Chapter 12
Ifeel like a scared puppy cowering under a couch as I follow Principal Hargrove out into the hallway. The school corridor—normally a cheerful parade of primary colors and children’s artwork—suddenly feels more like the green mile.
The thud of his polished loafers hitting the linoleum floor echoes around us.
He’s tall and wiry, with salt and pepper hair that never dares fall out of place, and cheekbones so sharp they could slice through policy violations.
There’s an aura about him—everything from his posture to his equally spaced strides exudes military discipline.
Reluctantly, I lift my chin and meet his eyes, which bore into mine with an inquisitive glare.
“Care to explain what happened out there?” He says it like I’m a student on the receiving end of a reprimand.
“I don’t know,” I stammer, because technically that part is true. “The reporters just . . . showed up. I wasn’t expecting them.”
His eyes narrow to slits. “Celebrities don’t typically arrive at elementary schools out of the blue, Miss Lang.”
He’s not wrong. What happened between Logan and Victoria for her to react this strongly? “I was as surprised as you were.”
He crosses his arms behind his back with the discipline of a retired colonel and says, “It seemed as though she was looking for you.”
Glaring down at me like that, I realize just how scary Principal Hargrove can be. No wonder kids fall in line the moment they see him.
“Like everyone else, I’ve only seen Victoria Delacroix on TV,” I say, feigning innocence to the best of my ability. “She almost gave me a heart attack out there.”
Principal Hargrove’s eyes don’t move. He stands in front of me like a robot scanning for truth. Is he even breathing?
“Just make sure this doesn’t happen again,” he finally says. “This is a place of learning, and parading around with your famous friends will not be tolerated.”
Before I can defend myself, he turns on his heel and disappears down the hallway, leaving me standing there as though I’ve just survived an intense cross-examination with my career hanging by a thread.
I wasn’t even this nervous when he interviewed me for the job two years ago. At least back then I had a résumé to hide behind and wasn’t harboring a pop singer next door.
My legs wobble as I head back into the classroom. The curious stares of my adorable students greet me, along with half-whispered “is she in trouble” theories that aren’t nearly as quiet as they think.
“All right,” I say, clapping my hands cheerfully, trying to mask the tremor in my voice. “Back to music. Let’s learn some notes.”
I turn to the small upright piano in the corner and start demonstrating quarter notes and half notes with its yellowed keys. The kids giggle at the word “crotchet” as if it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever heard.
Would explaining how close I just came to unemployment be funnier? Probably not.
“Miss Lang?” Lucy pipes up from the front row, her dark pigtails bouncing with each syllable. “Is the Spring Festival still happening?”
I blink, momentarily disoriented by the question. How did I forget the town’s most cherished annual event? Between Logan, fake dates, and real paparazzi, the Spring Festival got booted to the dusty corners of my mind like last season’s fashion trends.
“Of course it’s still happening.”
A chorus of “Yay!” erupts from the class, and Tommy, the boy with the cutest puffy cheeks, proudly proclaims that he’s going to eat twelve corn dogs and not throw up, which earns him a ripple of impressed chuckles.
Mom’s probably drowning in committee meetings and handmade decorations for the festival, and here I am—dodging celebrities in the school grounds and lying to my boss. Welcome to my new normal.
I turn back to the piano, determined to keep the rest of the day on track when there’s a knock on the classroom door.
My head snaps around so fast I get dizzy. Please don’t let it be the principal again. Then I freeze, heart lurching into my throat.
That face—I’d recognize it anywhere, even though Logan is in full incognito getup with a baseball cap pulled low, dark sunglasses, and—new addition—a face mask pulled up to his nose. He looks like he’s preparing for allergy season.
Every alarm in my body blares at once as I make my way toward the door. “I’ll be right back,” I tell the kids, stumbling over a backpack. “Keep practicing.”
I rush outside and pull the door halfway closed behind me. “Are you insane?“ My eyes sweep the hallway from left to right. “How did you even get in?”
He tugs down his mask, revealing that infuriating smirk. “I used to cut class through the back entrance all the time. Remember?”
“Good point,” I mutter, then quickly shake my head to clear my agreeing with him. “You shouldn’t be here. Do you have any idea what’s going on? This place is swarming with reporters—and Victoria Delacroix showed up out of nowhere and—”
“I know.”
My eyebrows lift as high as they can. “You know?“ I blink at him, processing this bombshell revelation. “How?”
He shrugs with the nonchalance of someone discussing whether it might rain later. “I hid in the bushes when it all went down.”
“You what?“ My voice spikes, and I frantically scan the hallway to make sure I didn’t just invite unwanted attention and force it back down to a whisper. “And you just left me there to fend for myself?”
“I didn’t mean to,” he says, his eyes suddenly full of regret. “If I revealed myself, it would’ve made things worse.”
“So you hid in shrubbery and watched me get interrogated.” My body gets hot with a potent mixture of indignation and disillusionment.
He nods solemnly. “It was very dramatic. You looked like a woman on the edge.”
”I was a woman on the edge. We’ve got problems, Logan.”
He shifts his weight nervously and pulls his phone from his pocket. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
He swipes a few times, then holds it out for me to see.
I grab it—and my stomach bottoms out like an elevator with cut cables.
There we are. At the mini golf course. Me laughing, head tipped back, while Logan stands mid-swing, both of us looking far too couple-y for this to be dismissed as friends hanging out. The lighting is terrible, slightly grainy—clearly taken from a distance.
“How did this happen?” I ask, zooming in to make sure it’s real, hoping to find evidence it’s been photoshopped.
