And then just as bad, to have turned this town against an innocent boy to keep his own crimes from ever being discovered?
As my heart broke for the kid I knew was in Kyle, I also felt tension because I knew there was no turning back.
23
Kyle
A thousand times I regretted having given those sheets to James.
I’d wanted to tell him, but I wasn’t sure that was the best way.
I should have collected those thoughts together and found a better way to articulate them. He was an English teacher, so surely he was judging the jumbled mess that was even more of a mess than an assignment I might have done for his class.
He wouldn’t be like that, I kept reminding myself.
But allowing myself to be so vulnerable had made me suspicious. He would judge me…think I was exaggerating…or even worse, that I made it all up.
Please believe me.
It had been impossible to convey so much in just a few pages, but even a hundred or a thousand couldn’t have covered every painful memory, every time my heart ached more than my body. Every time I was made to believe it was my fault, or that this was the way the world worked.
I chased those thoughts away.
I would have plenty of time to think on them when I saw James again. In the meantime, I would be appreciative I had Tex, who’d taught me what it really meant to be loved and respected…to be protected.
When I entered James’s classroom for fourth period, he was jotting some notes down on the board about the Romantic era.
I hoped—wished—for a moment that he hadn’t read the pages I’d given him. That he’d gotten busy, or lost them. I didn’t really want that, but it was a fantasy I could cling to for the sake of the kid in me, whom I was trying to protect not just from James, but the world.
He glanced over his shoulder, to the door, as if he’d had some psychic impulse that had alerted him I’d arrived, but I figured he might have just been glancing over his shoulder from time to time, knowing I would be there soon enough, and we’d have to have a moment to discuss what I’d offered up to him.
The expression on his face was softer than usual, and I detected enough in it to know he’d read it. Because of course he had.
I didn’t want his pity, but at the same time, what kind of person would he have been if he’d read that and not felt some?
I did my best to offer the sort of smile I might have on a regular day, but that was nearly impossible. I could barely fake a smirk in his direction.
Since before I’d gotten to class, I’d assumed the lecture might be as awkward as so many of our exchanges had been, but there was something about knowing what bits I had managed to get out and into his head. Even when he glanced at me, I could feel all his support, his kindness, and some intangible quality I couldn’t put my finger on.
After the bell, when I stopped by his desk, we gazed into each other’s eyes.
“I can’t imagine you want to discuss this here,” he said.
“Not really, no.”
Once again, we were reminded of our limitations under these conditions.
But I didn’t want to be at school when we talked about everything I’d shared.
“How about Wednesday?” he asked. “We’ll probably be just as packed full of volunteers for the library as usual.”
“Wednesday would be good. Maybe you could give me a ride there and back?”
He thought on it for a moment, as though deciding if that would be appropriate.
“Even Coach Williams had to give me rides back when I was playing football.”
As he chuckled, he must’ve seen how much he was overthinking us, but I didn’t blame him. There was so much to overthink. “Yes, of course.”
Surely it complicated matters that we both knew what we were doing was wrong, but to the rest of the school, we were just teacher and student. Hell, he was the married teacher who had acted so straight, I hadn’t suspected he could have even been capable of being attracted to me, let alone what we were doing.
In truth, the time between having handed James those pages at the party and when we talked about them was helpful in giving me a chance to wrap my thoughts around it all, to brace myself for an encounter I hadn’t