because I’d gone and screwed myself up, showing him exactly what he would be getting if he continued to date me.
And the bad thing was, ever since the night that we’d slept together, he hadn’t made a single move in my direction since.
He hadn’t even tried to cop a feel or kiss me.
Hugs, yes—not that I was complaining about Ezra hugs, they were the best—but there were other things I liked about him, too. Such as his lips…and his penis.
Like right now, he was keeping so much distance between us that I could definitely not miss the signs.
I was making him nervous.
“Do you want to come inside?” I asked, trying not to sound hopeful.
He shook his head. “I have an early morning practice tomorrow.”
I looked down at my feet. “I guess I’ll see you at the staff meeting tomorrow?”
I sounded almost hopeful as I asked that, and I knew that I likely sounded pathetic, too.
“I’ll be there.” He grinned, gesturing for me to walk to the door. “Thank you for inviting me to your parents’ place.”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure that I was actually the one to invite you…”
He chuckled and stopped at the bottom step, while I continued up the other three steps that led to my front porch.
Once the door was open, I flipped the porch light on and then turned to stare down at the man I’d never once entertained the possibility of being at my house.
Let alone dropping me off.
I guess I should be happy that he’d actually noticed me.
Yet…I wasn’t.
At least not any longer.
I was obsessed with the man, and I wanted so much more it wasn’t even funny.
“Well,” I hesitated, sounding nervous. “Be careful on the way home.”
Ezra winked and then started to back down the pathway back to my driveway.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I looked down at my hands, away from that perfect smile so I wouldn’t launch myself at him. When I next looked up, he was at his truck and climbing inside.
When he sat there watching me expectantly, I frowned.
He gestured with his chin, and I looked over my shoulder to see the opened door at my back.
I frowned.
“What?” I mouthed, seeing no need to actually say the words since he wouldn’t be able to hear them anyway.
Go. Inside.
He mouthed those words back at me, and I chafed inwardly.
Turning my back on the man of my dreams, I walked inside and shut the door before locking it tightly.
Once that was done, only then did I hear the roar of his truck start up.
Hurrying to the window, I looked outside and watched him back down my driveway, and then accelerate down the street.
Sighing in defeat, I flipped the lights back out, and then hurried to my bedroom.
After stripping off my beer and blood-stained pants, I walked to the shower and hosed myself off, hating that I had to wash the scent of Ezra off my skin.
Moments after getting out, I heard my phone ringing from my pants pocket where I’d left it, and hurried to it, putting it to my ear before I’d even looked at who was calling.
I smiled when I heard his voice, but frowned moments after that when I realized that he hadn’t meant to call me.
Had he meant to call me, he most assuredly wouldn’t have called me while also talking to another woman at the same time.
Ezra was a lot of things, but a mean person wasn’t one of them.
And it didn’t take a magic 8-ball to see that I cared for him.
“I’m sorry, Ezra,” an achingly familiar voice said quietly. “You look rough. Are you sure you don’t want to catch a drink?”
Shuffling noises sounded, and then I heard Ezra speak, but I couldn’t make out what the words were before the woman’s voice started to fill the line again.
“Or we can go get ice cream.”
And it was then that I realized that I was definitely a jealous hag.
Ezra and I hadn’t made any promises to each other whatsoever. However, whether he realized it or not, I’d given him one.
It was just sad that I would likely never get one from him.
“…Ice cream,” I heard Ezra reply.
I frowned, pulling the phone away from my ear, and wondering what I should do.
I, of course, had many options. One major one being hanging up and hoping he didn’t butt dial me all over again.
The other option was to listen to what was being said, and not say a word.
I did what any sane woman would do.
I listened.
To every. Freakin’. Word.
“I’m glad that you’ll come,” I heard Coach Casper say. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
My mind went wild as all the possible scenarios went through my brain, and the only logical one I could come up with was the one I kept going back to.
I’d heard Ezra agree to a date with Coach Casper, the one person in the entire school that I’d never get along with.
