because Tom was one of the few teachers who didn’t have a ton of behavioral issues with his classes.
“Have you gotten in touch with him?” Tom asked as he plopped onto the hard-plastic chair across
the desk.
“No.” I continued typing the report, still hopeful I’d get out the door before a migraine had time to
set in. With any luck, a heavy dose of fresh air and a long walk would reverse the tension of this
week.
“Are you going to see him this weekend?” Tom pried. In some ways, he was worse now that he
and Ben had been together a year, than he had been when he’d been miserably single.
“Probably not.” I massaged my forehead and closed my eyes, trying to remember what in the hell
it was we’d discussed in the meeting. I wasn’t proud of the fact, but I’d tuned a lot of it out because
there were some kids who simply didn’t want to be helped. My first few years at the school, those
had been the students I pushed harder than anyone else, but now I was jaded. What I needed was to
get away from this place for a while and remember why I’d wanted to be a school administrator in the
first place.
“But you want to,” he pushed. I shoved in the keyboard tray with more force than was absolutely
necessary and glared at him. “Don’t look at me like that. You know I’m right.”
He was, but at the same time I couldn’t get William’s warning out of my head. I’d been trying for
almost three weeks to figure out what skeletons could be in Sam’s closet that had William so
protective of him.
If you’re not willing to stick by him once you learn who he is, walk away. Now.
My knee-jerk reaction had been to point out William knew me better than to think I was a shallow
asshole, but the fact hedidknow me gave me pause. There was definitely something deeper in that
warning and it was driving me nuts.
“See! That look right there says it all.” Tom waved his finger around, pointing at me like a little
kid picking out which puppy he wanted to take home, complete with the shit-eating grin. “Youwantto
get to know this kid better, so what in the hell’s stopping you? I’ve never seen you tentative before.
It’s a little disconcerting.”
“What if I can’t deal with whatever William wasn’t telling me?” I wasn’t worried so much about
what William or anyone else at the club might think of me, but I worried about what it would do to my
self-esteem if I promised there was nothing that could turn me off and I wound up hurting him. The
