Page 27 of Working for the Teacher

“By who?”

“Doesn't matter who.” Reyes leans back in his chair, like he's got all the time in the world to enjoy this. “What matters is why a man with your history was alone with a student.”

“I wasn't alone with him. Charlotte was standing right there.”

“Ms. Hayes had already gone inside her classroom, according to the report I got.”

“That's a lie.”

“Is it?” He raises an eyebrow, and I can feel the rage starting to climb up my spine, the exact feeling I've spent years teaching myself to sit with instead of act on. “Because from where I'm standing, I've got a formal complaint, a scared kid, and a contractor with a criminal record telling me it didn't happen the way it was reported.”

“I was helping Charlotte. The kid was giving her trouble in class, disrespecting her in front of the whole room, and she pulled him into the hallway to talk to him. I heard some of it while I was working nearby, and I stepped in because he wasn't listening to her. I talked to him. That's it. Tried to get him to understand why taking his anger out on her wasn't fair to her. He apologized. He went back to class. Nobody got threatened.”

“That's not what I was told.”

“Then they’re wrong, or lying, or twisting what actually happened, because I know exactly what I said to that kid, and none of it was a threat.”

Reyes studies me for a long moment, and I realize with sick clarity that none of this is actually about what happened in that hallway. It never was. This is about every single thing he's been waiting to hold against me since the day Dave got me on this job site.

“You intimidated a minor,” he says. “A grown man with your past getting in a fifteen-year-old’s face. Doesn't matter what your intentions were. Doesn't matter what was said. What matters is how it looks, and how it looks is bad enough that I need you out of this school.”

“This is bullshit.”

“Ryder,” Dave says in a warning tone.

I force myself to stop and breathe. This is exactly the moment Reyes wants, the moment where I prove every ugly assumption right just by losing my temper in his office, and I refuse to give him that.

“The school cannot have a contractor who threatens students,” Reyes says, turning to Dave now. “Either he's removed from this project permanently, or Samuels Construction loses the contract.”

Dave's jaw works, and I can see him doing the math in his head. Twelve guys on his crew. A contract worth more than half his annual revenue. A reputation he's spent twenty years building in this town, and none of it can survive him fighting this battle for me.

I watch him look at me instead of at Reyes, like he owes me the courtesy of saying it to my face instead of letting the vice principal do it for him, and something about that small gesture makes this whole thing hurt worse.

“Ryder, I need to pull you off the job,” Dave says, and I can hear how much it costs him to say it. “I'm sorry.”

“I understand.” I don't. Not really. But saying it out loud is easier than the alternative.

I built this. Every bit of it, brick by brick, years of showing up early and staying late and never once giving anyone in this town a real reason to doubt me. I thought that meant something. I thought if I just worked hard enough, long enough, honestly enough, eventually the story people told about me would catch up to who I actually am now.

Turns out none of that matters against one accusation and a man who's been looking for an excuse since the day I set foot on school grounds.

“Fine,” I say, because there's nothing else to say that won't make this worse.

I walk out of that office feeling like I'm sixteen again, standing in a courtroom while a judge decides what kind of person I am, and every single thing I've built since then evaporates like it was never real to begin with.

I make my way outside, and then I hear Charlotte’s voice behind me.

“Ryder. Hey. Where are you going?”

I don't turn around right away. I don't trust my face yet.

“Ryder.”

I finally look at her, and whatever she sees in my expression makes her stop a few feet away, some of the warmth draining out of her face.

“This is bullshit,” I say.

“What is?”