AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My blood boils all over again as I observe him walking toward me without a fucking care in the world — like he didn’t just shit on everything I love. The thought of him breaking into my shop and destroying that car sends enough rage through me to knock the air out of my lungs.
“Mr. Brooks, what can I do for you?” He extends his hand for a shake, and I’m tempted to take it and twist his arm behind his back.
“I’d like to discuss this in private, if you don’t mind,” I mutter quietly and glance between him and his bimbo.
He plasters a shit-eating grin on his face. “Of course, right this way.” He motions for me to follow him to his office. He closes the door behind me before sitting behind his obnoxiously large desk. “Now, what’s this regarding?”
“Kelsey and I have filed a protective order against you,” I state matter-of-factly as I hand him the papers. “I can’t prove that it was you who keyed her car and destroyed my shop, but I can sure as hell make sure you stay the fuck away from her.”
“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he smirks. God, what a perfect asshole. “I was home all night, you can ask Veronica — she was with me.”
I have to take a few calming breaths to keep me from launching across that desk and choking the life out of him. I won’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me dragged away in handcuffs.
“Sure, I’m going to believe the secretary you’ve probably been fucking since long before Kelsey dumped your ass,” I scoff. “And I never said that this happened last night.”
“Believe it or don’t — it makes no difference to me. But you’re out of your mind if you think this order is going to get passed through.” He tosses the document on his desk like it’s trash.
“It already has been. My lawyer got it expedited this morning due to the vandalism. You’re not to come within 500 feet of us, our house, or our places of business.”
“Well, you’re within that distance right now, are you not?” he replies smugly.
“Yep, because I wanted you to hear these words from my mouth as I served you these papers. I don’t know what game you’re playing at, trying to get Kelsey to come back to you, but it’s not going to happen. And if you think the shit you’ve been pulling is going to scare her into taking you back, you’re a lot dumber than I thought you were.” I knock my knuckles against his desk as I stand up. “You have a great day, now.”
As I close the door behind me, I hear a loud grunt, accompanied by the sound of glass shattering against the wall. I can’t help but chuckle to myself because I know now that I got the better of him. Point, set, match.
Chapter 45
“You sure you two don’t want to go down to the tutoring center?” I ask Daisy and Dominic as they set up in my classroom after school.
“Nah, we’re cool, Teach. We don’t mind staying in here if you’re okay with it,” Dominic says with a little more pep in his voice than I’m used to. Maybe Daisy brings out a different side of him.
I’ve mastered the art of tuning out distractions while I’m grading or lesson planning — Grant never had respect for my career or the effort it took outside of school hours. He’d come home and put on whatever sporting event was on that night — there was always something on. It would’ve been manageable if he’d watched the games in a calm fashion, but instead, he constantly yelled at the TV or cheered obnoxiously when his team scored.
Despite my ability to tune out noise, I can’t help but overhear — okay, more like eavesdrop on — the conversation between Daisy and Dominic.
“Did you read last night’s chapters?” Daisy asks shyly.
“Did I read them or did I understand them?” Dominic scoffs.
Daisy lets out a frustrated sigh. “Are you even trying to understand it?”
I glance up to see Dominic smirking at Daisy. “Maybe you just explain it in a way that helps me understand it.”
It takes everything in me not to chuckle to myself. The look on Daisy’s face mirrors the one I wore many times while I tutored Joey.
“Joey, come on. I know you can write better than this.” I had just gone over one of his English papers, and actually felt my IQ drop a few points from reading it. I swear, there was a paragraph that was one long run-on sentence. I was convinced he was trying to write badly — even the worst writer in existence couldn’t write that poorly without doing so deliberately.
“But you’re such an amazing editor, Kelsey. Besides, if I wrote better, you wouldn’t be my tutor anymore.”
He had been in tutoring with me for well over two months by that point, so for him to fall so far backwards was nearly impossible. It made me wonder if he ever needed the tutoring to begin with, or if he was just lazy.
“Why do you want to be in tutoring when you could actually be enjoying your free periods?”
“Who says I’m not enjoying them?” He smirked at me flirtatiously.
Looking back on those days back in high school, I’m kicking myself for not noticing the subtle comments he used to make toward me. Or maybe it was that I had noticed them, but I just couldn’t believe they were real. I’d seen so many girls fall for stupid pranks from the jocks that I didn’t want to be one of them.
“Hey, Kels,” I hear Joey’s voice call from the doorway. “Ready to go?”
