STORM: A Standalone Romance (85 page)

“Gentlemen!” I called as I walked to my desk, dropping my leather case on the top of the desk as I gestured to three boys standing at the back of the room. “Please take a seat.”

The boys quickly sat as the bell rang, the last student rushing through the door as I walked over to close it. I turned again and surveyed the room, silently counting heads as I walked back to my desk. There should have been fifteen kids in the room. There were only fourteen.

“Where’s JT?”

It was more a rhetorical question than one I expected an answer to. But one of the boys who’d been standing at the back of the room when I walked in immediately answered.

“He’s in the principal’s office. He got in trouble over the weekend.”

“What kind of trouble?”

Fourteen pairs of eyes widened as they stared at me. And then the room erupted with chatter, everyone trying to explain all at once. I held up a hand, gesturing for silence.

“One person only, please.”

The first boy—Charlie, a football player JT usually sat beside—knelt in his seat like he was giving a presentation on Shakespeare rather than spreading gossip.

“He went to Sean Wallace’s party Friday night and got smashed. Then he wandered around the town square—apparently singing “Stitches” at the top of his lungs as he went. The cops hauled him in and his sister had to go pick him up at the county jail Saturday morning.”

Anger had begun to burn deep in my chest with Charlie’s first words and it just grew as I listened to the story and heard the other kids titter with laughter. I wanted to smack every one of them, Charlie for spreading gossip and the others for thinking it was funny. But I knew what I really wanted was to find Penelope and get a proper explanation from her lips.

I held up my hand again and silenced the class.

“Enough gossip. Get out your books. I want you to read the first chapter of ‘
Of Mice and Men.’
”

The students groaned, but they did as they were told. I waited long enough to make sure each of them had their books out. I stepped out of the classroom and crossed the hall to Mrs. Needham’s history class.

“Would you mind keeping an eye on my class? I need to step out for a few minutes.”

“Of course,” she said, clearly happy to do it. Maybe she was relieved to finally be able to repay me for all the times I’d done the same for her over the last month or so.

I didn’t stop to ask. I rushed out of the building, jumping into my second hand pickup, the rev of the engine satisfying as I jerked it into reverse and sped toward the town square. I pulled out my cellphone as I drove, punching in a quick text that I sent to my lawyer:

Put it in motion.

To hell with diplomacy. To hell with being nice. If she was going to let my son run around drinking and getting himself arrested, she better believe I was going to march in and take control. I wasn’t going to sit back and watch JT ruin his future just because I didn’t want to hurt some pretty girl’s feelings. Penelope’s custody of JT was a fucking joke and I wasn’t going to let this go on a minute longer than I had to.

I pulled to a sliding stop outside the bakery and burst through the front doors, ready battle.

Chapter 5

Penelope

I was kneading bread dough with all the energy I could conjure, exhaustion sitting so heavy on my shoulders that I could have just laid on the worktable and gone to sleep right there. I have never been so angry in all my life. And anger is a very exhausting emotion. To pace the floors half the night only to find out JT had been arrested and was being held down at the county jail was bad enough, but fighting with him all weekend, trying to get him to talk to me about what had led to his behavior, was even worse. It was almost a relief to drop him off at school this morning.

And then
he
was standing in front of me and I knew just by glancing at his face that I was in trouble.

“What the hell were you thinking?”

I stood back from the table, an irrational part of me convinced that Mr. James was about to jump over it to pummel me with his very capable looking hands.

“Excuse me?”

“You let him go to a party where there was alcohol?”

“I didn’t know there would be alcohol. I assumed Sean’s parents…” I stopped myself, suddenly realizing that I had no reason to defend myself to this man. What happened when JT was off campus was really none of his business.

“Why do you care what happens to my brother when he’s not in your classroom?”

Mr. James’ eyes narrowed. “What kind of guardian allows an underage child to drink?”

“He wasn’t drinking at my house. And he’s being punished, believe me.”

“He could have been injured. He could have gotten behind the wheel—“

“He doesn’t even have his driver’s permit yet.”

“But, still, he could have been hurt.”

“And that’s my problem. Not yours.” I moved around the table, glancing through the door that separated the front counter from the kitchens before I shut it. Then I turned back to Mr. James. “You sure seem to spend an awful lot of time obsessing over my little brother. Is there something going on there that I should know about?”

His eyebrows rose. “Are you accusing me or inappropriate behavior?”

