“That wouldn’t have saved any of us. We had a security guy at prom. He was killed because those boys didn’t care if they died. I know why they didn’t care. They could’ve been helped.”
Shaw’s heartbeat picked up speed at the words. I know why. I know why.
No.
Taryn thought she knew why Joseph had done what he’d done, but that was impossible. Shaw had never talked to anyone. He’d only talked to the police. She couldn’t know the real truth. No one did. No one could.
Shaw lifted his hand to slam the laptop closed, but he stilled, watching Taryn’s eyes go shiny but not spill over with tears as the votes came in one by one. She’d told him she’d dedicated her whole life to developing the program. The board had taken five minutes to crumple it up and toss it in the trash. They’d dismissed her.
Her expertise. Her work. Her pain.
They’d broken her damn heart.
Shaw hissed out a breath, and a surge of anger rushed through him like lightning across a dark sky—a powerful, destructive force that filled his veins and squashed his self-control, making his muscles twitch and burn. He wanted to punch that smarmy school-board president, tell him he had no idea what the fuck he was talking about. Shaw tried to breathe through the urge, but before he knew it, he’d picked up his metal water bottle and had thrown it hard enough against the wall to leave a dent in the new drywall.
The bottle clattered loudly to the floor, cracking. The second he saw the water puddling on the floor, reality crashed back in and he put his head in his hands, his heart pounding in his ears, the anger inside him like a caged lion trying to break free. “Shit.”
Dangerous.
The word whispered through him with warning. That was what his brother had been. That was what Shaw was, too. He needed to remember that and stay far away from Taryn Landry, her friends, and anything having to do with his past.
He couldn’t help.
He’d only make things worse.
* * *
Taryn sat in front of the wall of names in the memorial garden at the high school, the setting sun throwing swaths of orange light over half the names carved into the stone. Millbourne High, the new name for Long Acre High, had let out hours ago, but somewhere in the distance, the sounds of a pickup baseball game drifted on the breeze and mixed in with the bubbling sound of the fountain in the corner of the garden. Taryn pulled her feet up onto the bench and set her chin on her knees, reading the long list of names, all those lost in the tragedy, with a hollow feeling in her stomach.
She had rubbed her fingers over Nia’s name often enough to know exactly where her sister was on the list, but Taryn let her eyes linger on each of the other names, too—former classmates, friends, strangers. She’d let every one of them down last night at the school-board meeting. She’d blown it. Even though she’d been blindsided by the board’s reaction, she never should’ve lost her cool. Her outburst had undermined her authority and knowledge of her subject and had turned her into a victim in other people’s eyes yet again, someone to feel sorry for and then dismiss as being too fill-in-the-blank—affected, emotional, involved, damaged. She was sure those words and many more had been murmured among the board members after she’d stormed out.
Taryn closed her eyes, gravity feeling heavier today. She hadn’t been able to tell her parents yet. Her research was the rope her mom held on to, giving all this grief some glimmer of hope and purpose. She couldn’t bear to tell her mother she’d failed. Spectacularly. And she had no idea how to fix it.
Even if she could figure out how to further shave the budget or water down some of the components of the program, how was she supposed to go back in front of the board and be taken seriously? They’d made up their minds. Without research, without years of data behind them, without a working knowledge of the brain, they’d made a decision. Based on gut feel, on politics, on whim. Based on bullshit as far as she was concerned.
She took a deep breath, letting the anger and grief rumble through her, a herd of buffalo destroying the path she’d laid out for herself. Trampled. That was exactly how she felt. As if she’d built a very intricate house, piece by piece over the last four years, and then in one stampede, all of it had been crushed and deemed useless. So sorry, dear. Ditch that years-long research and start again on something new. On something different. This wasn’t good enough. You weren’t good enough.
It didn’t matter that she knew in the deepest part of her that she was right. That not just her gut but a stack of studies and research and many professionals in a number of fields agreed her program could be a game changer. That lives could truly be saved. None of it mattered because she couldn’t do it alone. She’d gone as far as she could solo. Now she needed others to believe in the program, to put money into it, to care.
Last night, she’d gone home and had stared at her wall of research—all the photos and data and connections she’d built into this complex matrix. Part of her had wanted to rip every bit of it off the wall. Throw it in the fireplace and light a match. What did it matter what she’d determined if no one would listen? But when she’d put her hands along the pages to tear them down, she hadn’t been able to do it. Instead, she’d sunk onto the floor and spent the night trying to figure out another way, another path to get the program off the ground.
The most obvious option was to continue to apply for grants, but so far, her success with that had been slow going. The competition for grants in her area of study was fierce, and the private money was dwindling. It could take forever to get what she needed.
Maybe she could apply to a new university in a different state, where other school districts would be an option, maybe somewhere that had a bigger budget or was open to a more comprehensive approach. She’d lose all the time she’d built toward tenure at her current university, though. She’d have to move away from her family, her friends. The losses would be big, and the idea made her stomach hurt, but she’d do it if it meant getting the program tested somewhere.
Maybe private schools? But they were smaller with a more specific population, and results would be harder to generalize to the public school system. Maybe figure out a way to implement the program online? No, too much of the program was built on face-to-face connections. Maybe…
She laced her fingers in her hair and gripped, a frustrated sound escaping her lips.
“You know, you keep doing that, and it’s going to give you a headache and bald spots,” said a familiar voice from behind her.
Taryn startled, her head popping up, and turned to find Kincaid standing at the edge of the memorial garden. She had her hands wrapped around her elbows, and she was studiously avoiding looking at the wall of names. Taryn put her feet to the ground and spun to face her fully. “Hey, what are you doing here?”
Kincaid took a few steps closer and shrugged. “I called you, but you didn’t answer, so I stopped by your house to pick you up for your workout. When you weren’t there, I chatted up your neighbor, and he said he saw you leave with a bouquet of flowers. I figured you were headed to one of two places. I got it right on the first try.” She smirked. “Who said blonds are dumb?”
Taryn sighed. “I’m sorry you went through all that trouble. I totally forgot about the gym session.”
“No worries. We still have time to make it.”