XVIII STORM OF DESIRE （AUGUST）

Hell is a real place, and I am in it.

I stand frozen in the doorway of a kindergarten classroom—Elle on one side of me, hot as hell in a red paisley print pair of capris and a sleeveless pink blouse with her hair in a ponytail with a matching paisley scarf, Miss Joly on my other, wearing an almost sadistic smirk.

When Elle said she would show me, I had no idea she meant this.

A room full of screaming kindergarteners, their teacher calling for them to calm down because Miss Joly has brought new friends to see them.

Surprise: they don't calm down.

They erupt into pure chaos, screeching, The puppy lady! I wanna pet the puppies! Where are the doggos?

They swarm the door.

I immediately duck out of the room, stepping back into the hall and flattening myself against the wall like there's a raging river bearing down on me.

Snickering, Lena Joly steps through the door to hold back the wave while I stare at Elle with my nostrils flared.

"What is this insanity?" I demand. "Have I mentioned I'm not good with children?"

"Isn't that part of the problem with Little Key?" Elle smiles.

Miss Joly leans back out the door, giving me a skeptical look. "Dude. How are you bad with kids? You publish children's books, don't you?"

"I do no such thing," I bite off. "I'm the temporary executive of a children's publisher. I'm focused on business strategy and long-term market planning—not audience engagement. My aunt enjoys those squirming little things. I do not."

That just makes Elle grin wider, and now I understand why she and Miss Joly get along like bandits.

Because behind that sweet, pretty smile, there's definitely a sadistic streak.

"You'd better learn faaast," Elle teases, catching my hand.

She pulls me along after her as she turns to walk into the room.

"Elle—Elle, no—"

Too late.

She marches me right into the gaggle of tiny creatures.

Goddamn, they're bright. They're loud.

They're a churning sea of pastels and ruffles and primary colors, sticky fingers and dirty knees and pigtails and freckles and gap teeth. They swarm me like ants crawling over an apple.

I freeze, holding my hands up to keep from touching any of them.

The teacher claps her hands together.

"All right, guys! Settle down," she says. "Miss Joly brought her friends today instead of the puppies. Say hello to Mr. Marshall and Miss Lark. They're going to lead craft time today."

"Craft time. We are?" I ask weakly.

"We sure are." Elle hefts her enormous bag with a grin.

I can't quite call the screams that follow cheers.

Or words, even if I catch hints of my name and enthusiastic hellos.

Or even human language.

What they are is piercing, hitting that special ear-breaking decibel level that only kids this age can reach. I wince with a knuckle in one ear.

"Admit it," I mutter, pitching my voice under the chatter. "You're still angry with me, and this is revenge."

"Little bit," Elle teases as she rummages around in her bag and pitches something cylindrical at me. "Now grab some glitter glue, and let's get to work."

I instinctively snap the little container of glitter glue out of the air, staring after her as she saunters across the room.

The subtle sway of her hips looks as enticing as ever. The gaggle of hairless rats trailing after us is infinitely less so.

How are they so loud?

And why do they smell like ... children?

Something bumps my arm—and I realize it's Miss Joly's elbow.

"Tuck your tongue in and quit staring at her, hound dog," she says dryly. "We're writing pen pal letters today. So sit your butt down and help out."

I'm not—

I don't know how—

Ah, fuck.

At least I don't shy away from hard work.

I look down at the tube of glitter glue and roll up the sleeves of my dress shirt.

Then I move, wading carefully through the tiny munchkins pulling at my legs, careful not to step on them as I work my way toward one of the activity tables.

Before I can even sit down, small sticky fingers catch mine. I frown down at a little brown-haired girl with her hair up in a blue bow and a giant googly-eyed hippo on her T-shirt. "You can sit with me, mister," she lisps.

"Yes. Yes, thank you?"

She just beams and drags me over to the low tables.

I have to nearly fold myself in half to fit on the end of the child-size bench, bowing my legs over both sides.

The teacher goes around the room, passing out stacks of cardboard, crayons, markers. I watch as Elle settles at another table and starts passing out the things to the kids.

Okay.

Okay, I should be doing that, too, right?

I lean over the little girl's head as she plunks down next to me and pick up the stack of colored paper. "Here you go," I say, passing her a sheet.

"No!" she exclaims in a squeal. "That one's green! I always get the purple one!"

"... purple. Right. Purple." I really don't want to set off the tears, so I quickly take the green sheet back and fish out a purple one before handing it to her.

And so it goes, down the entire table, giving them each the color they want.

"Don't start writing or drawing yet," the teacher says as little hands scramble greedily for markers and crayons. She claps her hands together. "We're going to fold them first. Remember when we made Valentine's cards? Do what Miss Joly, Miss Lark, and Mr. Marshall show you."

Shit, I'm supposed to be teaching them?

I glance desperately at Elle again for help.

