Chapter 14
fourteen
CHRISTY
There was something Holden wasn’t saying.
I mean, yeah, he’d told me Amber was a “literal psycho,” but I’d already figured that out by the way she’d sexually assaulted him with her eyes with me watching.
And how she’d tried to make me feel inferior.
Mean girl vibes were radiating off of her.
Obviously, she had a thing for him. Welcome to the club.
But also, get a hold of yourself. We weren’t besties but up until the bus breakdown, I’d thought we were cordial.
She must not have known the sis code. Never trample a fellow queen to get to the top.
Empower, not compete. There was more to the story than what either of them were putting off.
There was a history there. I could feel it in my bones.
For the rest of the day, Holden was quiet, his mind somewhere else.
He could hardly snap out of it to help coach.
And when I’d tried to kiss him goodnight once we were back in the high school parking lot and all the girls were gone, he sidestepped me, said bye, and told me to go straight home and lock my doors.
I didn’t know this Holden, but I didn’t like him. Not at all.
The next morning I woke up and Boyfriend Holden was back, full force.
Fifteen different apology texts, three phone calls, and he brought me lavender roses, which I’d mentioned were my favorite only once, back in the summer when we were just friends.
And we had a sizzling make-out session that night.
The next few days were a back-and-forth between Boyfriend Holden and The Guy I Didn’t Know.
Some kind of tug-of-war was going on inside of him, eating him up, but he wouldn’t talk about it.
I was trying to do what Lemon had suggested and be patient while he worked through it. All I could hope was that Lemon was right and he would be worth the wait. But there were times when I wondered if I was hanging on only to be let down one more time.
Five days later, even though it was Silas’s week to open up the school, I arrived early to prepare for the new tenth-grade transfer student, Tallulah Hawkins.
It was her first day and I wanted to give her the school tour.
Normally, Mrs. Yancy had a fellow student do it, but Mrs. Yancy had been right.
Something was off in her records. She’d been pulled out of her previous school for five months during eighth grade and then reenrolled.
She was now a year behind in school. I guess it wasn’t that weird.
Things happen sometimes. But there were also notes from the three previous schools she’d attended about her being withdrawn and one mentioned that she’d come to school with a black eye.
No one had been able to prove anything and her mother skirted around any talk of abuse.
But if there was even a chance that I had a kid coming in who needed extra help, I wanted her to know from minute one that she could come to me. That I was someone she could trust.
When I pulled into the faculty lot, I scowled. There were three cars parked there already. Mr. Jamerson’s, our head janitor, Silas’s truck, and Holden’s car.
Why was Holden here this early in the day?
I hurried across the lawn and into the school.
All the lights were on, ready to greet the students.
I glanced into the library through the floor-to-ceiling hallway glass.
Anna was there, reading a book. She must’ve ridden with Silas.
When she saw me, she shot to her feet, her dark eyes wide and…
worried? We looked at each other for two seconds.
I waved. She waved back, but it wasn’t happy like mine.
It was the wave of someone who’s worried they may never see you again.
Maybe? She turned away and walked to a shelf, studying the books.
Okay. That was weird. And concerning.
I pushed open the door to the central office and immediately paused.
No one was in the first room, which housed both of our secretaries’ desks and the counter where late students checked in. But I could hear voices.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. You need to calm down before you do something that you’ll regret,” Silas said in a tone that he used whenever someone was panicking. He’d used it on me plenty. It was soft, trying too hard.
“Don’t tell me to calm down,” Holden hissed. “This is exactly what I was afraid of.” He groaned. “I’m leaving. I’m going back to Sophie’s to grab my stuff and I’m out of here.”
What?
“That is the dumbest thing you could possibly do,” Silas said, losing his cool. And it took a fair bit to make him lose his cool. “You have to stand up to her or it will never stop.”
Her?
“It’s never going to stop, no matter what I do.
Seriously. My next job will be somewhere far, far away.
Hawaii. Guam. Somewhere tropical. I’m going completely off grid.
Maybe I’ll get a fake ID and passport. If you get postcards from Epstein Barr, you’ll know it’s me.
