She gives a theatrically bratty huff as she stomps her foot, and then she marches out the door.
Mr. Moran reaches up to rub his bald head for a second, looking everywhere but at me while I continue to hold Evie, rubbing circles along her back as I focus on the assistant principal’s eyes. He never meets mine, but he says with a sigh, “Well… come with me, you two. Gotta call your parents, kid.”
Evelyn jerks, and my arms tighten around her. “It’ll be okay, baby,” I tell her once more, and I slide her off the desk and set her on her feet, wrapping an arm around her to keep her steady as we walk to the office.
Chapter 20
Evie
It’s my worst nightmare come to life. How could I have been so stupid? How had I let my lust and desire overrule my mind and ruin my own freaking life? In the beginning of all this, I had been so worried Nathaniel would blackmail me, tell everyone about my private life, how I was a member of a BDSM club. And then later, I was worried his flirtations would make it obvious there was something going on between us. But no. It was me, it was my own stupid self who couldn’t just wait two more freaking days to make love with Nate, to wait until Friday when we could be in the privacy of my sanctuary, my home, without worry of being caught. Just two more days, and we could’ve had another weekend spending every moment together, wrapped up in each other, where the rest of the world disappeared and all that was left was us.
No. It was me who got him to chase me into the library, me who made it perfectly clear I wanted him to fuck me right then and there.
“I… I thought we were the only ones here,” I tell Nate as we trail behind Mr. Moran, and he tightens his grip around my shoulders.
“Cheerleaders practice late during football season, baby,” he replies, and I feel like an idiot. Of course they do. If I paid any sort of attention to my students’ extracurriculars, if I cared even the slightest to support all the school’s sports and our athletes, I would’ve remembered that. But no, I’m a horrible teacher. All I care about on Friday nights is getting home as fast as I can so I can get ready to go to my BDSM club, not giving one shit about the kids’ football games and other things that are important to them during their high school career.
We follow Mr. Moran into the main office and then through the reception area to enter his. He gestures toward the chairs across from him as he rounds the desk, sitting down and pulling his phone close to him.
And then I lose time. I’m vaguely aware of the two males speaking back and forth. I even manage to acknowledge it when Nathaniel asks if I’m all right. But I’m fairly certain I skip right past my panic attack and just black out, even though I somehow stay upright in my seat.
It’s not until I hear other people enter the office from behind me—Nate’s parents, I assume—that I snap back to the here and now, and without thinking, I shoot out of my seat, spin around, and back away from them. I don’t know if it’s because I think his mother might launch at me and choke the life out of me for sleeping with her precious only son, or if it’s something else that sets off my fight-or-flight, but while the instinct needle had flipped to the fight side earlier, when Nathaniel had caught me in the library, it most certainly was pointing all the way in the red, alarms going off inside my head for me to fucking fly.
But there’s nowhere to run. And so I don’t look like a complete freaking moron, I gesture to my now empty seat, saying to the beautiful woman with chestnut hair and big doe eyes the same color as her son’s, “Please, sit.” It’s then I realize I’ve backed myself into a corner, and I don’t know whether I feel trapped, or if I feel safer since nothing can come at me from the back.
“Oh, thank you, sweetheart,” she replies and sits, and her voice is so sweet, so pleasant-sounding, and it breaks my heart to think that it’s going to sound so very different when she hears why she’s here. This woman, who Nate painted such a wonderful image of in my mind, the best mom, the Pinterest mom, the woman his dad married for true love. I’d fantasized about meeting her in the future, about what it’d be like to have a close relationship with her, since I no longer have a mother of my own. She had been as much of a dream as Nate was, and now I’m going to lose it all.
Nate stands as well and offers his dad the chair, and his dad glances at me, asking silently if I want to take the now open seat—a gentleman, like his son.
“No thank you,” I reply, my voice trembling, and Mrs. Black’s face falls a little when she hears it.
Nathaniel comes to stand next to me, and as if he isn’t aware that his parents are right here, staring at us, as if we are on stage and in a spotlight, he wraps his arms around me and pulls me to his chest. I stiffen, my eyes going wide, and I start to struggle away, but he just tightens his grip, bending down to press a kiss to the top of my head and whispering a “Shhh” against my hair. “Trust me.”
Mr. Moran clears his throat yet again, and all I can do is watch this train wreck happen, unable to look away with Nate trapping me in my front row seat. “Mr. and Mrs. Black, let me start by saying this is