She catches my eye with a sweet little smile and pointedly creases her sheet of bright-blue paper in half along the long side, folding it into a card shape.

Right.

"Like this," I say. Why am I so anxious? I have my own sheet in green—the sheet the little girl rejected—and I set it down and smooth it against the table.

The children mimic me solemnly, very seriously focusing on creasing their pages in half. The little girl's so intent on it she practically has her nose on the page, but she's making a mess.

"Careful," I say, gently nudging her hand. "You're bending the corners."

"Oh no!" she gasps, then pouts up at me. "Will you show me again?"

"Of course, Miss—what's your name?"

"Sara!" she says happily.

"All right, Miss Sara. Watch me."

I fold her paper for her carefully, showing her with slow movements until it makes a perfect crease. She claps her hands together with that ear-splitting squeal again.

"It's so good!"

"You can be that good with practice," I say, right before the teacher's voice rises again.

"All right, everyone, we're writing to our pen pals today," she says. "Pair up with the people next to you and start writing letters. Say nice things. When you're finished, you can decorate your letters and give them to each other."

Sara bares her teeth up at me in a wickedly joyous smile.

Goddamn, children are terrifying.

"You're my pen pal, mister!"

"I guess that makes you mine. Do you know how to write a letter, Sara?" I look down the rest of the table. "Do all of you know how to write letters?"

I have no idea what their answers are.

It's all just a blur of noise from the few who are listening.

"Slow down," I say desperately. "Okay—okay, let's just listen, okay? You should start the letter with ‘Dear' and then the name of the recipient. So I'm going to write ‘Dear Sara,' and then I'm going to write what I want to say to her. At the end, I'll sign it. ‘Yours, August.' That's how you write a letter to your friends."

I have no idea if any of that got through.

They just all blink at me, writing utensils poised up, their mouths open, before chatter erupts happily again as they start scribbling on their construction paper.

Well, fuck.

I tried.

Sara looks up at me quizzically. "What's your name again?"

"August," I say.

She frowns. "That's a month."

"It's a month, but it's also my name. Do you know how to spell it?"

She shakes her head, her eyes wide.

"All right. Why don't you get that white marker? It'll look nice on the purple."

She grabs the last marker from the center of the table, wrestles the cap off, and stares up at me, and I realize she's waiting.

"A," I say, watching her draw an enormous, scraggly A that takes up half the inside of the folded paper. "U ... G ..."

It takes almost five minutes to spell my name.

By then she's made a mess all over the page.

But she seems to be having fun, at least.

I steal the last marker, a red one, and write Dear Sara at the top of my page.

"I'm going to write something nice about you," I say. "You can just tell me hello, if you want."

"Okay!"

Sara sets busily to work. I'm not sure if she's writing in any known language; it mostly looks to be squiggles and a few random stick figures.

Still, she's enjoying herself, and that's the important thing.

They all seem happy.

I shake my head slightly and set my marker to the page, the red bleeding in fuzzy lines on the soft green paper.

Thank you for being my friend,I write. That's a good thing to say to a little girl who's claimed you, isn't it? Sincerely, August.

After I finish, I glance up and find Elle watching me, even as she stops a little girl from putting a glitter glue stick into her mouth, handling her with a gentle touch.

A touch that turns into a little tap of her lips as she blows me a kiss.

I clear my throat, looking away quickly.

I hope like hell my face isn't turning red in front of all these little devils.

Not that they'd notice, anyway.

They're having a grand time, slashing messages onto their construction paper, trading off glitter glue sticks and, worse, loose glitter.

Glitter that gets puffed in my face as Sara tries to get a canister open.

The can pops, pouring glitter everywhere in a silvery eruption.

Closing my eyes, I jerk back and try to swat it off with my hand—but it's useless.

Glitter showers me.

From behind, I hear Miss Joly's raucous laughter and Elle's giggles. Spitting a little, shaking my head, I swipe at my eyes, carefully opening them and then looking down at myself.

I'm painted in glitter.

There's a wall of it down my front, all over my shirt.

All over my slacks.

It's even in my mouth, and when I shake my head it showers down from my hair.

Sara clutches the near-empty canister, looking up at me sheepishly.

"Sowwy," she mumbles. "Sowwy, Auggie."

"It's okay," I manage, though just talking makes me nearly choke on more hell-glitter. "No one got hurt. I'll clean it up."

"But who's going to clean you up?" comes from over my shoulder, light with sweet laughter as Elle catches my arm. "Here. There's a wash station this way. I'm going to steal Auggie for a minute, okay?"

"Okay!"

Nearly blind with glitter, I let Elle pull me to my feet and nudge me toward the wash station. It's not hard to tell she's struggling not to bust out laughing again as she wets a paper towel in the sink and starts swiping at my face.

"Wow," she murmurs. "Didn't think you'd get this into it."

