Chapter 35

chapter

thirty-five

ADDIE

"Meet me in the Health room in one minute, or your ass is off to detention."

Owen saunters past the row of bleachers, whistling an easy tune as I gather my thoughts—and ovaries.

I had two coffees this morning, but they don't compare to the energy boost his scandalous request gives me.

Scanning the gym, I confirm we have no witnesses, not that they'd be in here this early. We still have twenty minutes before first period.

I scurry toward the Health room and check once more over my shoulder, my paranoia nagging at me. With the coast still clear, I inch the door open and lock it behind me.

Owen slams his mouth to mine, both hands on my cheeks as he devours me with his kiss.

Last night was a dream. At least, I thought it was when I woke up.

I startled awake in my own bed after a particularly naughty dream of Owen and me in the hot tub, but it was real—so very wickedly real.

He'd insisted I stay the night with him, but I knew it was a bad idea. I wouldn't have been able to get up this morning to make it to work on time, not with a naked Owen sprawled across the bed.

With an enormous helping of self-control, I drove myself home, lost in a daze.

I danced in the bathroom while I got ready earlier, and I used my best mascara too, which has earned me several compliments all week.

I tear myself away from Owen and straighten my sweater back into place, then fluff my hair. "I think that'll do, Mr. Conrad."

"Oh, fuck. Don't call me that. Not unless you want me to hightail it out of here with you bent over my shoulder." He adjusts himself and groans.

I lick my lips, fantasizing about him doing just that, when a nutritional poster behind his head catches my attention. It's not because a group of cartoon fruits and vegetables stares back at me, either. It's a reminder.

We're at school.

This is our place of work.

We are professionals, who definitely did not have sex in a hot tub last night, and we're sticking to that story.

I need to get out of here!

He wraps his arms around me again, but I swat him away and smack his chest. "We need to be more careful, don't you think?"

"Fine." He holds his hands up.

"Wait two minutes to leave," I whisper as if someone might hear me, then turn toward the door.

And he squeezes my ass, his breath hot on my ear when he says, "You look beautiful today."

My heart stuttering, I take a deep inhale, throw the door open, and force one foot in front of the other until I reach my side of the gym. Soon afterward, I hear the Health room door shut, and he waltzes out, whistling the same tune from before as he gathers basketballs onto the rack.

"Good morning," Sable chirps, appearing seemingly out of nowhere.

My shoulders jump to my ears as I spin to face her. "Hi," I croak as I hear what sounds like Owen dribbling a ball behind me.

"Just wanted to come by with an update on your classroom." She wiggles her shoulders in a mini celebratory dance.

"My classroom?" I blink.

"The damage wasn't as extensive as we thought. In fact, the repairs on the roof are almost finished, then we'll paint, and you'll be ready to move back in sooner rather than later."

Instinctively, I glance back at Owen, whose shirt lifts as he shoots the ball from the three-point line and makes it.

"I'm actually surprised you haven't asked about it."

I turn back to Sable. "I'm sorry?"

"I expected you to be more involved with your classroom, to be honest." She giggles. "I imagined clipboards and itineraries for the remodel, and I was definitely prepared for daily briefs or something."

Oh, crap.

That does sound like something I'd do. What doesn't sound like me is quietly letting the professionals do their jobs without intervening just so I could make eyes at the PE teacher every day.

"Well." I swallow as another dribble sounds, but this time, it's much louder. It's like the basketball bounces inside my head, pounding against my brain. "I'm a team player," I manage. "I didn't want to overstep. I'm good at a lot of things, but construction is a whole other beast."

We share a laugh, after which she nudges me with her elbow. "I appreciate your patience, and I'm so thankful for how well you've made this new arrangement with Owen work."

"Just doing my job," I say with a jut of my chin upward.

"You should see what's going on with the other teachers who needed to team up. Revenge plots, broken thermostats, and missing tea bags." She shakes her head. "We should have coffee this weekend. I'll tell you all about it, and maybe I could even pick your brain to see how you've managed to be so successful. I mean, you and Owen have it all figured out. You're a great team."

"We're just co-workers," I blurt.

Her phone screen lights up with an incoming call, and she touches my elbow as she says, "Keep up the great work, and oh—I know I've said it before, but it's worth mentioning again. I just love your new hair."

She strides away, and I clutch my stomach as a wave of nausea rolls through it.

This is the first time I don't experience an adrenaline rush from her kind words about me.

Am I sick? No. I'm fine. She was simply complimenting me—it's nothing new. She doesn't suspect a thing between Owen and me.

From the sounds of it, I'm just making her life easier with these temporary classroom assignments, and that's all.

No need to panic.

Except the nagging urge to throw up doesn't leave me the entire morning. During the middle of second period, I even have to rush to the locker room to hurl into a toilet, but it's a false alarm.

My pale complexion is real, though, and it isn't because of the fluorescent lights above the bathroom mirrors.

I'm just having a minor crisis, but it's nothing I can't handle. I've basically trained my whole life for easy decision-making and an obscene amount of pressure. I can handle what comes next with Owen and me, no matter what it is.