“Why are you here? Don’t you have a class you should be teaching?”

“I want to know what happened Friday night.”

I turned my back to him, sticking my hands under the facet to wash the sticky dough off of them. “It’s really none of your business.”

“He wasn’t in class this morning.”

“That’s probably because Susan wanted to talk to him about his behavior. He was still wearing his football jersey when he was arrested, so she felt that he should suffer the consequences of acting disrespectfully while representing the school.”

I don’t know why I explained that to him. It really wasn’t any of his business.

I had gone to Susan and asked her to speak to JT. I thought that if the school got involved, perhaps it would get through to JT in a way that I hadn’t succeeded at just yet. But I hadn’t expected a visit from his English teacher.

“Did Susan speak to you?”

He didn’t answer me. I glanced at him. He was staring down at the table where my mound of dough was resting before the next round of kneading. I watched him, noted the anger that seemed to roll off of him in waves. But I also noted the wide set of his shoulders, the way his sports coat fit him almost perfectly, the way his jeans…I shook my head and turned back to the sink, shaking my hands a little before I grabbed a paper towel to dry them.

“He’s ruining his future with this behavior.”

“Do you think I don’t know that?”

“Going to juvenile detention—“

“He’s not. The cop who picked him up is a friend of the family. He didn’t book him. He just held him in the county jail overnight in an attempt to scare him.”

“So he doesn’t have to go to court?”

“Not this time.”

Again the silence.

“Why does it matter so much to you? Surely you’ve had other students who were bigger trouble makers than JT. Why are you so interested in him?”

“I have my reasons.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “I think I have a right to know what’s going on. It’s not normal for a teacher to take so much interest in one student like this.”

“I’m not a pedophile, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

The thought hadn’t actually entered my thoughts, but now that he’d put it there…I shuddered, my skin crawling as images I didn’t want to entertain shot through my mind.

“Maybe you should go.”

“Look, Penelope, I just want what’s best for JT. And you…you seem to be struggling so much.”

“I have this under control, thank you very much.”

“I don’t think you do.”

There was naked honesty in his words that cut through the fog of confusion that had settled over me. I was still working on why he would care so much about one student. And he was accusing me of failing to live up to my responsibilities. He might as well have told me I was incompetent, that I was the failure I’d told myself for three years that I wasn’t. It was like he was giving voice to all the self-doubts that had been swirling around me from the moment I stepped out of the haze of grief and into the paralyzing world of my new reality.

“How dare you?” I said, each word clipped. “You know absolutely nothing about me.”

“I know enough. And I can see that you need help.”

“Not from the likes of you.”

He came toward me, his hands held out in front of him like he was trying to show me he came in peace. But when he reached for my hands, I swatted him away, a little squeal slipping from between my lips as I stepped back and found myself quickly trapped between the sink and him.

“I want to help, Penny,” he said, grabbing my wrists as I tried to push him away. “I want to fix this, make it so that we can all work together to figure this thing out.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

I tried to push him again, but he had my wrists. He yanked them back behind me, forcing my body up against his. And suddenly I was enveloped in him, in his scent and his heat, in the force that was his masculinity. I looked up, determined to tell him exactly what I thought of him. But his lips were right there and then they were on mine. I pulled back slightly, but he followed, asking for entrance, asking to taste me the way I’d wanted to taste him from the first moment we met. I told myself I wasn’t attracted to him. Told myself that the fantasies that filled my mind in the weakest moments of the day were just an overactive imagination filling the space left by my lack of romantic life. But as he pulled me even closer to him, as the pounding of his heart made itself known against my chest, as his taste filled my senses, I knew there was no denying the attraction I had felt from that first meeting.

Despite myself, I felt the tension leave my shoulders, felt my body curve into his as my mouth answered his request by throwing the doors wide open. His grip on my wrists loosened and I reached up, my hand molding itself around his jaw as I enjoyed the feel of his tendons moving with the eagerness of his kiss.

I should have been pushing him away. There was something wrong here, some secret that was going to come back to bite me in the ass. But he knew what he was doing. The feel of his silky lips against mine, the way he explored my mouth like it was unchartered territory, made logic jump ship and swim for shore. There was no logic to sexual attraction, no logic to the baser instincts. All I knew in that moment was that I wanted more.

But maybe more wasn’t something he really wanted.

