11. River
RIVER
Present Day
I am in a foul fucking mood.
And everyone can tell.
My students sense it in my classes for the rest of the day. My coaching staff senses it. The guys on my team sense it.
It’s the first day of school, and I’m acting like I’ve been dealing with students’ bullshit for nine months and am ready for summer vacation.
But I can’t focus on anything else.
Sloane is in high school.
My high school.
She’s nineteen.
Two years younger than I thought.
And I thought she was too young when I thought she was twenty-one.
“You look distressed.” I hear my seven-year-old niece’s chipper voice.
I remove my hand from in front of my eyes and reluctantly open them, and I spot Isla sitting on the couch next to me with a pen and a small notepad, because her latest thing is that she wants to be some sort of therapist like Ellie.
“I really am. But do you even know what that means?” Her brows pinch together slightly like she might be thinking of the answer.
“Yes.” She nods before pulling her headband down and sliding it back up over her brown hair to re-straighten it. She was slowly growing out of her sunglasses-all-the-time phase, but now she was into all the hair accessories and wanted to dress like her older sister, Margot, and Ellie.
I lean on my elbow to face her because, as bad as things are right now, Isla is probably the only person who I will never allow to bear the brunt of my foul mood. “Alright, tell me what it means.” I nod.
“Bad,” she says while scribbling something in her notepad.
“Pretty much,” I tell her.
“Are you going to cry?”
“Maybe.” I snort because if there was ever a time that something would make me cry, it’s this situation.
Her eyes widen, and she puts a hand on my arm.
Isla has never been a big crier. I actually think she may be the toughest of the three kids when it comes to that, but she is very empathetic, and I’ve watched her comfort both of her siblings when they were upset.
“Do you need a hug?” she asks, and I nod.
“I think so, Isles.”
She climbs into my lap and gives me a tight hug before pressing a kiss to my cheek. “It’ll be okay, Uncle River. Do you want to talk about it?”
“No, honey.”
“Is it because I’m too little? Because I’m seven now. I get stuff,” she says with a matter-of-fact tone, and I chuckle in response.
Leave it to Isla to make me laugh when it feels like the walls are closing in around me.
“I know. You’re so smart, Isles. But this is just an adult problem.”
“I see. Well, maybe talk to Ellie. She’s good with problems,” she tells me as she moves to sit next to me on the couch, and I see she’s written my name in her notepad.
“I’m just going to wait for your dad.”
“Okay.” She puts a hand around her mouth. “He’s not as good with problems, though,” she whispers just as I hear the garage open.
Thank fuck. I feel like I am going to explode over these feelings of dread, and even if Rowan absolutely loses his shit over this, at least I can get this off my chest to the one person I’ve always been able to talk to.
“In your office,” I call out to him before I press a kiss to Isla’s forehead. “We’ll talk more before I leave, okay?”
“Okay, I do have a seven o’clock with Barbie, so you may have to schedule an appointment. Call my office,” she says before hopping off the couch and skipping out of the room.
“Okay, what is going on?” Rowan asks from behind his desk. His fingers are steepled under his chin as he stares at me with a pensive expression.
“I’m just going to blurt it out, and you’re going to tell me how fucked I am.” My heart is pounding in my chest over having to speak these words into existence, even if it is to the one person in the world who can help me navigate this nightmare.
He leans back in his chair and loosens his tie before running a hand through his dark brown hair. “Like… you might need my services, fucked?”
“Yes, exactly that,” I tell him as I begin to pace the length of his office.
“Is someone pregnant?”
“No!” I shake my head vehemently as a different intrusive thought hits me.
What if Sloane is pregnant? Or that girl from the bar…
or… okay, River, one crisis at a time. You always use condoms. No one is pregnant.
“No,” I repeat, mostly to myself in an attempt to slow my rapidly accelerating heart rate.
“Okay whatever it is—”
“Sloane’s in high school,” I blurt out, but I hesitate before continuing. “Not only is she in high school, but my high school and furthermore, my biology class.”
I stop pacing to look at him, and he’s completely frozen.
He finally blinks his eyes at me a few times as if he has no idea what I’m saying.
