The Academy - Forgiveness and Permission (Year One, Book Four) (43 page)

I swallowed to find my voice. “Mr. Blackbourne.”

“Did you hear me coming? I thought I was pretty quiet.”

He had been quiet, but they were all pretty noiseless when they wanted to be. I shook my head. “The air shift,” I said.

His eyebrow rose. “What do you mean?”

“When you open the door, the air shifts. I felt it.”

The millimeter smile broke his otherwise solemn face. “Remarkable.”

“I’m just glad you’re not Gabriel with another water gun.”

He pursed his lips and touched the bridge of his glasses. “I thought you and I might take a drive this morning.”

I blinked, tilting my head at him. “A drive?”

“We need to talk.”

My heart thundered. It wasn’t something he could discuss here?

“Meet me outside, will you?” He turned away from me, heading back toward the door. I listened this time for his footsteps but heard nothing. He was as silent as Luke.

I popped out of bed, scrambling to follow. Mr. Blackbourne was in my room. What could he possibly want with me? Did he know about yesterday? Was he going to reprimand me for how I had behaved in front of the others? Or tell me off for keeping such a stupid secret about the signal?

I found a pleated full skirt and a soft pink blouse to wear. I did my hair in a twist, leaving the two locks hanging at my cheeks. I strapped on a pair of sandals. I glanced around for a phone before realizing I didn’t have one.

Outside, Mr. Blackbourne stood by a gray BMW. It was then I realized Victor and he had similar cars. Mr. Blackbourne’s was a shade darker, a deeper gray than Victor’s, which was more a dark silver.

Mr. Blackbourne nodded in my direction, moving around his car to open the front side passenger door. “No need to jump across the hood this time,” he said.

My lips parted, eyes wide. Was that a joke? Did he just make a joke with me?

The gleam in his eyes and the millimeter smile told me it was. I smiled in return, too stunned to find something to say.

I slipped into his car, smelling his soap in the air and the new car leather. I put my seatbelt on before he had a chance to get in on his side and sit down.

He started the car, pulling out of the drive. From that point, my heart was in my throat. I’d never been in a car with Mr. Blackbourne before. I didn’t know where I was going. Kota didn’t know I was leaving, did he?

But I had gotten into the car, didn’t I? I hadn’t asked where we were going. While I wondered where, I didn’t feel I needed to know. Mr. Blackbourne wouldn’t hurt me. So I was trusting them, right?

He didn’t speak while he was driving, keeping his eyes on the road. Nervous about the proximity we shared, but with my tongue feeling glued to the top of my mouth, I gazed out the window.

The roads were clear for dawn on a Sunday morning. He took the highway a good distance before turning onto a road with a sign that advertised a park. He wound his way through a road that soon turned from concrete to gravel, and from gravel to dust.

He stopped short of a playground nestled at the top of a hill. At the bottom of the hill was a wide lake. There was an area cut off and noted for swimming, along with a high platform for diving.

He turned off the engine. “Walk with me, won’t you?” he said, while at the same time releasing his seatbelt.

Before I managed to undo my own seatbelt, he was at my door. He opened it for me, putting a hand out in front of my face. My breath caught, unsure for only a split second. I reached for his hand, dropping my palm in his.

He wrapped his perfect, smooth fingers around my hand, tugging gently to help me out. I stepped back and he closed the door. He released my hand and started walking toward the lake, pausing only briefly to look back at me. I was expected to follow.

I started walking behind him but he paused again, looking back at me. “Do you walk behind the boys when you’re at school?” he asked quietly, curious.

“Sometimes I suppose.”

He frowned softly. “Remind me to talk to them.”

“It’s not their fault,” I said, surprised. I stepped quickly to walk beside him instead. “I guess when the hallways are crowded, or when I’m nervous ...”

“You’re not to walk behind them,” Mr. Blackbourne said in that quiet command. “Ever. You’re not inferior to them. You don’t mean less than them.”

“I think it was more I felt more comfortable like that.”

The corner of his mouth dipped. “I know you’re shy and a little low in self-confidence, but that’s no excuse for the guys to forget their place, and it is certainly not in front of you.”

