“It says here that we’re going to have a lab? Will we be assigned partners, or will we get to choose them?” Taylor asked, once again not waiting for me to call upon her. I gritted my teeth, imagining Maximillian and Blakely working late hours in the lab.
“This year, I’ll be picking lab partners. You need to learn how to work with anyone. In the professional world, you won’t always get to pick your coworkers, but you always get to pick how you handle working with them. Consider it a life lesson.” I was pulling that reasoning straight out of my ass, but most of my students seem to buy it. Good. I was confident that if they knew my real rationale, they would no longer look at me with respect.
The bell rang, and I resisted the urge to hold Blakely back to ask why she had a frown on her face. She slowly gathered up her belongings, packing her textbook into the messenger bag Lance gave her this morning.
I’d been thinking about her reaction to his gift all day, wondering if she wasn’t used to getting gifts. It almost made me want to give her a present every morning. And no, I didn’t mean that sexually, although my dick had other plans.
Maximillian stopped at her desk, asking if she wanted to go to lunch with him. “You go ahead, I need to ask Mr. Harris something.” I was surprised that she wanted to talk to me at all, considering she hadn’t looked at me once since coming here.
Maximillian was like a puppy dog, eagerly nodding as he responded. “Sure thing, I’ll save you a seat.”
“Thanks,” Blakely replied. Maximillian walked out of the classroom after giving me a knowing look I wanted to punch right off his pretty-boy face. Once he was gone and the door was shut, Blakely stood up and marched over to my desk.
“Did you tell people about my mother?” she asked, her voice somewhere between a growl and a tremble. That question surprised me. Of all the things she was going to say, that was the last I would’ve expected.
“I told the enrollment counselor. I have to be transparent about my living situation, and when I vouched for your entrance here, I told them how I knew you and how you came to live in Memphis.” Although Blakely was more than qualified to attend school here, I might not have been entirely forthcoming with how she got into MAMS.
“I thought we had an understanding,” she sneered before slamming her palm down on my desk. “I’m not here for three hours, and already the rumors are flying. Why did you approach me in the hallway? Why did you tell everyone I’m some charity case?”
I felt my face sour like bad milk. Blakely wasn’t some damn charity case. She was a survivor. She was intelligent and deserved a spot at the school. I tried to be transparent so that the administrators understood why I wanted her here and my relation to her. However, it didn’t take away from the fact that she had earned a seat at that desk.
“I should’ve told you that the teachers here knew about your situation. But you aren’t the first person to walk through these doors with a peppered past, and you won’t be the last. As far as our living situation? Lance is your guardian and my best friend. Nothing is going on, so I don’t understand why it would bother you so much.”
I watched her beautiful face bloom a vibrant, angry shade of red as she stared at me. The storm in her green eyes had become an inferno that no amount of water could put out. Her anger was intoxicating but beautiful, despite it all.
“It’s nothing? So I suppose it would be fine if I told Lance that you walked up to me and announced to the entire school that we lived together? Especially since I was talking to the first friend I had made.”
Shame and turmoil were raging in my chest. Both emotions fought for dominance. One part of me wanted to call Lance and apologize, and the other part of me wanted to show her that I had every right to stake my claim—even though I knew damn well I didn’t.
“What are you insinuating?”
She tilted her head back and let out a hollow chuckle that echoed with fury. “I’m not insinuating anything, Mr. Harris. I want to have a normal life. I didn’t just run here because I had no other options; I was running away from everything that reminded me of Mama. I can’t do that if everyone in this goddamn school looks at me with pity. I’ve already had a lifetime of sympathy for being Sharron’s daughter. I didn’t want it here.”
I felt like shit. When I had told Blakely that we had a lot in common, I meant it. I could understand wanting to run away from your parents’ toxic shadow. It’s why I was in Memphis instead of Chicago. Yes, I loved the slower pace coupled with a vibrant city, but the best part about being in Memphis was that people didn’t care if I was Jack Harris’s son. And I knew that she didn’t want to be known as the poor girl whose shitty mother died of cancer.
“So what do you suggest?” I asked. “Everyone already knows.” It was a dick thing to say, but I couldn’t change what people thought or already knew. The only choice now was to move forward. I didn’t want her stuck in the victim cycle; I wanted her to overcome it.
She folded her arms around herself and looked at the door. We could both see students eyeing us warily through the small window. “I don’t know.”
“You could always ignore it. Fuck their narrative. You’re here because you’re brilliant. Get good grades. Have fun. And don’t worry about me. So what if people know our living arrangement? I won’t treat you any differently than any of the other students here if you continue to get shit done.”
Green eyes looked back at me, and I had to take a steadying breath to stop myself from leaning over and touching her soft skin. “Okay,” she choked out.
I wanted to reach out and squeeze her hand reassuringly or offer her a hug. I knew first hand that this shit wasn’t easy. I craved to kiss away the furrow on her brow.
But instead, I nodded toward the door and started rustling through papers on my desk, wordlessly dismissing her because I knew I didn’t have the strength to tell her to go. For some fucked up reason, I wanted her near me. It wasn’t until the door to my classroom shut that I felt my spine relax and the tension in my body release.
Blakely had to become nothing. So nothing was what she’d get.
13
Blakely
“Baby girl, you look like you need to break something.” Rose stood up from behind her desk and walked over to me. She’d called me into her office after catching me toss a customer one of the biggest fake smiles of my life. I was trying, I really was. But the kindness didn’t meet my eyes, and Rose, being the intuitive annoyance she was, noticed right off the bat.
My first day at school had been hard. Surprise, surprise.
“I had a rough day,” I replied cryptically as she ran her fingers along her white desk.
“I can tell. Your aura is so angry right now,” she murmured while picking up a vase and tossing the wilted flowers housed in it on the floor. “Toss it. It’ll make you feel better,” she added before handing the glass to me.
“I’m not doing that,” I replied with an eye roll. I wasn’t in the mood for my boss’s eccentric personality.
“Throw it on the ground,” she ordered again before taking a step back. I eyed my boss wearily, taking in the tight jeans that hugged her curves and the off the shoulder smock draped across her frame. Her eyes were wild, and her lips were stained a berry color.