My fingers tightened around her arm, preventing her from reaching. But she might as well have put her hand on me anyway. I felt her everywhere, digging in with her nails and sharp kitten teeth while cutting me at the knees with only a look and a plea.
“Please, don’t make me regret telling you this.” She wrapped her free hand around mine on her wrist and leaned in. “I’m feeding baby opossums. This isn’t like the bat. I know they’re joeys. Or they were. They’re nearly ready to survive on their own. They just need a couple more days to bulk up for the winter. Please, Father Magnus.” She bent over our hands, lowering her brow to my chest. “Please, don’t hurt them.”
My muscles ached, contracting and stalling, excruciatingly rigid with the effort to hold her back. Except it wasn’t her. It was me I was holding back.
I pulled away and gripped the doorframe behind me until the edge jabbed into my palm. “I’m not going to hurt them.”
I can’t promise the same for you.
“Really?” She narrowed her eyes, but hope glowed through the slits.
“There are no rules in the student handbook about feeding wild animals.”
“No, but I thought—”
“Let’s go pay them a visit.”
“Now?” Her arms dropped, hanging dormant at her sides.
I needed out of this suffocating room. Turning on my heel, I strode into the hallway and didn’t stop until I arrived in the grove behind the main building.
She ran a few paces behind and slowed as she caught up.
“You know where they live.” Her fists went to her hips, and her bottom lip pushed out like an offering. “How long have you known about them?”
“Since day one. You eat every meal out here, even when it’s raining.”
“So what did you do?” She lowered to her knees and crawled toward the twisted root system of a large tree. “You came out here to investigate and found the cutest little—? Oh, hey there.” She dipped low to the ground, ass up, with the skirt flipped above her thighs.
The wind must’ve caught the hem. I should’ve told her to fix it. The command was there, scraping across my tongue, but it didn’t emerge.
My welts would glow like fire on her flawless, porcelain skin. My hands would leave a ring of blue around her delicate throat. My cock would stretch and tear and split her tiny pussy in half.
I ripped my stare away before I did something irreparable.
“I’m sorry to wake you.” She made a shushing sound at the critters. “But since you’re both up, I have someone here to meet you.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“Don’t be rude.” She rose to her feet and held out her arm, drawing my attention to the fuzzy gray marsupials clinging to her cardigan.
“You shouldn’t handle them.” I rested my fingers in my pockets, fighting an inner battle with my overheated body.
“They’re less of a health risk than nearly every other animal in the wild. And they’re clean.” She grinned at the one on her shoulder. “Aren’t you, Willow? Always grooming yourself.” Her arresting smile shifted to me. “She thinks she’s a cat.”
“Handling them makes them less fearful of humans. When they leave here—”
“I know. I’ve tried to keep them off me. But they’re climbers, and since I bring them food every day, they think I’m their mom.” She sighed. “They’ve never been afraid of me.”
For four weeks, I’d watched her retreat into this grove while weekend visitors came and went. Every student had received at least one visitor since the start of the school year. Most students had visitors every weekend.
Not one person had come to see Tinsley.
As we walked back to the classroom, she prattled on about the opossums, sharing stories as if they were her closest friends.
She was lonely.
If I looked beneath her misbehavior and sass, I would see just how deep her loneliness ran.
She was miserable.
Maybe that misery began long before she moved to Maine. What had she really left behind in Bishop’s Landing? Shallow friendships? A cold mansion? A world where she went unnoticed, unappreciated, and unloved?
She’d stopped asking for her phone two weeks ago.
“They keep me company.” She followed me into the classroom, still talking about the opossums. “It’ll probably sound dumb to you, but they’re all I have here. I’ll be devastated when they move on. But I’ll also be proud and blissfully happy. I only want the best for them.” She smiled to herself. “Animals are better than people.”
“How so?”
“They don’t judge. They don’t hate. If humans had hearts like opossums, what a beautiful world this would be.”
If people had hearts like Tinsley Constantine, my faith in humanity would be renewed.
For the next few hours, I led her through her lessons. She took some exams, went to lunch, and sat through my afternoon classes. Then she finished her day with the punishment she’d earned for being late this morning.