Still battling with my mouth, I nod, relaxing into his touch. He presses a kiss to my forehead. The gesture might be as sexless as a distant uncle, but its tenderness is startling. He releases me, walking over to where Kari waits for him, putting a companionable arm around her waist as they move away in tandem.
The pupils left nearby mark out a large circle around me and Carrod, who’s still struggling; to breathe, to move, to right himself.
I’m shaking. My limbs don’t want to obey me but as I force them to step away, they regain control.
When I walk into English two minutes after the second bell, the teacher doesn’t berate me for my tardiness. A girl near the window pulls out a seat, an obvious invitation. I drop into it, and she welcomes me with a smile.
“I can’t believe you’re friends with Lock,” she says, her expression becoming perplexed the longer she looks at me. “Have you known him long?”
Mr Wilkins sends a frown our way, but the girl doesn’t seem fazed by his displeasure.
I shrug, not wanting to draw any further ire from the man who determines the grades I need to stay enrolled.
“You’re good friends, yeah?”
As I glance around the class, I see a few other pupils openly staring, trying to reshuffle the school hierarchy, fitting me into a new structure and adjusting their responses in real time.
I turn back to face the front, not wanting to attract any more attention than I’ve already had today, but the girl tugs at my sleeve, still wanting an answer. I chuckle at the idea I know any more than she does, then shrug again. “Sure, I guess.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
LOCK
Late the next afternoon,I stand at the student services desk, staring daggers at the unfortunate man on duty. I expected my request to be a simple one to fulfil, but he’s just thrown a curveball at me.
“Are you really suggesting there’s no empty rooms in the entire school?” I ask in a flagrant show of disbelief. “There must be something.”
It’s not just me being an irritant, either. Students drop like flies in this place, leaving every term.
At least one goes because of money troubles, usually when their parents have underestimated how expensive their divorce will be. Then there are the academic failures. If you don’t meet the rigorous internal assessment standards required for two terms running, you’re out and it doesn’t matter how much money your parents have.
“What about Will’s room? He only just left.”
“We run a waitlist,” the hapless man explains. “There’s always at least a dozen students ready to take a place when someone leaves for whatever reason.”
“Let me see.”
He starts to protest, then shakes his head and swivels the monitor around to face me. Not that the names mean anything, but it seems unlikely someone would mock up the list on the off-chance I turned up with this exact request.
Since I’m here, I lean over and grab his keyboard, typing in a search for George in the student database. She’s there under the surname Lytton, the same one she tried on Menzies without success.
I pass the keyboard back. “This girl’s top of the list now, understand? The first room that comes up for grabs, I want her in it.”
The lack of housing puts an extra step in my plan but by the time I reach my car, I’m already planning a workaround.
Last night, I’d had trouble sleeping after George’s impromptu visit. Not just because her sole condition also happens to be the one request I’m unable to fulfil.
I kept seeing the tiredness in her eyes, the weariness dragging at her slight frame. Her deadbeat father isn’t taking care of her.
Ican torment her. That’s fine. For anyone else to do the same is unthinkable.
She needs to be free of his clutches. More than anything else, getting her out from under his selfishness, his addiction, his utter lack of capable parenting, is a priority.
I don’t want her to beg me just because he broke her. Doing that once was lovely, a memory to treasure. To do it twice is just sick.
Out of the school grounds, I head for Patrick’s club, my teethalready gritted because I need to ask him a favour. They clench even harder when I walk into my cousin’s office to find him getting blown underneath his desk.
Not that there’s anything unusual in that. Outside of opening hours, possibly inside them, he runs a free-use policy with his employees—male and female alike.