I swallowed, my heart in my throat. I felt like I just got the guys in trouble and I had no idea why or the meaning of it.

We approached the lake, finding a dock. The water sloshed along the gentle slope at the bank. Mr. Blackbourne tucked his hand into my elbow to assist me up the steps as if worried I’d fall. He let go again when we were on top. I followed him to the very end, where our view of the lake was unchallenged.

The morning light sparked up the top of the lightly ruffled water, dazzling my eyes and distracting me from his face.

We stood quietly together. The wind swept gently around me. It was a salty breeze, reminding me of Silas’s ocean scent. My lungs filled up, reveling in the contrast to yesterday when I couldn’t breathe beneath the sawdust pile, and again when I had been swallowed up in sorrow about being so angry with North.

“I used to come here with my mother when I was little,” he said, his voice a couple of notches softer than his usual commanding tone. “I learned to swim in this lake.”

“It’s a nice lake.”

He pursed his lips and nodded. “It was a safe place for me. It was one of the few places my father refused to come with us.” I broke my gaze away from the lake to seek him out, but he was fixated by the sparkling water as he continued and didn’t meet my eyes. “So I asked her every day if we could go swimming. I had ideas that if I could keep her here long enough, she’d see how much better life could be without him. She didn’t have to live with his pain or his lies.” He paused, his eyes narrowing to some point out into the sky. “I never said out loud that was what I wanted for her. I thought doing nice things around her, like remembering her birthday and wishing her good night would one day make her see. And when my father’s anger finally killed her, I’ve since regretted never telling her exactly what I wished.”

Words caught in my throat. The sudden revelation about his family shattered every imaginary thought I’d had about the perfect life he must have.

“We’re all broken, Miss Sorenson,” he said. His head tilted toward me, his gray eyes, gleaming, fixed on mine. “Every single one of us in our group, our family. Maybe they haven’t told you why yet, or how, but that’s who we are. Our group is different, because we’re all from broken families.”

Kota had hinted at this before, I didn’t imagine the extent and that it included Mr. Blackbourne. “All of them?”

“All of us,” he said. “It is what our family is built on. So when I realized you were with Kota and the others, I knew why. They saw this broken little girl, just as lonely and just as desperate as they had been, and when you seemed willing to play along, they knew exactly what to do. Well, they knew what they wanted to do for you. What they didn’t realize is how different they would become when you joined us.”

“But you knew,” I said in a small voice.

The corner of his mouth lifted. “We never had a girl before. They weren’t prepared.”

I blushed. A finger betrayed me, fluttering up to my lip to pinch it to my teeth.

“Unfortunately I believe that’s our problem now. The boys don’t know how to respond to you.” The smile lifted higher. “I don’t think I was prepared for you, either.”

“What do you mean?”

He turned his head, removing his glasses. Without them, his face was softer, the perfect angles beautiful. He bent forward, as he leaned close to me, his face inches from mine. His gray eyes sought out mine again, now uncontested and breathtaking. “In the past few weeks, I’ve seen this little girl take on an entire school where the boys won’t leave her alone, a principal and a vice principal are hell-bent on taking her down with us, withstand hours of torture from her own mother, and a host of other problems crashing around her, only to bravely turn around and willingly want to face off again for the most unselfish reasons.” The smile filled in fully, something I wasn’t expecting and enough to get my heart racing. “You’re the strongest little beautiful creature I’ve ever met.”

The finger at my mouth pinched harder until I felt the bite at my teeth. I released it, shoving my shaking hand behind my back. “I don’t ... I ...”

“But now we’ve got a new job to do. If you’re still interested in sticking with us ...”

“I am,” I said, convinced, but blinked back when I realized I’d just interrupted Mr. Blackbourne.

He nodded, the gray eyes confirming. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask for your patience, and for your help.”

“What’s the problem?”

He opened his glasses again, putting them back on his face. He looked out at the lake again. “This isn’t going to be easy. The boys are having problems adjusting to you because you’re a girl.”

“I didn’t imagine they would dislike a girl.”

“They don’t dislike girls. The problem is they’re treating you like one.”