"You're not funny, brat."

"Liar." She flashes that adorable smile up at me. "You want to laugh. Admit it."

"If I inhale too hard," I say through my teeth, "I'll be digesting glitter for a solid week."

Elle giggles and gently draws the paper towel across my brows, cleaning delicately around my eyes. "Sara's taken a liking to you."

"She has the charm of a jackal cub. Cute. Scruffy. Unsettling."

"Oh, please, you aren't scared of that little thing."

"Her voice could crack glass."

"That's just how kids are. I think you like it."

I give Elle a sour look. "You've made your point. Yes, they're enjoying themselves." I glance over at the table I left. Sara's happily trading a glue stick back and forth with another little girl, both of them spackling their cards with streaks of shimmery stickiness. "I think our target market might be slightly older for actual pen pal activities, but we can certainly create a vertical of secondary merchandise for this age group."

The next thing that touches my face isn't the paper towel, but Elle's lips—brushing a light, chaste kiss to the corner of my mouth before pulling back. I glance back to her, her pink lips shining with traces of silver.

"Thank you," she murmurs with a sweet smile. "But we're not done yet. Brush yourself off and go give your little friend her card."

"You've got glitter on your lips." I brush my thumb to the corner of her mouth. "It's a good look on you."

"If you're nice here, you can do something a little more hands-on about that later." She grins.

"Does that mean I'm forgiven? And you have no further intention of torturing me?"

"For now," she says airily—then flings the wet, glitter-crusted paper towel at my chest as she spins on her heel and flits away. "But I have every intention of torturing you."

I stare after her, catching the paper towel.

That woman.

If we weren't in a kindergarten class ...

Let's just say I'd make her regret tugging my leash.

I finish wiping my face off, brush my clothing off over the trash can, and return to my seat.

I suppose I can't give Sara an undecorated letter, so I draw a heart on the front in glitter glue and shake my hair out over it before it dries, filling it in almost completely in silver.

"Done!" Sara crows, holding her card up triumphantly. "All done! It's for you!"

She thrusts it at me like a weapon.

The thing is soaked in glue, covered in so much glitter it bends in half, but I take it anyway and open it.

The only part that's legible is my name, and even that's questionable.

The rest is all squiggles, the number 3, a few hearts, a stick figure, and I think that letter might be an F.

"Great work," I say, forcing a smile. "What does it say? It's pretty. You did a good job."

"It says we're gonna be friends always, Mr. Auggie!"

She flings herself at me in a hug that almost crumples her card.

I pat her back gently, holding the card away from her so she doesn't get glue in her hair, but the glitter was a lost cause the moment she hugged me.

She pulls back spangled. Her parents are going to murder me when she goes home like that and infects their house with the silver plague.

"Here you go." Shaking my head, I pick up my card and offer it to her.

Another shrill, ecstatic squeal. She actually hugs the letter, crumpling it, then pets the glitter heart like she's petting a cat. "Pretty!"

"Can you read the inside?" I ask.

She opens it sharply and shakes her head.

"I see my name," she declares. "I know my name!"

"It's good that you can read your name." Even if I'm still worried about asphyxiating on glitter, I chuckle. "It says ‘Thank you for being my friend.'"

Her eyes grow round and wide.

"You really mean it?" she whispers. "You mean it, we're friends?"

"Friends," I answer firmly, glancing over to watch the other children.

Elle was right, I think.

She has good instincts, and she knew better than I did.

Not only are the kids trading their letters and happily interpreting their squiggles, but they're happily tottering around to show off their letters to other friends. There might even be new friendships forming.

Writing letters really does bring people together.

Maybe Inky's time really isn't past just yet.

It must be an hour before they're done shouting around and laughing—and clearly very sleepy. The teacher, Elle, Miss Joly, and I help marshal the munchkins into the washroom to get the worst of the glitter, glue, and marker streaks off them.

As if this is common routine, as soon as they're done in the washroom, they toddle out to blankets and folded mats taken from cubbies in the wall, claiming a spot on the floor and rolling their mats out to curl up.

As I help Sara scrub her fingers off, I glance at Elle. "Nap time?"

"Story time," she answers, teasing a glob of glue out of a little boy's hair. "And you're going to read to them."

I sigh, but without much exasperation this time. "You're really grinding this in."

"Mm-hmm."

Smug little wretch.

"All clean!" Sara proclaims, and holds her hands out for me to dry.

I wipe her fingers off one at a time with a towel and lightly pat her shoulder. "Go get your mat and find a good spot."

With a bobbleheaded little nod, she darts off, bouncing toward the wall cubbies. I wipe a little more glitter off my hands, watching her while Elle shoos off the little boy with clean hair.

"You're better with them than I expected," Elle says.

"I said I'm not good with children. I didn't say I'm a complete imbecile with no common sense. It's not that difficult to make them happy. Just be nice to them."

