by Nichole Rose
"Remind me to send her a giant bouquet."
Rowan gives me a tiny smile. It's not much and it wobbles after a brief moment, but seeing it loosens the knots in my stomach and fans that little flicker of hope into something bigger, brighter. I cling to it with both hands, not willing to let her talk her way out of my life. Not over a dick like Johnson.
"You're mine, pretty Paradise. And I'm yours. Richard Johnson won't ever change that. In fact, he won't be making any changes at Commodore ever again."
"You're firing him?"
"A teacher came forward today with concerns that he may be inflating test scores by changing answers on score sheets. The board is going to strongly encourage his retirement at the end of the year." I blow out a breath. "At least that was the plan. After what he did to you today, we'll be speeding that process up real quick. I want him out of there now."
"Don't fire him."
I blink at Rowan, speechless.
"L-let him retire," she says. And even though he's made her life a living hell, even though he broke her heart today, compassion wells in her eyes and spills from her lips. "He d-doesn't have anything else. He's a sad, lonely, miserable old man. But he w-wasn't always evil. He may not deserve respect or dignity, but h-his retirement shouldn't be taken from him."
I stare at her, awed. Humbled. So fucking in love, my chest actually aches.
"Please," she whispers when I don't say anything.
"I'll see what I can do," I promise her. I want to add conditions, demand that she stay with me if I give her this, but I can't do that. Staying has to be her choice, not something I force her into. I want her to choose me one more time. Not because I didn't give her a choice, but because a future with me is what she wants more than anything.
Relief fills her eyes. They track back and forth across my face as if she's memorizing me. As if this is the last time she'll ever see me. It scares the hell out of me. My entire being cries out in protest, begging for her to stay. To save me from a future of pure misery, of unparalleled hell.
Her lips tic upward. Her dimples pop out. What little composure I have left escapes in a ravenous growl. I roll on top of her, pinning her beneath me.
"What are you thinking?" I ask, desperate to know.
"I'm thinking about my mom," she says, surprising me just like she did the first time she told me that. It feels like lifetimes ago instead of a handful of days. "She always taught me to be brave and reach for what I want. To fight for it."
"Yeah?" I whisper, my heart in my throat.
She bites her lip, nods. Her gaze drifts across my face again. "I'm still scared being with me might ruin your career, but I don't want to break up with you, Sebastian. You make my heart so happy. You make me so happy. I love you so damn much."
"Baby," I whisper, pressing my forehead to hers as another wave of awe and gratitude courses through me. This one is fierce, bowling me over. My throat burns. My heart goes wild in my chest, hammering against my ribcage in soul-shaking thumps.
"You're my paradise too," she says, wrapping her arms around me and hugging me like she's afraid I might slip through her fingers and disappear. "My giant, gorgeous, sexy Gandalf."
"Gandalf?" I chuckle, unable to stop myself.
"I felt like Frodo today," she says. "Cadence was Samwise. We threw a ring in the fire and defeated a troll. Well, I guess he's really more of a Balrog though since he tried to take you away from me. I don't know. It's a whole thing. Just go with it."
God, I love the shit that comes out of her mouth. It always seems so random, but there is always so much depth behind her statements, so much thought to them. I adjust my position, dipping my head to capture her lips with mine.
For long moments, the only sounds that come from her mouth are content little purrs and needy whines. My dick threatens to snap in half. I undress her slowly, unveiling her beautiful body bit by bit, until she's bare beneath me, staring up at me with wonder in her big brown, red-rimmed eyes.
She helps me pull my clothes off, neither of us speaking. She touches me everywhere, igniting fires inside my bloodstream. They consume me from the inside out, setting her ablaze too. The light surrounding her brightens as I make love to her with my hands and mouth. When I finally slip inside her, joining us like we're meant to be, she's glowing again, shining bright as the sun.
"I love you," I whisper against her lips, rocking into her. I hold her close as we make love, keeping her locked tightly to me, unable to let her go for even a moment. I came too close today to losing her. It's going to be a long damn time before I forget how that felt.
"I love you," she cries out, her body quickening around mine. She arches and writhes, her nails scrabbling down my back and then digging into my ass. She pulls me closer, throws her head back and moans my name.
Her inner walls lock down around me, so tight, so good, that I roar her name and follow her over the edge. We come together, fall toward completion, together.
Always together.
"Paradise," I whisper over and over, placing adoring kissing all over her face. "My little owl. I love you."
"Sebastian," she whispers back, still trembling beneath me, around me. Making my dick hard all over again.
I start to move again, loving her one more time, harder, deeper. We get lost in our own little world. Nothing else exists, nothing else intrudes. It's just me and her.
Paradise.
Chapter Nine
Rowan
"Roger, please stop pushing Corey," I say, exasperated. As expected, his relationship with Jamie ended in drama a few short days after it started. He told her that her daddy didn't know everything. She wasn't happy about it. There were tears and some shouting, and then they decided they were going to be best friends.
Now Corey Cochran follows her around like a puppy.
Roger hates it.
