I called for them to come in, then held in a sigh. The door swung open, and one of the newer students, River Mac, strode inside. He was tall, only slightly taller than me. His dark hair was long on top, falling into his eyes in a way that women probably liked. Today, he wore a deep blue hoodie, and his hair was a bit damp.
“Is it raining out there?” I asked, glancing through my windows into the overcast sky.
River looked at me like I was a complete idiot, smoothed his expression, then shook his head. “I was in the gym,” he muttered.
“Ah,” I replied.
Great. He was a dick.
The only thing worse than someone who discussed their trauma at too deep a length were people who didn’t want to discuss anything at all. River didn’t seem like the small talk type, so I decided to go right for the issue.
“So, you attacked a student,” I said.
River’s blue eyes practically glowed through the dark of his hair. “Yeah.”
“Okay. And you understand that was wrong?” I said slowly.
River worked his jaw before shrugging.
“What’s the shrug mean?” I asked.
“I guess it was wrong.”
I blinked back an eye-roll. Holy shit, this kid was going to be rough. Usually, I’d ask more guiding questions to get them to open up, but I could already see my usual tactics wouldn’t be working on River.
“Why do youguessit was wrong?”
“Because the rules say it was.”
“And…” I trailed off, and he only stared at me. “And you disagree with the rules?”
“Yeah.”
I ran my tongue over my teeth as I considered that. It wasn’t a wrong answer, exactly, it just told me a bit more about him. It wasn’tsurprising in the slightest to see that he had his own set of rules to live by. I decided to try another approach.
“Why don’t you tell me what happened?” I asked.
River looked at the paperwork on my desk, then raised an eyebrow at me.
“Obviously this is Coach’s report of what happened,” I said with a sigh. “But he admits he didn’t see the whole thing, so just humor me.”
River muttered something that sounded a lot like ‘I don’t think anything humors you’, but then he shook his head. “He started shit with my gym partner. He was about to attack her, so I stepped in.”
I nodded. “That’s good information. Important. Who else was involved?”
“Uh,” he chewed the side of his thumb for a moment. “This girl, Skye. And this other girl Carla, but she wasn’t involved, really. She was trying to stop Anton.”
Nothing surprised me anymore.
Of fucking courseSkye was involved. Andof fucking courseno one had told me about it.
I never thought I’d make a statement like this, but Rafe really needed to get back to stalking Skye. It was the only way I’d ever learn anything about her until we could patch up our bullshit.
Well. Until I could patch upmybullshit. Not for the first time, I really wished the only other counselor in this school wan’t my fucking ex.
Back to the issue at hand, though. Skye was always getting into trouble with the wrong people. It was a habit at this point.
I blinked hard, though. Rafe said Levi had said something similar about her, and I didn’t like that. Not at all. I vowed right then and there to stop comparing her in a way that resembled Levi’s comments.
