10. A Most Unfortunate Discovery

10

" W ho can tell me which Greek city-states fought in the Peloponnesian War?" I asked my class, leaning against the front of my desk to alleviate my aching feet after a full day of classes.

Nobody answered.

Predictable.

Three students were asleep, five were messing with their phones, a couple were lazily flipping through their textbooks, attempting to look like they were searching for the answer, and in the very back, Queen Bee Claire DeLongpre was touching up the top coat of her manicured nails.

The bell sounded over the ancient PA system. Everyone stood in unison, packing their things to take a quick exit.

"Athens and Sparta," I yelled the answer over the cacophony. "Turn in your essays on the way out, please," I requested beseechingly.

A good third of the class probably wouldn't even bother. I knew better than to put up a fight. I merely deducted points for days late, eliminating any awkward conversations or made- up excuses. If they couldn't write a five-paragraph essay on any topic of their choosing, they deserved to fail.

"Claire," I called out as the girl passed me, surrounded by her usual gaggle of friends.

"What?" she replied sharply.

"No more nails in class—someone will pass out from the fumes, and the windows are painted shut," I explained.

"Fine." She rolled her eyes, flipping her long hair over her shoulder as she marched out the door.

I had noticed I wasn't getting quite as much resistance from the students as the year before. Montgomery was small, with only around one hundred students per grade level. "Keeps things competitive," Headmaster Winston had noted of the small student body when I'd once asked him.

With eight periods in the day, I taught two classes per grade each day and was able to cycle through the entire student body between the fall and spring semesters. I was fortunate for the smaller class sizes. I'd heard so many horror stories from other teachers while earning my teaching certification of how public schools were bursting at the seams and funding went down every year.

But as with any job, Montgomery had its own set of challenges, despite the benefits. Fearing any interaction with a privileged student could lead to professional disgrace was definitely high amongst them.

Six weeks.

We'd already been in session for a month and a half.

And those first six weeks at Montgomery had thankfully passed almost uneventfully. The autumnal foliage in the surrounding woods had started to turn early. The colors deepened as the temperatures dropped with each passing day.

I watched leaves fluttering to the ground as I made my way across the back lawn to the storage shed where Lenny had kindly left a few parcels of chopped wood for me to take up to my room and the lounge, as the weather had also begun to turn with the leaves.

There was some sort of primitive central air system in the carriage house, but I had never figured out how to work it and my maintenance requests the previous school year had gone unanswered. So instead, I took to using the wood-burning fireplaces to keep warm, which suited me just fine. I found the smell and sound of a crackling fire quite soothing.

Chance had finally taken the hint and had thankfully been keeping his distance from me. Although occasionally I'd catch glimpses of him around campus snapping photos on the antique camera he had mentioned to me on the drive home the first night we met.

I often wished I could see the photos he took. If things had turned out differently between us, maybe I would have become his muse, as he had joked. I found my anger toward him waning slightly, but it didn't change the fact that we were from different worlds, or that he had lied to me.

As fall sunk in, he began to wear sweaters over his button-up shirts, which made him look positively swoon-worthy. And swooning I still was, much to my dismay.

"He probably smells good too," I grumbled to myself as I hauled one of the heavy parcels across the back lawn to the carriage house.

The thought occurred to me as I lugged the wood up the three flights of stairs, thumping on each step as I went, that it sounded like I was dragging a body, so I wasn't surprised when Chance poked his head out of the door to his apartment, just as I made it to the fourth-floor landing.

"What are you doing?" His eyes darted from me to the parcel.

"Nothing," I grunted, trying not to think about how my fingers were burning from the exertion and that I definitely felt at least two blisters forming.

"Sure you don't want help?" He quirked a brow, his head swiveling as he followed my progress down the hall to my own door.

"No—go away," I retorted petulantly as I passed him.

"Violet…" He trailed off, as if it pained him not to be able to assist me.

"It's still Miss Price," I scolded him, more to stop myself from giving him a chance to speak to me like the civilized human being I should have been, or worse, admitting to myself that I not only wanted his help, but was pleased that he had even offered.

I was extraordinarily good at holding grudges. But it was a talent I didn't wish to harbor.

I didn't want to snap at Chance at every opportunity.

I wanted to be friends with him.

Hell, I wanted to be much more than friends.

That was the problem.

And that was why it was easier to be cold and distant with him.

It was the only thing I could do to keep from acknowledging how my heart still fluttered around him, and that I thought of the kiss we'd shared so much more than I ever reminisced over any other kiss I'd ever received.

I sighed in relief when I heard the click of his door latching.

Per my usual routine, I threw some pasta on the stove to cook while I unpacked my bag. Pasta and PB I just removed the blankets covering it.

But my absolute favorite find in the room was a neat little console table that I situated between the fireplace and window seat on my side of the room. Atop the table sat a very old phonograph, with a big trumpet-like speaker. And on the shelves below was a fantastic old record collection, full of jazz, classical, and big band instrumental records, as well as some music artists from the forties and fifties. My favorite was a Motown album that I often played while I read on the couch.

Judging from the labels on the recreation tables and the most recent books, I figured nobody had been up there in a good thirty years, which would have aligned with the last renovation of the carriage house in the early nineties, when it had been turned into the faculty apartments.

How someone had forgotten the treasures in my lounge was beyond me, but I was glad for it. Having my own space, and a secret space at that, made a piece of Montgomery feel like mine. The lounge was the one place on campus where I felt like I belonged.

It was as if the room existed solely for me. Like it had been waiting its whole existence just to bring me joy.