“Sorry, I think I just spaced out for a second or fucking hallucinated. Run that by me again?” His tone is even, and I imagine this is how he is when he’s in lawyer mode.
Calm and collected, even if different feelings are brimming below the surface.
I start pacing again. “She lied about… everything. Well, not everything. What her parents do for a living is true, and she did move here from overseas to live with her aunt and uncle.”
“Holy shit. Is she underage?” His eyes are wide now with a look of complete horror, and I can see the stress all over his face at the thought.
“No, no… thank God,” I groan, trying my best to fixate on that small fact because it is literally the only silver lining in all of this. “She’s nineteen. She moved back here for her senior year.”
I watch as relief floods his face. “Okay… good. That is good,” he says before moving to the corner of the room toward his bar he has set up. “I assume you want a drink?”
“Unless you’re planning to lace it with poison, for now, I’m good,” I tell him as I lie back on his couch with an arm over my eyes.
“Okay, step away from the ledge. You didn’t know, and that will play into your favor if this ever comes out.
” He sighs, and I hear the clink of the bottle hitting the glass, then the glass hitting the coffee table in front of me.
When I turn my head, I see Rowan has left a tumbler of whiskey for me anyway. “How did you guys… put this together?”
“What do you think?” I grumble.
“Christ,” he groans, “she walked into your class?”
“Like she didn’t have a care in the fucking world.”
Earlier that day:
I’m preparing for my third-period Honors Biology class, which is my favorite block of the day.
It’s the class right before I have a free period, and it’s usually filled with juniors and seniors, with the occasional gifted freshman or sophomore.
Because of that, the class could probably run itself.
The juniors are at their best because it’s arguably the most important year, and colleges look at it the most. Seniors are trying to keep their grades up for the school they've already gotten into, and the freshman and sophomores could probably teach this class better than I could.
Not to mention, there’s usually a handful of my guys from the team, which always keeps the class interesting.
The class is slowly filling up as students file in, when a familiar smell wafts into the classroom. When I turn around from where I’m writing on the whiteboard to check the source, I’m rendered almost fucking speechless.
Blue eyes. Very familiar, stunning blue eyes. Blue eyes that I’d stared into only a few days ago when I looked up at her from between her legs while I fucked her with my tongue.
Suddenly, the room feels very small, and it feels like someone has sucked all the oxygen out of it, because my chest is tightening.
If this is a heart attack, please, just let it kill me.
I take a deep breath, and though my heart is still pounding, I can at least feel a bit of air entering my lungs again. The blood rushes to my ears, and I feel like there’s a ringing in them.
What the fuck? My mouth almost opens to ask her what she’s doing here or if this is some sort of joke. But why would she be carrying a backpack?
No fucking way. No. Fucking. Way.
Keep it cool, River. Keep it together. Do not show that anything is wrong. Just check the syllabus and go from there. Maybe this is a joke. A weird and twisted joke, but I’ll laugh if it is. I swear, I’ll fucking laugh.
But the way her eyes are wide and look terrified, I don’t think this is a joke. I immediately go to my desk and pull up the attendance on my computer sliding my gaze down the alphabetized student list until I get to H.
Sure enough– Sloane Hunter. Grade 12
FUCK.
“And you never told her the name of your school? She’s been at your house a few times. You didn’t have anything out that would have allowed you guys to come to this realization earlier?” my brother asks, breaking me of the memory.
“Don’t you think that would have at least alleviated this surprise?
No, she didn’t know, and I guess it never really came up.
I’ve been keeping my house neat when I knew she was coming over, and when she’s there, I rarely had clothes on.
So it’s not like she’d see any of my T-shirts with the school name on it.
She has borrowed some things, but it was never anything that had anything Westlake High School or Bulldogs on it,” I explain.
“Did anyone in your class pick up on anything?”
I sit up and dig my heel into my eyes. “I don’t think so. I pretended I didn’t know her and ignored her for the entire class. She came to my office after class, though, and I let her have it. I’ve blocked her phone number since.”
“Okay, for the time being, do not be alone with her at all,” he tells me, and I nod in agreement. “I mean it, River, even if it’s harmless or she’s asking for help—”
“I told her she needed to transfer out of my class today, so that won’t happen,” I interject.