“You think I’m going to tell someone?” I ask, disbelieving.
He watches me for a few seconds before replying, “You’re a teenager, aren’t you? Teenagers gossip. They tend to open their mouths and say things they don’t mean to.” Then, “They also tend to walk into rooms they shouldn’t and touch things that don’t belong to them.”
I see the shadows of that anger he’d just controlled in his eyes, and guilt stabs me in the chest.
Despite everything, despite his doubts in me, it makes me almost blurt out another apology.
But I don’t.
Because something else occurs to me.
Something that stabs me even harder than his anger just did.
“Is that why you came here?” I ask, frowning. “Is that why you… Is that why you apologized just now? For hurting me. For saying all those mean things to me. Because you think I’m going to tell someone about your secret? So you think you have to keep me happy, make nice with me. I can’t believe this. I —”
This time he cuts me off by letting himself go.
By taking that step he’d stopped himself from before.
In fact, he takes all the steps. To get to me.
And he does it so fast, so lightning quick, that I don’t even realize it or get the chance to back away from him.
“I apologized,” he says, bent over me, the pulse on the side of his neck throbbing. “Because I was wrong. Because I hurt you. Deliberately. Knowingly. I hurt you so much that your spot under that tree has been empty. For three fucking days. For three fucking days, you haven’t shown up wearing your little sweater and your little knit cap. You haven’t sat on the ground, bent over your sketchpad and focused on it until a little smile tips up your lips. Probably because you finally got it right, your art, your sketch, whatever.” My mouth parts as he draws even closer, his eyes all blue and angry. “I apologized because you were letting what happened between us get in the way of your dreams. Being an artist is your dream, isn’t it?” I jerk out a nod and his nostrils flare. “And you were very stupidly letting something inconsequential get in the way of that. And so I fucking apologized and made nice with you because I’d be motherfucking damned if I let you do that. If I let you potentially ruin your dreams for me. Does that clear things up for you?”
It does.
It so does.
It clears everything up. That he regrets it. What he said. The way he hurt me. That his apology was sincere. That once again he’s the only man who somehow cares about my dream.
Quite possibly as much as I do.
And so it’s painful, a thorn in my heart, to utter, “But you still think that I’ll tell.”
Something grave washes over his features, mysterious but seemingly business-like, and he steps back as he says, “You’re still a student here, at St. Mary’s. You’re still the girl who argued with me on the first day and then trespassed through my office. And whose privileges I took. So yes, I need to know if in your impulsiveness or in the throes of your teenage hormones, you’re going to tell someone or not.”
Teenage hormones.
Right.
Because I’m a teenager. And so I’ve got a teenage mouth and a teenage brain and a teenage fucking desire to tell him that yes, I will tell.
I will fucking plaster it all over St. Mary’s.
I will draw it on every wall of every classroom that Coach Thorne is having an affair with Miss Halsey.
God. God.
I hate that he thinks I could do something like that. All because of my age.
All because I’m a student here, just another girl at St. Mary’s. And I know I shouldn’t take it so personally, because it’s not as if he remembers me from that night.
He doesn’t know that we’ve already met. And so he doesn’t feel the same connection that I feel with him. So it’s only natural for him to ask me this question.
But.
I am taking this personally. Because I do feel the connection.
I do.
So I steel my spine and take yet another deep, painful breath. “What will I get if I do? Keep it to myself.”
His eyes narrow.
And I shrug. “There has to be a price, right? For keeping your secret. What is it?”
He studies me, my defiant face, for a few moments before he almost bites out, “What do you want?”
I look him up and down at his question.
Only because my heart is twisting in my chest and if I don’t, my eyes will start to sting. So I focus on him, his body. Tall and proud. Beautiful. Every line, every muscle such a work of art.
“I seem to recall asking you for help,” I say, glancing up. “The other day. With my college applications.”