12 - Thea
Thea
THE LAST BELL of the school year rang fifteen minutes ago, and I’m sitting in the faculty room with an empty cup of instant coffee in my hand, watching the playground through the window.
Most of the kids are still outside. The pickup rush hasn’t fully cleared, and the ones left behind are doing whatever they want. A group of boys chasing a ball, a few hanging off the monkey bars. They’re doing whatever they enjoy doing.
And that’s the thing.
That’s the whole thing I could never explain to my parents.
They looked at my test scores and decided my future for me. Nobody bothered asking me if it was okay with that.
So I became that person.
The one who stands in front of kids and tells them we don’t all have to be doctors or lawyers.
That it’s perfectly okay to suck at math, that we need people who write stories and paint pictures and build things with their hands just as much.
I wanted to be the person who asked What makes you happy?
What do you love doing? before asking What are you good at?
That’s why I’m here.
That’s why I packed my bags and came into these mountains for a two-month emergency maternity cover position.
I really am going to miss this place.
“Miss Walsh?”
The principal is standing in the doorway with her reading glasses pushed up into her silver hair and gestures for me toward her office.
I toss the paper cup into the trash and follow her.
She hasn’t said anything until we’re inside her office and she’s closed the door.
“I heard from Mrs. Leyton.” She glances up at me over the folder in her hands. “Her husband’s been transferred for work, and she’s decided to resign.”
I nod.
“Which means that a permanent teaching position is open.” She closes the folder and folds her hands on top of it, offering me the smallest of a smile.
“You’ve done excellent work this term, Thea.
The kids respond to you. The parents have had positive things to say.
I’d love to offer you this permanent position, if you’re interested. ”
Surprise isn’t exactly the words for what I feel, more the weight of a thing I wanted becoming real. More like relief than anything else..
“I’m interested,” I say. “Very interested.”
“Wonderful.” She nods. “Take the break to think it over formally.”
I thank her and leave her office, and in the hallway I stop and press my back against the red bricks and close my eyes.
Permanent position.
This is what I’ve been silently praying for. I cannot imagine leaving this place. I cannot imagine being somewhere he isn’t.
When I walk out of the building, the first thing I see is Kilian. Waiting for me.
He leans against his Harley near the gate, his leather cut over a plain black shirt. He’s talking to Ronan, and his red beard. Sara stands between them.
Kilian’s gaze finds me the moment I step through the door. He doesn’t react, but watches me walk toward him.
“Miss Walsh.” Sara’s voice is bright.
“Hey, Sara.” I crouch down to her level. “Have a good afternoon. I’ll see you again, okay?”
She nods, and Ronan gives me a two-fingered salute before Sara climbs onto the back of his bike. Ronan pulls away, and Sara’s small hand lifts in one last wave before they disappear around the corner.
“Ready?” Kilian says and holds out the spare helmet.
Two months ago, merely seeing him and his bike sent me into a spiral of alarm bells.
Now I take the helmet, buckle it, and swing my leg over the seat behind him like it’s the most natural thing.
My arms find his waist. My left cheek presses against the leather when the engine growls to life, and I hold on.
He takes the road out of the main street, past the last row of houses, and onto the back road where it curves around the mountain.
The bike slows when we reach the lookout. Flat Rock, the locals call it, because that’s exactly what it is—a big, broad, level slab of sandstone at the edge of a cliff with no pretense of being anything more than its name.
He kills the engine, and I slide off, pulling the helmet free. The lookout is empty.
I walk to the railing and rest my forearms on the metal. Kilian comes to stand beside me.
“How’s Sara doing?” His voice is low, directed at the view.
“Good. Really good, actually. She’s more talkative now. She raised her hand twice during reading group this week without me prompting her.” I pause, considering. “And she has a new friend. A boy named Silas.”
Kilian makes a sound. Not quite a laugh. “Silas is Kade’s kid.”
Kade, as in the mechanic?
Wait.
Sara knew Silas? Their families are connected… and she still shoved him to the ground? I don’t say any of that out loud.
“So they knew each other before school?” I ask instead.
“Only since she was born. Before I came into the picture, Sara lived with her grandma, close to Kade’s place. I think that kid has a thing for her. Every time Kade brings him to the club, he follows her around.” A beat. “But he’s going to have to prove himself to me first.”
I laugh, but Kilian doesn’t so much as blink. He’s dead serious. The sun is lower now, painting the ridge in amber.
“I wanted to tell you something,” I say, at the exact moment he says, “There’s something I need to—”
We both stop.
