Rivers’s face lit up. “Holy shit. That’s fantastic!”
“No.” Shaw began to pace like a caged animal, his mind going too fast for him to stand still. “No, it’s not. It’s a complete fucking disaster.”
Rivers looked unmoved. “Are we really freaking out about a kiss right now? Come on, Shaw, it’s about time—”
“She’s a Long Acre survivor,” he spat out, the words like glass cutting his tongue.
Rivers stared at him as if he hadn’t heard the words. “Wait. What?”
“Oh, it gets worse.” Taryn’s words kept running around in his head on a hyperspeed loop. “She lost her sister in the attack. Her sister, man. Probably at the hand of my fucking brother. And I kissed her. Did more than that.” He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes.
“Jesus.”
When Shaw lowered his hands, Rivers’s face reflected Shaw’s shock. “You didn’t recognize her name? I thought you had them memorized.”
Shaw grimaced. After the attack, he’d forced himself to memorize the names of his brother’s victims as a kind of penance. It was the only way he could make himself accept the reality of what had happened, that those lives were gone. He’d used the rest of his college fund to make anonymous donations in each of their names. “I didn’t learn the names of the survivors, and I haven’t watched any coverage of it since the day it happened. I didn’t even catch Taryn’s last name.”
Rivers reached out and grabbed his phone off the side table, opening something and reading it. After a second, he said, “It’s Landry.”
Shaw’s mind scrolled through the long list of names that were forever imprinted on his psyche—an alphabetical line of tombstones. Landry. The name was right there. “Nia Landry. That was her sister.” Shaw raked his hands through his hair, the panic trying to fully take over. “I’m going to be sick.”
“Shaw.”
“If she figures out who I am…” And that he’d kissed her and joked with her and almost slept with her. “I need to leave.”
“No, you don’t.” Rivers blew out a breath, his gaze wary. “I’m not gonna lie. This is horrible, but if she hasn’t figured out who you are already, she probably won’t. We just have to get you out of the situation immediately. We’ll come up with something. I’ll assign her to another trainer or I’ll take her on. I’ll schedule you opposite her sessions. Avoid contact completely.”
Shaw laced his hands behind his head, squeezing his skull, trying to breathe. Taryn had lost her sister. Taryn, that soulful singer up onstage singing her heart out, the woman who’d teased and joked with him tonight, was once a high school girl who had watched her friends and sibling be gunned down in front of her. She was dedicating her life to finding ways to prevent others from going through that. She was an amazing woman. And he had let her kiss the man partly responsible for all that heartbreak in her life.
That last fact wouldn’t hurt her if she didn’t know. He couldn’t cause her additional pain and let her figure out who she’d spent the evening with. “She can’t know.”
“She won’t,” Rivers said, sounding more confident than he looked. “I’ll make sure of it.”
Shaw leaned against the wall and closed his eyes.
Rivers was quiet for a long moment and then said, “Thank God you didn’t sleep with her.”
“Yeah.” Thank God. Because he had been well on the way there. They’d been riding a bullet train leading straight to the couch in his office, but when she’d called out the name Lucas with such pleading, his entire libido had flattened like roadkill. Lucas. She didn’t even know his name. He didn’t have the right to touch her, to hear those sounds from her, to make her feel good. He was a liar.
No. Now he was so much more than that.
He was her nightmare.
* * *
Early Thursday evening, Taryn’s whole body was humming as though she’d been plugged into an electrical outlet. Her mind was running through her presentation, her lips moving with the unspoken words, and her feet paced along the perimeter of the building where the school board held its meetings. The floor would be hers in a few minutes. Her presentation equipment was being set up inside.
You’ve got this. The mini pep talk kept playing through her head. She had no problem speaking in front of people. She did it every day teaching her classes, but she’d never had so much riding on one talk. All her work, all that research, the years she’d spent buried in this topic had come down to this. Information without action was just words on a page.
She’d already laid the groundwork. She’d built a relationship with the school-board vice president and had communicated regularly with two of the trustees. The details of her program had already been sent to all the board members. She’d been told how much they loved the idea of her program. She’d only exchanged one email with the president, but he’d seemed really positive about it, too. Money had been allocated for school-violence prevention this year, and they were just waiting to award it. This meeting was going to be a formality.
Still, she wanted to nail it. The board meetings were broadcast live on the web, and she wanted the community to support the program, too, to know where their tax dollars were going. She wanted this to be a movement, something they could pilot here in Austin and then spread to the rest of the country. She wanted this to be the spark that would light the fires.
You’ve got this.
She closed her eyes, stopping her pacing, and went through the list of her most compelling statistics in her head. Mental health numbers about teens and mood disorders. Warning signs that had been present before the majority of school shootings. The compelling research on social connections and self-esteem. The effects of adult mentors.
Someone tapped her shoulder and she yelped, her eyes popping open. She whirled around. “What the heck?”