Mr. James—I was kissing this man in a way I hadn’t done with another human being in more than three years and I still didn’t know his first name—pulled back, his breathing a little rough as he paused with his forehead pressed against mine for a long second.

“Sorry,” he muttered as he stepped back, turning away from me and touching a finger to his lips. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“You should leave,” Nick said as he watched the two of us from the doorway.

Mr. James just nodded even as he glanced back at me. Then he left without saying another word.

Nick stared at me for a long second, then he turned away too, leaving me standing there feeling like the whore of Babylon.

What the hell did I just do?

~~~

I was waiting for JT when he got home from school that afternoon. I had a speech all planned out in my head. Susan called the shop and told me that she’d given JT a week’s detention. She said he seemed contrite about the whole thing, especially the fact that he would have to miss football practice all week, which meant he wouldn’t be able to play in Friday’s game. I was hoping that meant he’d finally gotten the message and we would be on a better path going forward.

I could always hope.

I heard the front door slam. I shut off the television and stood, waiting for JT to come into the living room. He didn’t. He crashed through the entryway and made his way to the back of the house, the door to his bedroom slamming so hard that it rattled every window in the house.

I followed, somewhat cautiously, taping on the door after a moment’s hesitation.

“JT?”

He didn’t answer at first. But then the door suddenly burst open. His face was red, his eyes puffy almost as if he’d been crying.

“You had to fucking tell them, didn’t you?”

“Tell who what?”

“You know, you’re not my mother. Just because they gave you custody when your parents died, doesn’t mean you have the right to ruin my life!”

“JT, what are you talking about?”

“Like you don’t know.”

He pushed past me, nearly knocking me into the wall, and went into the living room, throwing himself down on the couch hard enough to force it back a few inches. He picked up the remote, but he didn’t turn on the television. He just sat there and stared at it.

“What’s going on?”

He turned that dark stare on me, his soft, familiar blue eyes looking right through me like laser beams in a bad sci-fi movie.

“Coach cut me from the football team. Said I set a poor example for the rest of the team, showed poor sportsmanship by getting arrested in the team jersey, and I no longer deserved to wear it.”

The air seemed to burst out of my lungs. I pressed a hand to the center of my chest and stared at my brother. That was not what I thought would happen when I told Susan about his arrest.

“JT, I had no idea he would do that.”

“But you called the principal. What did you think would happen?”

“Not that.”

“Football was all I had. And now that’s gone, too.”

I sat beside him and tried to take his hand, but he pulled away.

“I’ll go talk to your coach.”

“Please don’t. You’ve already done enough.”

“But maybe if I—“

“Don’t you get it, Penny? You’ve already destroyed my life! Why would you want to make it worse than you already have?”

He jumped off the couch. “My parents didn’t want me. The parents that did want me, died. And now you…you’re destroying everything that matters to me. Do you really hate me that much?”

“It’s not like that.”

“Why don’t you just go back to New York and leave me alone? I’m better off without you, anyway.”

He turned and a second later I heard the front door shutter in its frame. I wanted to go after him, but what could I say to that? He wasn’t completely wrong. I had done this. If I had known calling Susan would lead to this, I never would have…at least, I liked to think I wouldn’t have. Would I have? Maybe I was just that frustrated with him. Maybe I had, in the back of my mind, known what would happen. Maybe I wanted it to happen. Maybe I was that desperate to get JT to be more like the boy he was when I left for New York, the happy ten year old who followed me around like a lost puppy instead of this angry, bitter teenager who went out of his way to make my life complicated.

Was I really fit to be a guardian? Was I doing anyone any favors trying to make this work? Had I already messed up too badly to fix things?

So many questions. And it seemed like I had absolutely no answers.

~~~

I waited three hours for JT to come home. Then I began calling all his friends. Someone had to know where he was, right? It was a small town. After five hours, I began to have all these thoughts—JT in a hospital somewhere, unable to speak with no idea to identify him, JT drinking and doing some dangerous drugs in someone’s dark basement, JT becoming road kill in a terrible accident on the highway—that sent panic shivering through my body like an epileptic seizure.

I needed help. I would normally call Nick, but he hadn’t spoken two words to me all day after catching me with Mr. James. And Susan was in the city with her family, celebrating her daughter’s fifth birthday. There were others I could call, but each one came with complications, such as the cop who arrested JT who had promised the next time he caught him doing something that reckless, he would book him for sure. I didn’t know what to do.