” It would’ve been funny if his tone wasn’t ripped with pain.
That had been his nickname in my contacts.
Of course, I’d taken it down once we were together, right after we had a good laugh about it.
My feet were moving before I told them to.
For once I was glad my heels clacked loudly against the tile so I wouldn’t have to announce my arrival.
The guys went silent as I moved in that direction.
I poked my head into Silas’s office to see my hunk of a man leaning forward, hands on the desk, chest heaving like someone had whipped him with stripes across his back.
I looked at Silas. “What is going on?” He gave me nothing, hands in his pockets, lips sealed.
So I glanced at Holden, dressed in joggers and a tight T-shirt that, any other morning, would’ve made me want to run my hands all over his chiseled torso.
“You’re moving somewhere tropical?” He may as well know I heard.
Still they said nothing. And that’s when I noticed them.
Dozens of crinkled flyers in a messy stack on Silas’s desk. I walked over and picked one up. I dropped my eyes to the paper.
And then I gasped.
It was a picture of me and Holden, in my office, kissing, him sans shirt. With the words “What happens in the principal’s office, stays in the principal’s office” framing it.
My hand went to my heart.
I dared to glance at Silas, sure he was so disappointed in me. Us. In us. But he was stone-faced. Then he gave me a pity smile. Holden was still bent over, eyes on the ground.
I took off for my office, I don’t know why.
I knew there were cameras in there but no one ever looked at the night feed.
There was no reason to. Had I thought there was a minuscule chance someone could find out?
Yes. But I’d quickly talked myself off that ledge.
The chances were so remote it wasn’t worth giving a second worry.
My eyes checked each camera, a red blinking dot greeting me.
My mind reeled a hundred miles an hour, playing through every scenario of how this could’ve happened.
Nothing made sense. I hurried back to Silas’s office.
Holden was up now, chewing his thumbnail, eyes trained on the door, as I came through.
“Who?” I asked them.
“We have theories,” Silas said.
Holden scoffed. “One theory. And it’s the only one we need.” But then he clamped back down like he’d said too much and I was met with silence once more.
“Okay?” My hands went to my hips. “Would you like to share with the class?”
Silas deferred to Holden with a glance. But Holden was on lockdown.
Alrighty then.
I turned to my assistant principal with zero patience left. “How?”
He held up his hands. “My guess is the password is old. It’s a small town. Probably too many people know it, who knows? I’ll call Eddie right at eight o’clock.” Eddie was the school district’s IT guy.
Holden was staring at me, tight-lipped. I was going to have to pull every bit of information out of them one piece at a time.
I held the flyer up. “These were posted around the school?” It wasn’t hard to deduce. There was a piece of tape on the top of each flyer. Where else would they have been?
“Don’t worry, we found all of them,” Holden said.
“You’re sure?” I had to ask. If they’d missed even one…
He nodded. “We ran the entire school three times. Anna helped.” Great. Anna had seen the flyers. I’d barely recovered my credibility from my freak-out at the beach. That girl was never going to respect me.
How early had Silas gotten here? Early enough to notice, give Holden time to drive down and search the school repeatedly. I’d never been more grateful that Silas was an early riser.
I’d had enough of the short answers, it was essay time. “Spill it. I want to know who, why, and why you’re threatening to leave the country. Now.”
Silas cocked a brow at his brother. “I think I’ll give you the room. Just keep your clothes on, please. The cameras are rolling.”
My face heated as he walked out and shut the door.
Holden looked up with hooded eyes. “I’m so sorry, Chris.”
“Why are you apologizing? Did you spend last night taping these all over the walls?”
“No. But it’s my fault. I never should’ve started this.” I didn’t understand what was going on, but it was clear from his words and the slump of his shoulders that he thought our being together was a mistake. Dread filled my chest.
Ever since the bus breakdown, Holden had been different, and in the back of my mind, I couldn’t stop worrying that my heart would get broken after all. An all too familiar desperation settled in. I was going to get dumped. Again. And this time, I would not recover. Not after Holden.