I selected a jazz album that evening and took to lighting my first fire of the season in the large hearth. The sound of crackling wood and the flickering firelight put me at complete ease. I exhaled in contentment, settling at the study table to eat first, then started to work.

It began to rain halfway through grading my essays. The gentle pitter-patter on the paned windows made me drowsy…the soft jazz didn't help either. My eyelids drooped, heavy with exhaustion. I gave in, closing them for just a moment, only to be startled out of a dead sleep moments, or maybe hours, later when something came crashing through the window at the far end of the lounge.

On instinct, I released a bloodcurdling scream.

"Violet?" a familiar male voice called out from the dark.

A shadowy figure moved toward me, and once he reached the study table, I finally recognized his blue-grey eyes.

"What the fuck, Chance!?" I shouted, scrambling off my chair and promptly tripping over the leg, falling to the floor in a heap.

"Sorry." He grimaced, reaching a hand out to help me up.

I swatted it away and righted myself without his help, taking a few steps back to increase the distance between us once again.

"What is this place?" he breathed in awe, craning his head to look up and down the long room.

"My lounge…" I frowned, willing my heart to stop racing.

Chance paced toward me, but his attention was on the seating area situated in front of the still crackling fire, just behind me.

"This is your secret cozy space." An impressed grin spread along his face, but quickly faded when he took me in. "I didn't mean to frighten you."

I folded my arms over my chest defensively. I wanted him to leave…immediately. Nobody else had been up in the lounge. Jolene and Lenny were the only two people on campus who even knew it existed, or at least they had been the only ones who had known I knew it existed.

"How'd you find me?" I pouted.

"I've heard you puttering around up here for weeks. I thought it was an animal." He paused abruptly to chuckle at himself. "Or maybe a ghost. But rodents and ghosts don't usually start fires and play jazz, as far as I'm aware."

Chance looked around, searching for the source of the music. "Where's it coming from?"

I pointed to the console. "It's a phonograph."

"Actually, it's a gramophone." He grinned, walking over to look at it up close. "And a beautiful one at that." He traced the edge of the horn with the tip of his index finger. "Well, technically, a gramophone is a type of phonograph, but they play cylinders, while gramophones play records like this."

Ignoring his unsolicited correction to my terminology, I asked, "How'd you get up here?" I squinted, trying to see how he might have entered from the end of the room, but failing.

"The fire escape." He beamed, proud of his ingenuity. "The window was unlocked."

I fought back a grimace, remembering the last time the weather had been pleasant and I'd opened up all of the windows, knowing it would be one of the last opportunities for a while. It hadn't occurred to me that I needed to be concerned about intruders on the fourth floor that nobody was supposed to know existed.

I studied him as he continued to gawk at everything. His hair was wet with rain, rivulets of water running down his face and neck, disappearing beneath the casual grey zip-up hoodie he was wearing. Like me, he had swapped his slacks for pajama pants, but had put on a well-worn pair of sneakers to scale the fire escape. Small puddles formed in his wake as he traipsed across the floor in earnest exploration.

Without thinking, I reached over the couch to grab a blanket. "Here," I called out, just before throwing it to him.

He looked down at the blanket and then back up at me, a curious expression etched upon his face. He took a beat before using it to dry off, wrapping it around his broad shoulders afterward.

"How'd you get up here?" He raised an eyebrow in interest.

"There's a trapdoor in my bathroom ceiling," I admitted.

"Huh." He nodded his head, seemingly amused at the thought.

"Please don't tell anyone," I blurted out.

Chance gave me a predatory grin as he contemplated my request.

I tried desperately to ignore the flutter in my stomach at having his eyes on me so intensely.

Taking his time to respond, he strolled past me, elegantly seating himself in the armchair closest to the fire.

"I might have a few conditions." He turned his gaze on me, crossing his ankle over his knee, then leaning back into the chair.

Chance was already acting like he owned the place. But he wasn't the one who had painstakingly arranged everything. I had. This was my lounge. MINE!

I said nothing, letting the anger stew just below the surface as I waited for him to continue.

He watched me closely as he spoke. "If I wanted to join you up here occasionally, do you think you could tolerate being in the same room as me?"

No.

"Fine."

"I'd also like for you to allow me to call you Violet," he challenged.

No.

"Fine."

Chance slowly rose from the chair to approach me. "And I'd like to put the past behind us, so we can call a detente and be done with all this contention."

My jaw clenched involuntarily. I knew he wasn't asking for much. I knew I should just agree and be done with it all. But I found myself speechless.

"Perhaps you're just determined not to like me." He took a step closer, tilting his head down to meet my fiery gaze.

He wasn't wrong.

I couldn't help but let out a soft gasp when his warm fingers connected with the sensitive skin at my wrist. "Or maybe you like me too much—is that it?" he whispered softly.

That hit too close to home.

"I have to go," I choked out, abruptly severing the connection and rushing to gather my papers strewn across the study table.

"Violet, you can't run away from me forever," Chance simpered, but made no move to stop me.

"Doesn't mean I won't try," I replied flippantly, kneeling down between the pool and Ping-Pong tables to open the trapdoor and extend the ladder into my bathroom.

"I'm glad we can discuss and solve our problems like adults," Chance called out sarcastically.

I slammed the trapdoor closed in response.

Chance Harper was mistaken if he thought all it would take was one conversation and a handshake for me to move on—to forget that he'd lied to me. Fool me once and all of that. But I'd been made a fool of too many times before, and I was dead set on holding my ground.

Maybe I was determined not to like him, but I knew if I gave in, it would only lead to ruin.