AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I blushed from head to toe, though secretly I enjoyed the warmth and amusing moments after stressing out about the kids we found. “Ugh,” I said.
Luke and Victor laughed. Silas chuckled, the deep sound reverberating against my bones.
Dr. Green finally let go. I wobbled a step and then breathed in fully. Dr. Green smoothed out his shirt and then winked at me. “Are you busy? Perhaps you and I could go check out the babies again. There’s new ones now and—”
“Hey there,” Luke called out. “About time he showed up.”
Dr. Green’s face shifted from happy to confused until he turned. I realized Dr. Green was asking me to join him at the hospital. The last time we looked in on the babies, he considered it a date. Was he trying to ask for a date?
The moment vanished as a light gray, almost silver BMW rolled up to the curb.
Mr. Blackbourne stopped the car and left it running but stepped out. Gray suit, maroon tie, as elegant as ever. His soft brown hair appeared freshly cut and brushed back away from his face. His steel eyes sparked behind the black-rimmed glasses. A polished diamond that looked out of place in the broken-down district.
I ducked behind Dr. Green and the others as they approached him. My hands smoothed over the jeans and light jacket that I wore over my T-shirt. The others were dressed similarly, but next to Mr. Blackbourne, a sense of being underdressed always hovered over me.
Mr. Blackbourne focused on Luke, the steel in his gaze hardening. “Mr. Taylor, was it truly necessary to crawl through the attic work?”
Luke nodded, causing a string of dust to fall from his hair. The light smile on his face faded. He stood taller and addressed Mr. Blackbourne. “I felt it was,” he said. “There were a few options, but the attic gave me good sound cover. Plus, there were a few holes so I could get a visual.”
“You’ve been taking a few more risks lately,” Mr. Blackbourne said. “I understand your reasoning, but your safety is more important. Miss Sorenson is in need of a situational awareness class. Perhaps you’ll join her?”
My mouth dropped open hearing this. I needed situational awareness? There was a class? Where?
Luke’s head bobbed in an enthusiastic nod. “I could use a refresher, I guess. Besides, I’m hardly in any of her classes at school.” His gaze turned until he met my stare and he smiled more. “Can we take two?”
“Start with one,” Mr. Blackbourne said. He backed up a step, and his attention turned to Dr. Green. “Let’s get them out of here.”
“I was just about to,” Dr. Green said. He put an arm around my shoulder and pulled me forward until I was beside him. “I thought I’d take Sang over to the hospital with us and—”
Mr. Blackbourne raised his open hand and sliced it through the air. “I understand, but I’m in need of Miss Sorenson to join me this morning. We have a few things to discuss. I’ll be taking her to breakfast.”
A silence fell among the group. My heart pumped heavily and my breath caught. It was a mix of feeling something intimate, and being called on by a teacher for being in trouble, and not knowing for sure what you’d done wrong.
I ducked my head a touch, a slight smile on my lips, more to reassure the others that I wasn’t in trouble. At least I didn’t think I was.
Mr. Blackbourne moved himself around the car, and opened the passenger door for me. Excitement ignited my insides. They all did this, and while I was getting used to it, it seemed awkward still from Mr. Blackbourne. Rather, I felt awkward because he was perfection in leather shoes.
I settled into the seat, slipping a little against the gray leather. While Mr. Blackbourne walked around to the driver’s side, I did a short finger wave to the others.
Luke and Victor waved enthusiastically. Dr. Green gave me a wink, but there was something a little off in it. I wondered if he was disappointed I couldn’t join him at the hospital.
Soon, once he was settled behind the wheel, Mr. Blackbourne took off amid the downtown streets of Charleston, and the barrier the other boys provided stripped away. I watched white strips of clouds amid morning blue sky just to avoid looking at him.
It wasn’t that I was nervous with him, but the topic I had to tell him about was difficult to start, and I wasn’t sure what else to talk about. How could someone like me convince the others to allow me to join the Academy with them? Was I even allowed to ask?
Would the Academy even want someone like me? A girl with a dead mother, a stepmother that didn’t want her, and a father who had run away to a new family? I had my own family now, though I was always uncertain of my place in it. As much as I wanted to believe, I also didn’t want to assume too much of what exactly I was supposed to do.
“From what Mr. Morgan told me,” Mr. Blackbourne said, “you did well today.”
