Rowan breezed in, a stack of folders in her hands and her hair tucked neatly into a low ponytail. “Thanks for getting here so quickly. Sorry I’m running a few minutes late.”
Colby leaned forward in his chair, forearms braced on his thighs, as she slid behind her desk. “Not a problem. What’s going on?”
She looked up after putting the folders aside and met his gaze. “Well, Adam Keats is going on.”
Colby’s stomach dropped to his feet. Oh. Shit. She knew. She’d figured out who the half-naked guy in his kitchen had been. “What do you mean?”
Principal Anders spread her fingers wide across the papers fanned out on her desktop. “He came forward and spoke with the lawyer and a school board official a few days ago.”
“He did what?” Colby’s jaw went slack.
“He defended you, Colby, taking full responsibility for what happened back then. He stated that you tried to help him and he ran away because of his father.”
Colby’s brain scrambled. Keats had come forward? Had Rowan seen him? “I don’t know what to say.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “You didn’t know he was going to do that?”
Well, that answered one of his questions. He swallowed hard. “You know who he is.”
She nodded. “He requested a private meeting with no school staff there, but I saw him walking out afterward. I pulled him aside to talk to him.”
Colby rubbed a hand over his face. He was so fucking fired.
“It took some convincing to get him to talk to me, but when I told him your job was on the line, he told me the story. He promised me nothing had happened between you two back then.” She smirked. “And he told me to hook him up to a lie detector test if I didn’t believe him. There may have been a few expletives involved in that last part.”
Colby blew out a breath. “I know it looks bad, Rowan, but he’s telling the truth.”
She tapped a finger on her desk. “I know.”
He looked up, surprised.
She gave him a small smile. “I’ve been in this position long enough to have a pretty good bullshit meter. If I had believed anything bad had happened back then, I would’ve never hired you in the first place. Plus, I met Adam Keats’s father the other day and don’t trust him as far as I could throw him.”
“The guy’s scum.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
Colby scrubbed a hand through his hair. “So what happens now? Are you going to tell the board what you know?”
She shook her head. “In my opinion, that has no bearing on the current case. They’ve interviewed who they need to and have the pertinent information. Two teachers from Hickory Point vouched for you. Adam Keats vouched for you. And Travis told his doctors at the inpatient facility that he hid his plans from you and left too fast for you to get any real information out of him. The only person who had anything negative to say was Adam’s father. Travis’s parents don’t have any evidence to really back up a court case at this point. What happened to their son was unfortunate but not anyone’s fault. Their lawyer has advised them not to pursue a case.”
All the starch drained out of him. “They’re going to drop it?”
She gave him a full smile now. “Yes. And if the board had any notions about continuing to investigate you anyway, I told them that you could sue their pants off for discrimination for the homosexual comment they made. I almost threw something at Martin Davis when he asked you that question.”
Colby stared at her, afraid to believe what she was saying. “So . . .”
“You’re cleared, Colby,” she declared, triumph in her voice. “You can come back to school after the Thanksgiving break.”
Colby sagged in his seat, relief flooding him. “Holy shit, Rowan. I can’t even tell you how happy I am to hear that.”
“And”—she leaned forward like she was going to tell him a secret—“if you’re still open to it, I’d like to move you to full time after the first of the year.”
“Seriously?”
“A principal never kids,” she said, pulling a stern face.
“I could kiss you right now.”