My stomach flips, and I think I turn white.
The pause stretches, and in that pause, my brain fills the silence with every terrible possibility.
He has something to say, it sounds important.
He doesn’t know I got offered a permanent position.
He’s going to say he can’t do long distance of whatever this is, because we haven’t even named it, but it would still feel—
“You go first,” he says.
I exhale. Okay.
“The principal offered me a permanent teaching position.” I grip the railing. “Mrs. Leyton resigned. Her family is moving interstate, so the role is mine if I want it.”
Kilian doesn’t say anything. He’s watching me. I hope he’s not disappointed with this news. The thought makes me more nervous, so I talk more.
“You’re actually the first person I’m telling.” I swallow. “My parents… I think they assumed I’d come to my senses and come home. So… I’m not too eager on calling them.”
The wind moves, and I turn to face him. He’s already looking at me.
“Anyway, while I’m being vulnerable and honest…” I take a breath. “I owe you a proper apology. For how I judged you. For what I thought you were. I looked at you and I built a story in my head and I was wrong and I’m sorry. I don’t think I apologized well enough.”
He hums. “So, you’re going to accept it? The job.”
“Yes.”
His mouth moves. Not a full smile. Kilian doesn’t do full smiles. But the corner lifts, and his eyes warm by a fraction, and on him that fraction is a standing ovation.
He turns back to the view. The sun is bleeding orange into the sky.
“I thought about what you said,” he says.
“About Simon. About the guilt, and you were right.” The words come out measured.
He’s been sitting with this. “Simon and I, we grew up together. His family took me in when I couldn’t deal with mine.
But we both wanted it. The army wasn’t just my idea.
It was the plan we made together, since we were kids.
” He pauses. “But after he died, I absorbed all of it. I made it mine because it was easier to carry the blame than to sit with the fact that I couldn’t save him. ”
His thumb presses into the compass tattoo on his forearm. I’ve seen him do it before. The gesture is automatic.
“I know Simon would’ve hated this version of me.
He would’ve kick me off my ass and told me to stop being an idiot and go play with Sara.
So now I’m trying. To let go. To give Sara more of me instead of giving everything to the guilt.
” He breathes out and looks at me. “You showed me that. I wouldn’t have realized that without you. ”
My throat aches. I clamp my lips tight and swallow heavy to compose myself before I smile.
“So thank you, Thea.” He says it the way he says everything, but his eyes are different.
“There’s another thing, and I don’t know how to do this,” he says. “I haven’t…” He exhales hard through his mouth. “I don’t have the words for it.”
My heart is beating wrong, hanging in the balance. I blink many three times to stop the sting. Please please.
“I feel different when you’re not here.” His voice is rough now, stripped of its usual control. “And I know what I feel when you are.”
He’s looking at me, full on. And the mask, the wall, all of that is absent. What’s left is a face I’ve only caught in glimpses. When he told me about Simon. When he pulled back from kissing me and looked wrecked by his own restraint.
“I’m in love with you, Thea. From the first time I saw you. I tried to stop it. I don’t deserve you. I know that. But I’m asking anyway. Please stay with me.”
All my nerves evaporate. My eyes are burning. I press my lips together and swallow hard.
“I d-don’t believe you. You were t-terrible to me.”
“I know.”
“Y-you cornered me in my-desk,” I say. My voice is shaking.
“I did.”
“You said things to me in the hallway. With children. Walking. Right past us.”
“I did that too.”
“You told me you’d drag me behind the building and—”
“I remember every single word I said, Thea.”
“Well… I have thought about all the things you’ve done every single night since, and I need you to know that.
I need you to know that I went home and replayed every word and I was furious and I was mortified and I—” I stop, because the next part of that sentence is not something I planned to say out loud, but it’s sitting right there on my tongue, and he’s watching me with those blue-gray eyes.
“And I wanted you to do those things,” I whispered, “because I wanted you… Even when I thought you were a bad guy, I wanted you so badly it scared me.”
He reaches over in an instant.
His hands to my face, and he pulls the strand of hair that the wind keeps blowing loose. He tucks it back, slow, his rough fingers careful. His thumb traces down my cheek and stops at my jaw.
I’m looking at Kilian Rutherford, and he’s standing here with his heart in his hands. The man I judged so very wrongly. This man who’d jump straight into fire for the people he cares about without a second thought.
“I love you, Thea. With all of my heart.”
“I love you, too.”
And when he kisses me, my whole body catches fire.