Her lips curl.

"Seems like a good rule with just about anyone." Her smile widens. "I thought you said being nice was pointless?"

"They're children, Elle. What kind of monster do you think I am?" I toss the towel at her. "No, don't answer that."

Her grin says it all.

I just shake my head as I let her drag me out into the classroom to an actual adult-size plush chair.

The children have arranged their mats around it like sunflower petals. Elle pushes me down into the chair, then steals a book from the top of the stack the teacher offers her and slaps it into my hands.

"You're up, Shakespeare."

"You are enjoying this far too much," I grumble, but then I look down to see what she's given me.

It's something about a puppy that pokes.

It's a very ugly puppy.

Well, I suppose puppies don't need to be show winners to poke things.

I crack the book open, looking inside at the illustrations, then at the sleepy faces watching me expectantly.

This suddenly feels strange—all these trusting little things looking up at me, fully believing that somehow I have the magic power to soothe them to sleep with just a few words.

I don't think of myself as a calming presence, as someone safe enough for children to look at with such innocence.

But they clearly don't see me like I see myself.

Sort of like Elle never has either.

The thought softens my voice as I begin reading slowly about the five little puppies digging under a fence. I'm careful not to let my tone jar the children out of their sleepiness.

The book's longer than I expect.

A silly story about a group of five puppies, and how one of them always seems to find his own way, and the things the other four puppies find as they search for the poky little puppy, then pick up the smell of rice pudding.

It makes me think of the stories Aunt Clara used to read to Deb and me on the nights when we remembered Mom and Dad were gone, when the world felt large and frightening and very alone.

Those stories made us feel like we were all together in a safe bubble. They always eased us right to sleep.

By the time I turn to the last page, they're all out cold.

Sara chews on the neck of her shirt in her sleep. The little boy who had glue in his hair has one foot sticking out of his blanket.

Elle sits on one of the craft tables, watching me with her eyes soft and a look on her face that makes my heart twist with yearning.

I close the cover and stand, then make my way quietly through the room to offer her the book.

"Here. You win."

"I knew I would," she whispers, sliding off the table to take my hand. "We should go. If we're here when they wake up, they'll never let us leave."

I nod and turn the book over to the teacher.

We thank her before slipping out into the hall. The door closes carefully behind us and latches.

Miss Joly gives me an amused look the second we're free.

"Silver. I'm calling you the Terminator from now on."

"You're not as funny as you think, Miss Joly."

She flashes cunning teeth at me.

"Yes, I am." Then she pokes Elle's shoulder. "You owe me one."

Elle rolls her eyes in amusement. "Thank you, Lena."

Lena just snorts and waves us off, sauntering down the hall toward the exit. "We're well past my lunch break. I gotta get back to work. We've got six neuters and spays on the docket today at the clinic, and I'm itching to cut something's balls off."

The warning is clear.

She's picked up on something undeniable between us.

If I hurt Elle, Miss Joly will neuter me next.

Elle chuckles, leaning against my arm. "Don't pay attention to her. She threatens everyone."

"Glad to know I'm not special."

"Oh, you're special. You're just ... a different kind of special." Elle snickers and reaches up to flick my hair off my brow. "I should help you get out of those glittery clothes."

There's a sudden ache between my ribs and between my legs.

The implication. The memory of the taste of her flesh. The wanting.

Yeah, I wouldn't mind letting her strip me naked and inspect to make sure there's not a single grain of glitter left on me.

Before I return the favor with my tongue, searching every inch of her body.

Only, that warning lingers.

I remind myself I'm no good for her. I can't be.

But it's hard to say no.

Harder to shake my head and force a smile, squeezing her hand.

"I couldn't get the whole day off," I say. "Not when I've got a strategy meeting with a few new investors this afternoon. I have to go straight home, shower, change, and get back. Rick can take you home. I'll take an Uber."

Disappointment flashes across her face before her smile returns.

I almost can't stand it.

The way she smiles at everything, when what I want most is her.

I want her whole heart, all her feelings, no matter how intense.

For now, all I can do is accept, when I created this situation—and nod as she teases, "You asshole. You're taking an Uber so you don't get your own car dirty."

"Guilty," I admit. "You've never seen Merrick angry. Glitter on the upholstery, though?"

I wince.

"Well, in the interests of saving your fancy car ..." She rises up on her toes and kisses my cheek—and comes away with more glitter on her lips. My beard must be foul. "I'll follow the game plan. You'd better tip the Uber driver a week's worth of pay for this mess."

"I will." I shake a little more glitter out of my hair before turning to follow her outside.

I'm almost walking unsteadily from the madness rattling around my head.

All I want to do is pull her too close to breathe.

Pull her close and lay claim and take everything, every soft inch of her, until she's entirely mine forever.