Ispend the next few days in classes with Pippa, doing workouts in the afternoon, and generally being reminded not to do things like moon anyone, especially not Commissioner Starkowsky, who holds the strings to my career.
Yes. I know better.
No. I won’t do it again.
Message received. Loud and clear, but I’m not sure how to read the mixed messages from Pippa. I’m ready to move on, preferably with her. Maybe settle down in the city or the countryside. Or both. Rings on our fingers. Kids, eventually.
I swallow hard. Maybe our parents are right. Perhaps we’re meant for each other, but after our evening at the fair, she went cold. Candle extinguished. Hearth dark.
I’ve searched for the spark between us. She’s almost, but not quite, gone back to acting as if she doesn’t know me.
It’s confusing and frustrating and disappointing. I try to joke with her, catch her eye, and find a way to hold her hand, but she’s wooden as though going through the motions of the day.
Tonight, we have some free time that I’d like to spend with her, but I can’t locate her. Perhaps there’s a teachers’ meeting?I hang out with the guys, swapping stories about reform school progress. In various versions of grunts and groans, they each relay how much they hate it.
“Come on, it’s not so bad.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re Mr. Fancy Pants,” Wolf taunts.
“You can’t blame me for the fact that my sisters made me play tea party with them.” It isn’t just that, though, and they all know it.
I come from a certain background. My parents are wealthy. Cap Collins was a football legend who went on to become richer than most in the industry as an owner and investor.
“I’ll admit that I don’t mind my teacher,” Declan says with a laugh. “She’s cool.”
“She’s cool? And you’re Mr. Cucumber,” Wolf says. “Cool as a cucumber.” He leans back, hammocking his head in his hands and gazing at the ceiling. The guy looks pretty cool himself, considering he’s usually like a caged animal anytime he’s told that he has to do something.
“If I’m Mr. Fancy Pants and Declan is Mr. Cucumber, what does that make you guys?”
“I’m just Wolf,” replies Wolf, aka Connor Wolfe. “And Grey is Mr. Mystery.”
“Why’s that?” I ask.
“He hasn’t said a word.”
We all turn to the linebacker who is unusually quiet, even for him.
“You doing okay, Grey?” I ask.
The chair he sits in is of ordinary size, but Grey makes it look miniature, hulking atop the cushion with his elbows resting on his knees and his hands clasped. The military dog tags he wears around his neck glint. “Yeah. I’m fine. Just thinking.”
“Care to illuminate us?” Declan asks.
“The dude is probably coming up with a way to inhabit Mars or cure cancer, always quietly pondering.” Wolf chuckles, speculating about the inner workings of our teammate’s mind.
Grey snorts, which is as close to a laugh as you can get out of him.
“Is it about your teacher?” Wolf asks, waggling his eyebrows.
Grey looks about as comfortable as a cat landing on a pincushion—another one of my grandfather’s sayings—so I bail him out.
“Actually, about my teacher-coach-high school crush...”
All eyes land on me. Even Grey’s. I share an abbreviated version of the story, but include the sponge cake incident. “Then just when I thought things looked promising, she got distant.”
“If you dated more, you’d be able to read her better,” Wolf says. He’s a quantity-over-quality kind of guy.
“Possibly, but I don’t want a fling.” I want love, marriage, a family, a house, some dogs...with Pippa. But maybe I ought to resign myself to the fact that it isn’t happening. Her distance and relative silence are making that clear.