Jamie is annoyed with both of them. She desperately wants friends, but she's softhearted. She hates watching them bicker. So she ignores them both. They're miserable because of it. They haven't quite figured out yet that they would make her happy if they just stopped fighting.
"Boys," she says from beside me, scoffing.
I bite my lip to hide a smile as we all troop toward the auditorium for a special assembly. Sebastian thought it was the best way to tell the kids that Principal Johnson will no longer be working here. The morning after…everything…happened, Sebastian met with the board to plead Johnson's case. The board wanted to fire him. So did Sebastian. But he kept his promise.
I'm not sure why I asked it of him. I think, though, that I just didn't want to give Johnson that power over us or our relationship. I didn't want to look back with any regrets or guilt. I wanted…well, I wanted to be better than him. How can I teach these kids to be better if I'm not willing to make the same demands of myself?
They never would have known the truth, but I would have.
The board agreed to allow him to retire. Sebastian graciously gave him two weeks to get his shit together and say whatever goodbyes he needed to say. There were caveats, of course. Principal Johnson wasn't allowed to interact with the teachers or students without a member of the board present. He also wasn't permitted any say over anything at the school.
I wanted to tell him that I forgive him, but Sebastian put his foot down and refused to let him near me. So I wrote him a letter. I told him that I forgive him. I prayed for him to find peace. It felt good, as if writing it washed away those last lingering barbs he left buried inside me.
My students made him a card to thank him for all the years he spent in education. I don't think he started out as a bad person. His grief over losing his wife sent him spiraling down the wrong path. He got lost, became consumed by the only thing he thought he had left. Had he opened his eyes and looked around, maybe he would have realized sooner that he was poisoning the school. But lost people are often blind to how far they've wandered.
I hope he finds his way again.
I hope he finds peace.
His two weeks ended yesterday. Leslie Holland will be filling in as our principal until a replacement is found. A lot of the teachers wanted Sebastian to do it, but we both decided that wasn't the best idea. We've been open about our relationship since everything went down, but we're still trying to be discreet. There have been some scandalized whispers about us, but Johnson's vision of Sebastian's future hasn't come to fruition.
Most people simply don't care that we're together. Those who complain…well, somehow, Sebastian always keeps those whispers from touching me. He protects our little slice of paradise like it's his job. I don't mind. He's incredibly sexy when he's all protective and bossy.
When my class makes it to the auditorium, I see him on the stage with Leslie, his dark head bent as they murmur back and forth. As soon as I cross the threshold, he lifts his head as if sensing my presence. His eyes lock on me.
Even from across the room, the heat in his intense gaze sears me. Butterflies burst into flight in my stomach. My womb clenches and I shiver. I want him endlessly. The dirty things he does to me when we're alone are so damn hot.
My fingers itch to fix his wild hair. He's so damn beautiful. He's wearing another dark suit today. It hangs on his broad frame perfectly.
His lips lift into a smile.
I wave and smile back. And then Roger and Corey start pushing each other, and I have to look away to deal with the two of them.
"Roger, you're sitting at the far end," I say, pointing down the row of seats reserved for my class. "Corey, you're sitting in the middle."
"Can I sit with Jamie?" he asks.
"I want to sit with Jamie," Roger protests.
"No way," Jamie says, turning her little nose up at both of them.
Roger and Corey's faces both fall.
"Jamie is sitting with me," I say firmly.
"When you two learn to get along and treat each other with respect," Sebastian says, coming up behind me, "Jamie might want to sit by you. But when you're mean to each other, you make her sad. As her friends, it's your job to make her heart happy, not to hurt her heart."
Roger and Corey share an uneasy look.
"We make your heart sad?" Roger asks Jamie.
She nods, her expression as serious as I've ever seen it. "I don't like it when you fight. It's mean. I want you both to be my friends."
Roger and Corey share another uneasy look, as if they'd never considered before that their constant bickering over her was making her sad. Little boys are kind of oblivious.
"Take your seats, kids," I murmur.
Roger looks at Jamie one final time and then does as told, hurrying down the aisle. The rest of the class fall in line behind him, taking their seats. Corey gets back into line with them, his little brows furrowed as he thinks through the problem in front of him.
I have a feeling Sebastian might have just helped Jamie find the friends she deserves.
"Hi," I whisper, turning to face him once the kids are all where they're supposed to be. I tip my head back to look up at him and smile. "Thank you for that."
"Boys are dumb when it comes to girls," he says, smirking at me. "We never know what the…heck women want."
"You aren't so bad at figuring it out," I tease him.
"That's because you're different, little owl. You're not just a woman. You're magic." He scoots closer to me to allow Lydia McCormick's class to squeeze past him down the aisle.
The auditorium is quickly filling up, hundreds of little voices buzzing with the excitement of being out of class for a little while. They're wired today.
"You're pretty magical yourself," I murmur to Sebastian, clasping my hands together behind my back so I don't reach for him. It's so hard to be this close to him and not be allowed to touch him. My hands actually twitch with the desire to feel him beneath my palms.
His signature, panty-melting smile works like a wrecking ball on my insides, intensifying the ache to touch him, kiss him. As much as I'm going to miss him being here every day, it's for the best. The things he makes me want to do to him are definitely not school appropriate.