It was kind of hard to when Coach Casper—I refused to call her by her real name because it was stupid—picked on me all through my informative years.
Chapter 11
Eat more hole foods.
-Donut marquee sign
Ezra
“It’s a good thing that we get to go home early today,” I heard Raleigh say to another teacher, Ms. Holdenbrook. Ms. Holdenbrook was the art teacher and was clearly hanging on Raleigh’s every word.
Then again, Ms. Holdenbrook was the third-newest teacher at Gun Barrel ISD, and so new and green that she hadn’t even gotten her teaching certificate in the mail.
Lucky for her she was young, and likely wouldn’t be too traumatized by her class of students that she’d taken over when the old art teacher—Mrs. Rosemary—had retired after she’d had a major heart attack.
“Why is that?” Ms. Holdenbrook asked.
“Because a few of the kids thought it’d be hilarious to toilet paper my trees,” she muttered darkly.
The sweet little woman I’d left on her doorstep last night was gone. In her place was a raving woman who’d much rather geld me than kiss me.
What the hell?
I didn’t know what happened between last night and today, but something sure the fuck had.
She was staring at me like I’d run over her dog right in front of her, and I didn’t know what the fuck had happened.
I couldn’t even ask her what the fuck was wrong because the goddamn auditorium where we were all shoved was filled to the brim with people.
“I’d like to discuss first the morale in the school,” Mrs. Sherpa started with, as she fucking did every single time she started a stupid staff meeting.
We had a hundred thousand things to do today as we got ready for the standardized testing we were starting come Monday, and she wanted to bore us to death with student morale.
“Mrs. Sherpa,” one of our veteran teachers, Mrs. Golden, interrupted. “I’m going to be quite honest with you. Morale is absolute shit because we’re having to teach to this stupid freakin’ test and not to what they should be learning. They’re being told if they fail, they won’t graduate. They’re also scared shitless because they should be planning graduation and getting excited about prom, not whether or not they’re going to pass this asshole test.”
My lips twitched.
She was right.
I never worried about these tests when I was a kid, and I’d had to take them.
Now, students looked at me like they were on the verge of a panic attack on test days. When I took my test, there was no question on whether I would pass it. Nor was there an equation on whether my neighbor or the kid behind me would pass it.
“Ms. Crusie, do you have something to say?” Mrs. Sherpa asked. “I see you over here sinking in your seat.”
That was likely due to the fact that I hadn’t looked away from her since she arrived and refused to sit next to me.
She kept casting me nervous sideways glances and my dick was twitching each time she bit that goddamn lip.
“Ummm,” she hesitated.
“If you don’t feel like paying attention, then why are you even attending?” she snapped.
That’s when I lost my patience.
“She doesn’t want to tell you that morale is a goddamn crap shoot. That it makes you sound seriously out of the loop because you walk these halls just as well as we do. And honestly? With that threatening memo that went out last week about all of our jobs being in jeopardy if we don’t score well on the tests, nobody will say anything. Picking on Ms. Crusie because she’s too worried to say anything just makes you sound like a bad guy,” I interrupted.
Mrs. Sherpa’s eyes came to me.
She took a deep breath and straightened her spine. “I’m sorry, Ms. Crusie. I didn’t mean to take my bad mood out on you. Coach McDuff is correct.” She started to rub at her temples. “And I have noticed that student morale is down. I was hoping we could make a few concessions this week. Does anyone have any ideas on how we could do that?”
Raleigh hesitantly raised her hand.
“They just opened up the splash pad next door,” she said softly when the principal nodded at her. “This Friday is early release. We could spend that morning there, then eat pizza next door before returning to school. And since it’s still technically on school property, we wouldn’t have to obtain permission slips.”
The pizza place and the splash pad they’d just built in town was rented property that the school owned. But I could see one problem.
“As good of an idea as that is, we can’t do it because there are too many students,” I objected.