I couldn’t stop the half smile on my own face. “You’re worried about them treating me like a girl?”

“Like you’re incapable of making your own decisions,” he said. “Of not trusting your instincts. Or becoming jealous. Or wanting to babysit you. Or a host of other complications they enforce and don’t realize they do. It’s hard enough to work with you when you’re new to our group. It is understandable that you would hesitate to trust us at first. You’re finding your place and testing us. I know all that. It’s inexcusable that they’re unwilling to listen and trust you. I have tried to teach them better.”

My heart leapt at hearing his words. I knew it. I’d known it with North and the others. They weren’t trusting me. Of all the boys in the group, I never imagined Mr. Blackbourne being the one to understand me so well. “I thought perhaps if I joined the Academy, maybe that would help us both.”

He shook his head. “You couldn’t join us unless they trusted you, and you trusted them.”

I frowned. “Kota mentioned that.”

His eyebrow shifted on his head. “He’d told me he didn’t want you to join.”

“He said that, too.”

“Do you not want to now?”

I bit my lip, unsure. I had thought I wanted it, but maybe Kota was right, maybe I was interested for the wrong reason. My desire to become part of them, to really feel accepted, wasn’t going to happen in the way I thought. I realized I didn’t know enough about the Academy to make an informed decision. “I thought I did. I think I still do. Maybe I don’t know enough about it yet. I think I want to because you and the others are on the inside. I feel too out of the loop.”

He chopped his hand sideways through the air, as if cutting this off. “We’ve got time to worry about your Academy eligibility later. Before we can even approach that topic, we need to pull ourselves together.”

“What do I do?” I asked, desiring the answers. Mr. Blackbourne understood me. It was all I needed to know. Someone I could trust to talk to me, to tell me the answers.

“One at a time,” he said. He held up a single finger. “Move forward with us. Work with us at the school. Take the guys on one at a time, if you can.”

“How?”

“Listen to them,” he said. “You’ve got a natural instinct to how people feel, and what they’re saying without them telling you out loud. You’re also very clever. You know things they don’t, things I can’t teach them. You’re going to have to show them exactly what a girl can do.”

“What do you mean?”

His millimeter smile returned. “Like tumbling off of a balcony and walking away from it. Like when you sail across the top of a car hood and land feet first only to target and fire like a pro without any training. Like showing them they can’t boss you around by flipping one of them over. You’ve got a remarkable instinct in you.”

I blushed, disbelieving he’d bring all those things up. He had heard about North. “What if I don’t know what to do?”

“You can talk to me at any time,” he said. “Call me or send me a message. I’ll come find you. Every time. I promise.”

I nodded. “I’m sorry for not calling you sooner.”

He pursed his lips, his eyes unyielding. “I know why you hesitate. It was for the same reason I had for not telling my mother I wanted us to leave my father and never return. I thought I might push her away and she wouldn’t care about me anymore. Don’t wait. You don’t have to be afraid of bothering me or letting me know when the guys are doing something overwhelming. I’ll help you. We’ll get this family back together. When that happens, we’ll see about what to do after. Family first. Academy second.”

I nodded. “Just tell me what to do.”

He tilted his head toward the shore. He walked slowly up along the dock with his hands in his pockets. “North took things pretty hard yesterday. He blames himself for it all.”

I blushed. “I made it worse when I ... when I flipped him.”

“You did the right thing,” he said. “You showed him that he can’t bully you into trusting him. It’s what he’s been needing. And to be honest, I’m glad you did it in front of the others. They’ll know better than to try.”

“I might have hurt him.”

His millimeter smile returned. “The day you actually physically hurt one of my boys, I want to hear about it. I’ll reprimand them for being caught off guard by a pretty face.”

My mouth popped open. Did he just ...

“But North has been on a rampage since you won’t talk to him.”

I flinched. “What’s going on?”

“He dismantled that Jeep of his. Last I heard, he was starting on the truck. The Jeep is unsightly, but we do kind of need that truck. I don’t really have the time to go get another one outfitted.”

The Academy used North’s truck? “If he’s angry with me, shouldn’t I avoid him until he calms down?”

“You do calm him down. Or you can if you talk to him.”