When the bell rings for fourth period, and the students shuffle out of the gym, I take a seat next to my large trusty tote and retrieve a protein bar. One bite, though, and I'm ready to vomit again.

It's my favorite snack, but right now, I couldn't want it any less than if it were a bag of dirt.

I wrap up the end and stick it into a baggie in my tote, my shoulders slumping. It takes everything in me not to slither to the floor and lie down. To my surprise, nothing sounds better than a nap on this disgustingly dusty floor.

But students file in and pull me out of my weird trance. I have a job to do. Now is not the time to fall apart just because my fantasy life and reality are colliding.

After a quick greeting, I open my textbook to the short story of the week to break up the long reading assignments since we finished The Scarlet Letter . I use my pointer finger to trace the title at the top of the page and say, "‘The Tell-Tale Heart' by Edgar Allan Poe." I swallow with great difficulty like I'm trying to force down a cotton ball. "Unreliable narrators. Voice. Tone."

The students blink back at me from the bleachers, expectant expressions mixed in with bored ones too. Nothing out of the ordinary, but my thoughts are jumbled. It's as if I've forgotten to speak in full sentences, with a subject, verb, and transitions.

"Let's start with the narrator." I cough into my palm, but it does little to alleviate the pressure in my throat. "How would you describe him?"

I nod toward the first kid to raise his hand. "Delusional."

"And what gives you that impression? What examples could you use?" I press.

"He says in the story that he's sane, but he also kills an old man in his own bed," he answers, his eyes wide.

"Good. Good." I pace in front of the bleachers—bad idea. It feels like I'm rocking on a boat, and my sea legs haven't quite matured. "Let's dive deeper into this narrator."

Owen's whistle from the other side of the gym makes me cringe, and the echo of it doesn't immediately wane as it normally does.

The distraction takes me a second to gather my wits and remember the lesson I have planned. I've already done this three times today. I shouldn't have any trouble successfully completing it a fourth.

"What do you make of the narrator's specific details and hypersensitivity to his surroundings in the scene?" I pose.

Thankfully, the students do a wonderful job of discussing the complexity of Poe's character as they dissect and analyze pieces of the short story.

One student raises a hand and asks, "Does this guy have a name? I don't remember reading one."

"Excellent observation," I say. "He does not give a name in the story. Do you think it's a deliberate choice? If so, why?"

I take a seat as they bounce ideas back and forth regarding the universal relatability of a character with no name, while some students argue it was a lazy choice to leave out the name.

At one point, their conversation is lost in the game Owen's leading, and my stomach squeezes. I don't know how long I remain frozen as the room spins around me.

"Lockhart?"

When I glance over, my head moves in slow motion, and my eyes don't immediately focus on Owen.

"Hey, are you okay?" He kneels in front of me, one comforting hand on my knee.

"I, um, don't know." I slowly blink, my eyelids heavy.

"What exactly are you feeling?"

I wrap my arm around my stomach and take a deep breath, but it does nothing to settle the increasing nausea threatening to commandeer my body. "I'm going to throw up."

"Now?"

"I'm going to throw up," I repeat more emphatically and use his shoulders for balance to help me stand.

With his assistance, I reach the locker rooms just in time.

I collapse onto my knees in one stall and hurl this morning's breakfast into the toilet, tears streaming down my face as my stomach clenches in agony.

Owen calls out to me from the entrance of the locker room, but I barely comprehend his muffled words over the throbbing in my temples.

Torture. This is absolute freaking torture .

I slump against the wall of the stall, and my lungs squeeze as I fight for breath. Several minutes pass before my pulse finally steadies, and the nausea subsides.

I press my back into the wall and hoist myself onto my feet, straighten my sweater, and blow the hair out of my face. Once I wash my hands and touch up the smeared mascara in the corner of my eye, I exit the locker room, dragging my feet like I just got off a ten-hour flight.

And when I pause, it's not because I can't walk any farther. It's because Owen is addressing my class. His own class is alternating between running up and down the bleachers and shooting free throws.

I'm within earshot, but he doesn't immediately notice me.

He points to Mia. "You said this song is so bouncy and catchy, but it's actually really sad. Most of us would agree, yes?"

Some students don't move or otherwise respond, but many others nod.

"Why do you think Taylor put such a fast-paced tune to sad lyrics? Why the juxtaposition?" Owen asks my class as I study the scene.

What exactly is going on here?

Students look left and right at one another as if looking for answers written on their foreheads.

"Could it be because it's yet another way she's doing this with a broken heart? It's in the lyrics, right?" Owen poses. "She puts on a happy fa?ade, like the song, but she's also sad inside."

"The song is her," Mia supplies.

Owen throws his hand up and spreads his fingers in a mic drop gesture. He swivels his head toward his class, who's making much less noise, and calls out, "I see you! Get back to work, people."

His eyes land on me.

My smile is instant. It couldn't be contained were my mouth sealed with duct tape.

His eyes slowly crinkle in the corners as his own grin spreads.

And for this split-second moment, we're the only two people in the building.