“I don’t know,” he says, running a hand through his hair. “We were careful.”
“I told you those stupid disguises wouldn’t work.” I hand back his phone, dredging the sure-to-come appearance of my face on front page news. A bitter suspicion rises. “Is there something going on with you and Victoria that you haven’t told me?”
His mouth opens to answer, but before he can get a word out, a classroom door creaks open at the end of the hall. My heart leaps with terror, and I instinctively grab his hand and yank him inside my classroom, shutting the door behind us.
Twenty-three unblinking pairs of eyes glance at us, the student’s little mouths falling open in perfect, stunned synchrony.
Oh no!
I know that look—wide eyes, twitching lips, little bodies on the verge of bursting.
They’re about to scream.
“Shhh!” I hiss, throwing my hands up like I’m trying to tame a raging bull. “We don’t want Principal Hargrove to come back, right?”
The warning is enough to bring them all to heel.
Every kid in the room immediately clamps their mouths shut and looks around with silent panic, as if Principal Hargrove might materialize through the wall like a ghost at any moment.
A slow, grateful breath escapes my lips. Crisis averted. If there’s one person scarier than Victoria Delacroix, it’s our no-nonsense principal with his aura of impending doom.
Then the excitement bubbles out in different ways—whispers, bouncing in chairs, and creeping ever closer to Logan like he’s Santa Claus.
“Are you dating?” Tommy asks, eyes darting between us like he’s cracked some kind of romantic mystery wide open.
How is gossip spreading this fast? It’s like Maplewood Springs runs on a rumor superhighway with no speed limits.
Logan looks at me with an amused sparkle in his eye. “You take this one.”
I blink at him, flustered. “We’re just . . . old friends. From school. Hanging out.”
It’s not a lie—just a fraction of the truth. But even with that technicality, my chest tightens with guilt.
Lucy raises her hand enthusiastically. “Can you play us a song?”
Logan’s expression softens. “Sure.”
He crosses the room to where my classroom guitar rests on its stand—the one we usually reserve for sing-alongs and birthday songs—and picks it up.
Next, he settles on the edge of a table and starts to strum, humming a melody I recognize.
It’s the same song I heard floating through my window the day I came home after getting ambushed by Lindsey and Andy at the diner—before the heavy metal, before the contract we signed.
Then the first words of a song I’ve never heard before come out.
My breath catches. I’ve never seen this side of him, performing live in front of an audience. Every inch of me erupts in goosebumps at the sound of his voice—it’s angelic. In this moment, I could forgive any of his wrongdoings, any of his childish high jinks, whether recent or in the distant past.
But halfway through, Logan stops playing.
“It’s still a work in progress,” he says, looking around the room. “But you’re the only ones in the world who’ve heard it.”
The kids’ faces light up like someone handed them gold stars and cotton candy. One by one, they crowd around him, tugging at his hands and sleeves, guiding him to their desks and art projects.
“Look at my rocket ship!” Julie says, holding up her latest work of art.
“This is my dog, he’s wearing sunglasses!” Emily’s face lights up when Logan gives her two thumbs up.
To my surprise, Logan doesn’t pull away. He listens. He nods. He squats down to eye level and tells a seven-year-old with missing teeth that her macaroni penguin has strong main character energy.
I stare at what’s unfolding right in front of me, completely caught off guard. Would I have placed a bet on Logan Humphries, bad-boy pop star, becoming the Pied Piper of my first-grade classroom? Not in a million years.
This is not the kid who once got banned from the school library for hiding frogs in the reference section.
He’s patient. He’s kind. And—dare I say it?—he’s . . . great with kids, apparently.
And now I’m wondering if all those headlines and scandals didn’t tell the whole story.
Logan ends up spending the rest of the day hiding out in my classroom like some kind of reverse substitute teacher.
He helps with math problems, listens to reading practice, and somehow turns our scheduled science lesson about clouds into an impromptu songwriting workshop.
The kids think it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to them.
When the final bell rings, I tell Logan to stay put. “Hide behind the felt board if you hear anyone coming.”
“Got it,” he says, ducking behind the art easel like he’s in a spy movie.
I herd my students outside for pick up. Parents arrive one by one, collecting their sugar-fueled children. And across the street?
The press.
Ugh.
Still camped out like vultures hungry for a scandalous headline.
Principal Hargrove stands tall near the entrance, arms folded, glaring them down like he’s a bouncer at a nightclub. No one dares to cross the street.
Once the last of my students waves goodbye, I slink back inside and find Logan peeking out the blinds.
“Ready for the grand escape?” I ask.
He nods, and we sneak through the back of the school—the same way he came in.
We tiptoe past the cafeteria dumpsters, round the building, and make it halfway across the parking lot before someone shouts, “There they are!”
“Run!” Logan yells.
We take off, sprinting across the pavement like fugitives. I pass him up with ease.
“Why are you so fast?” he calls from behind me.
“I coach recess!” I yell, hitting the unlock button on my key fob. “It’s basically the Olympics for elementary teachers!”
We dive into my Golf, and the tires screech as I peel out of the lot. The adrenaline pumping through my system feels like electricity, making every sensation sharper.
What a rush!
Once we’re clear of the chaos, Logan laughs breathlessly. “I didn’t know you had it in you, Lang.”
I keep my eyes on the road, pulse pounding. “We can’t go home. Not yet. They might follow us.”
He leans back in his seat, turning to me. “You know this town better than I do. Any ideas where we should go?”
I glance at him, then at the road ahead. Only one place comes to mind. Somewhere I’ve never taken anyone with me before, not even Andy. “I know a spot.”