“We could take them in shifts,” Coach Casper interjected from my side. “Coach McDuff and I can…”
I missed whatever else that Coach Casper said.
My eyes were watching Raleigh, so I didn’t miss the narrowing of her eyes. Nor did I miss the death glare that she sent Coach Casper’s way.
I felt my lips twitch.
She may be mad, but she was not indifferent.
Good.
I leaned down farther into my seat and stared straight ahead as the principal discussed the legalities of the trip with the superintendent.
“All right,” Mrs. Sherpa replied. “I’ll figure out later if that’s acceptable. Who wants to give me a rundown on classes this month? Any trouble?”
I was busy watching Raleigh, so I noticed how she didn’t say a damn word about my class.
I raised my hand. “Now that baseball season is underway, I’m more than capable of taking my health class back over.”
Mrs. Sherpa’s eyebrows rose. “You were just saying how nice it was to have the free time to do the field maintenance.”
I shrugged. “They hired a new lawn guy that’s going to start soon. I no longer need that free period anymore.”
Not to mention I didn’t want Raleigh to feel uncomfortable.
But did the woman take the gift she was given?
Hell no.
The stubborn little shit.
“I’d like to keep the class if that’s all right,” Raleigh broke in. “We’re getting along great, and I would hate to have to disrupt their learning.”
“It’s sex-ed,” Coach Casper interjected. “They’re not going to be upset over Coach McDuff taking over. No offense, but everyone loves Coach McDuff. There’s a waiting list to get into his math classes first and second period.”
There was that.
But I wished Coach Casper wouldn’t try to help…because she wasn’t.
Not at all.
Raleigh’s eyes narrowed on me, and then Coach Casper. The clench of her jaw had my dick hardening.
“I’m perfectly capable taking over,” I offered. “But if Ms. Crusie wants to keep it, that’s fine. I was just offering my expertise.”
Mrs. Sherpa nodded. “Who was in charge of drinks today?”
Raleigh raised her hand. “I am, but I couldn’t carry all eight gallons of tea by myself, so I still have six to go get out of the staff fridge.”
Raleigh stood up as Mrs.
Sherpa dismissed her, and I stood up as well. “I’ll help.”
Raleigh’s eyes narrowed. Mrs. Sherpa’s dismissive wave had me smiling—on the inside anyway.
Following behind Raleigh’s practical jog down the auditorium, I found myself grinning ear to ear.
She was like a scared little rabbit.
Chapter 12
Not to brag, but I don’t even need to wear camo to go unnoticed.
-Raleigh’s secret thoughts
Raleigh
I felt like a hunted deer as I practically ran down the center aisle of the auditorium.
I hurried even faster when I chanced a look over my shoulder and found him gaining, despite him not appearing to rush in the least.
Pushing through the auditorium doors, I cursed myself every way that I could muster.
Why had I acted like I cared? Why did I care?
I shouldn’t.
My booted heels clicked on the stained concrete floor as my breathing started to accelerate.
I couldn’t decide whether I liked that he was following me, all intimidating like, or if I didn’t.
I was leaning toward liked it, which was what scared me.
Not with the way he so easily could accept a date by my most hated enemy—though Coach Casper hadn’t done anything overtly mean or confrontational. She just had the bad luck to be pretty and also be attracted to the one man that had always been it for me.
It was when I pulled out my master key—the one that unlocked every single door in the school that all teachers had access to besides the principal’s office and other administrative offices—that it happened.
The key fell from my hand, and I stopped and bent all in one motion.
That was when the worst possible thing happened.
My pants split.
With Ezra standing not three feet behind me.
Face flaming, I stood up very carefully and willed myself to disappear. For the ground to open up and swallow me whole.
I felt everything inside of me scream in embarrassment as I prayed for all I was worth that the rip wasn’t as bad as I feared it was.
I was wrong.
It was worse.
My hand started searching for the rip, and I found it instantly.
Hissy Fit (The Southern Gentleman Series Book 1) Page 10
