“I know.”
“This doesn’t change that.”
“I know that too.”
She held his gaze another beat, then nodded once. Sharp. Controlled.
“Fine,” she said.
Grace turned and crossed the street before he could say anything else.
She didn’t look back.
But as she walked toward the doors—toward her students, her classroom, the life she’d built—she felt it.
The knowledge that when the final bell rang, he would be there.
Grace stoodat the whiteboard with a blue marker in her hand and wroteBEGINNINGin careful block letters.
“Okay, friends,” she said, turning back to the room, past the rows of small desks and swinging feet. “Every story starts somewhere. Who remembers what the beginning is for?”
Hands shot up. A chorus of voices followed.
Grace smiled automatically. Genuinely.
This—this was easy. Familiar. Safe.
She moved through the first half of the morning on instinct. Reading circles. Gentle corrections. Praise offered exactly where it was needed. She knelt beside a desk to help with a stubborn letter B, laughed when someone announced they’d lost their pencil for the third time already.
The kids didn’t look at her differently.
They never did.
To them, she wasn’t a Hart kid. They were too young to remember a time when her parents were still in town, causing trouble and getting arrested every other week.
She was just Miss Hart.
Trusted. Respected. Liked.
That knowledge settled something tight in her chest—even as her thoughts refused to stay put.
Grace guided her class into silent reading and moved to her desk, lowering herself into the chair. She picked up a stack of worksheets and tried to scan them. Instead her mind replayed everything she’d been holding at bay.
The porch. The footsteps. The way his fingers had brushed her hair.
Her stomach clenched.
She took a deep breath, forced her shoulders to relax. She kept her expression neutral as she drifted through the aisles like she always did. A gentle presence. A constant.
When a book slipped from a desk and hit the floor, she startled.
Just slightly.
“I’ve got it,” she said quickly, bending to pick it up before the student could. “Gravity’s being dramatic today.”
A few kids giggled.
The moment passed. But the vigilance stayed. She was cataloging exits, noticing sounds she usually tuned out—the hum of the lights, the scrape of a chair, footsteps in the hallway outside.