"I need to get back up there," he murmurs, reaching out to touch my arm. It's an innocent gesture, one no one would really notice, but I can tell by the relief in his gaze that he needed it as badly as I do. "I just wanted to check on you."
"I'm good," I promise him.
"Yeah, you are." He smiles again, his dark eyes crinkling at the corners. "See you soon, little owl."
"Bye." I watch him turn and head back toward the stage. He stops every few feet to say hi to one of the teachers or to talk to a student. When he gets to Cadence, whose class sits closer to the front with the rest of the second graders, he murmurs something that makes her hold her hand up for a high five and laugh.
He shoots her a wink and then jogs the rest of the way to the stage.
"Miss Lassiter?" Jamie asks.
"Yeah, sweetheart?" I slide into my seat, tilting my head closer to hers so I can hear her. The auditorium echoes with so many people all talking at once.
"If you mawwy Dr. Thorne, does that make you a doctor too?"
"If I marry him?" I chuckle, caught off guard.
"He looks at you like my daddy looks at my mom," she says, pursing her lips. "You look at him that way too."
"Oh." I nibble on my lip, thinking through my answer. "Well, we like each other. But if we were to get married, I wouldn't be a doctor. I would just be Mrs. Thorne. You have to go to school for a really long time to be a doctor."
"Oh." Her eyes narrow on me behind her glasses. "Do you want to mawwy him?"
Lord, yes. But he hasn't asked me. We've been slowly moving me in with him over the last two weeks. We spend all our free time together. His siblings are coming to meet me soon, and my mom and George want us to fly to London over our next break. But we haven't really talked about marriage or the future. I just know that he's on a mission to get me pregnant. I'm not putting up much of a fight.
"He hasn't asked me to marry him," I murmur, figuring I probably shouldn't confide all of that to an eight-year-old.
"Boys are dumb," she huffs on my behalf.
I laugh quietly.
A few minutes later, Leslie steps up to the podium to call the assembly to order. The kids are harder to silence than usual. I think they sense that things have changed around here because their excitement is palpable. It has been all day.
They finally quieten down after a few warning glares from the teachers in the room.
Leslie introduces herself to the kids even though most of them have already met her. She's spent the last two weeks here with Sebastian, trying to get to know everyone. They're working so hard to make this transition as easy as possible on the kids. I'm so proud of him and the incredible, caring man he is.
I watch my class carefully as Leslie explains that Principal Johnson won't be coming back to the school. A few of my kids stare at each other with big eyes. A ripple of sound moves through the massive room like a schoolwide sigh of relief. It breaks my heart a little that Johnson didn't even see what he was doing to the kids here. We protected them as much as we could, but they were all leery of him, all a little frightened of him.
I know with Sebastian and Leslie at the helm, whoever replaces Johnson won't make them feel the same way. The next principal will be a good one, someone these kids will learn to love. Someone who will love them. They deserve nothing less.
"Miss Lassiter."
I glance up when I hear Leslie say my name fifteen minutes into the assembly. I feel everyone in the auditorium turn to look at me. Most of the teachers know something went down between me, Cadence, and Johnson, but they haven't been prying for information or details. They're just glad he's gone. It's unnerving to have the entire school focusing on me.
"Can you come up here, please?" Leslie asks, motioning for me.
I glance from her to Sebastian. He nods at me, silently letting me know everything is fine. He's smiling, mischief in his eyes. He's up to something.
I climb to my feet and adjust my shirt.
Lana hops up from her seat a few rows up and hurries back to me. "I'll watch them for you," she murmurs, squeezing my arm and smiling.
"Thanks." I take a breath and head toward the stage, curious as hell to know what's going on. Sebastian meets me at the stairs, holding his hand out to help me ascend. My skin hums where he touches me, singing like it always does.
He escorts me to the center of the stage.
Leslie grins at me, her eyes twinkling just like Sebastian's. They are definitely up to something. They aren't related, but they're so much alike, they might as well be. The bond they share is obvious. Sebastian adores her. She feels the same way about him. I really like her too.
"I believe you need this," she says, handing the microphone to Sebastian.
He takes it, winking at her, before he turns to me. His expression is so soft and warm, so full of love. God, it's no wonder Johnson knew something was going on between us. Sebastian looks at me like I'm the only woman in the world.
I look at him the same way.
"What are you up to?" I ask, narrowing my eyes on him.
"Nothing, little owl." He smirks at me and then turns to look out over the rows of kids. "Miss Lassiter doesn't know it yet, but I have a surprise for her," he says, speaking into the microphone. "I think I might need a little help with it. Do you think you can help me?"
"Yeah!" the kids all yell.
"Excellent." He grins at them. "On the count of three, I want you all to say what we talked about when I visited your classes, all right?"
The kids all shout their agreement.
I stare between him and them, partly amused and partly nervous. I have no idea what he talked them into doing for him. There is no limit to what he'll do to make me happy. He says it's his job to keep me that way.
"Mrs. Holland is going to count for me. When she says three, you do your part. Don't leave me hanging," he says. "Your part is the best part."
The kids all shout their agreement again.