I tried to smile, though it felt like a grimace. How much had he heard? “The boys did most of the work,” I said quietly.
“You don’t give yourself enough credit,” Mr. Blackbourne said. “Although there wasn’t much to be done in this situation. Either they took a chance on listening to us or they ran, in which case, we could either try again or use alternate methods of reaching out to them.”
“What will happen to them?” I asked.
“More than likely, their parents will be found,” he said. “They probably don’t have jobs, so they sent their kids to the states to hopefully become part of the system.” He turned the car down a road in Charleston where there were shops on either side. While I was distracted looking at storefronts and people walking by, he continued. “In any case, we’ll find a better life for them than living on the streets or being separated into foster homes.”
I smiled now, glad to have been a small part of helping others get involved with the Academy. I trusted them to take care of the kids and find them suitable homes, no matter what had happened to them. I was curious as to where they might go and how it might work out, but I understood with the Academy, it might not always be possible to follow every step of the process. You simply had to trust.
A couple more miles and Mr. Blackbourne pulled up along the street to park. We were in a part of downtown Charleston, in front of a restaurant that sat on a corner. The other three corners were bank buildings. There weren’t many people out on a Sunday morning, but the restaurant, simply named Toast, had a couple sitting on the bench out front, gazing up and down the street, looking fresh-faced and excited about the day. Other than that, the restaurant itself appeared as if it hadn’t opened yet.
“Is this place suitable?” Mr. Blackbourne asked.
I was gazing at the windowed doors, seeking out signs of life inside. I nodded quietly. Toast. I guessed it was a place that had great toast? It was a curious little corner restaurant with green wooden wall boxes on either side of the door. Each green box had a front window, and inside each window, a menu was displayed.
So people could look at the menus before they went inside? It wasn’t something I’d heard about before, but then I hadn’t gone to many restaurants.
Mr. Blackbourne parked and opened his door to step out, walking quickly around to open my door before I’d managed to get the seatbelt off fully. He presented his hand and I took it. It was a process I was starting to get used to with the boys, and with some of them, the hand up was occasional, but Mr. Blackbourne did it every time.
Once I was standing on the sidewalk, I opened my hand to let go. Mr. Blackbourne squeezed my fingers gently, holding on while he closed the car door. His cool skin warmed itself against mine.
My heart did a nervous flip, vibrating through my chest. I wasn’t expecting it. There was a small part of me that thought to pull away, but then his hand felt cold, and the better part of me thought it was a good thing for me to help warm it.
He clasped my fingers between his and then slowly slid up to the palm to press his into mine and held it there. He turned, without looking at me, toward the doors of the restaurant and continued on.
With him holding onto me, it forced me to walk
beside him, and I scurried to keep up. Again, I felt out of place in jeans and informal clothes with him dressed up, even if it was what he wore every day.
I wondered what he wore at home when he wasn’t out in public. Could I even imagine him in pajamas? Or even wearing jeans?
I pressed the thought down.
Mr. Blackbourne walked toward the doors. The moment we were there, he released my hand, moving ahead to open the door.
I walked in, and he came up behind me and pressed a hand to my shoulder, as if to encourage me further in.
I was holding my breath, willing my heart to settle from the fury of beating. I’d been out with Mr. Blackbourne before to a golf club, and there we’d needed to look like a couple on a date.
This time, it felt like we were a couple on a date, without him saying so, and without me realizing it until this moment. It was like a date I’d read about in books, or watched on TV shows.
The inside of Toast was darker than I had expected, even with the walls lined with windows. The paint and most of the décor was maroon, the tiles a light brown, with black tablecloths. There was a small counter in the center where two old gentlemen were sitting with cups of coffee, and a young man stood at the cash register nearby, pressing buttons on the screen.
The young man looked up, gave us a smile, and nodded toward the tables. “Good morning,” he said. “Please sit anywhere you’d like.”
I didn’t see anyone else working. Was he the only one? I thought of the diner with Uncle in the back, and sometimes just Luke working out front, and wondered if it was the same situation.
Mr. Blackbourne guided me to a table by a window near the front where we could look out on the street. He stepped ahead of me to pull back one of the chairs, looking intently at me, waiting.
I swallowed, wondering how I was supposed to sit when someone held the chair for me.
I moved forward and tried to get it over with. I sat quickly, and ended up half in the seat as he hadn’t finished pushing it in.
