“Unless you do?” he added, knowing that he sounded as uncertain as he felt.
“No!” she said softly yet fiercely. “I don’t. I love the work that we’ve been doing. I love helping people, and the feeling that gives, and the way I know that I am being the heart and hands of Jesus.” She paused for a moment, and then she said, “And I love working with you.”
“Well, then it’s settled,” he said, relief making his chest feel light. “Nothing has to change.”
“No. Nothing has to change.”
Her words hung in the air between them, and he didn’t realize it, until he had moved closer, close enough to see her eyes wide and looking up into his, feel her breath on his face, and move his hand totouch her hair, moving it back. When she didn’t move away from that, he allowed his fingers to trail down, his thumb to touch the lobe of her ear while his fingers touched her neck.
“I didn’t realize it was you hiding behind that cloak all the time,” he said, and then realizing that he no longer needed it, he reached his hand up and pulled his ski mask off. “I guess I don’t need to hide anymore, since you already know who I am.”
“No. But we still need our disguises if we’re going to be anywhere where we might get caught on camera.”
That caused a sour note to enter into his happiness. “Like the church.”
“It’s the outside that has a camera.”
“Yeah.”
“I know that’s not you,” she said, and there was no question in her voice.
“You know how nice it is to have someone who believes in you?”
She smiled. “I think that’s my job as a teacher, to believe in my kids, but it’s different with you.”
“Your kids are lucky.” He didn’t really mean lucky. He meant blessed. Her kids were blessed to have her behind them, but then he realized that he was just as blessed, because…she believed in him too.
Maybe that idea didn’t make him as happy as it should have, because he was in the same category as her third-grade class was, and that wasn’t where he wanted to be.
“I guess I’m blessed too,” he said, and he heard the flat tone that had entered his voice, almost as though he were disappointed about it.
“You’re a little different than my third-grade class,” she said, as though she were reading his mind.
His brows went up, and then he figured he could take that one of two ways. Either it was obvious that he was different, because he was a man, or she was saying that he was special.
“Different in a good way? Special?” he asked, wondering if she would catch the difference.
“You’re definitely special,” she said.
He stood there, processing. And then the thought occurred to him that he didn’t have to figure this out this second. He could let it unfold naturally. He didn’t have to push. It was enough that they now knew each other’s identities, and they could get used to that.
He dropped his hand from her hair and noted that she hadn’t moved away from him.
“I’m going to enjoy working with you, Nelly.”
“I already enjoy working with you, Roland,” she repeated.
And then, because he figured it needed to be said, he began, “I’m sorry for my part in our childhood feud. I was not very kind to you with that valentine, and…I think part of it was because I was jealous.”
“Jealous?”
“Yeah. I had a sizable crush on you, and that was a really nice valentine, and at first, I was excited because you had given it to me, but then I saw that it wasn’t really meant for me.”
“Oh,” she said, her eyes widening as comprehension dawned.
“Yeah. That was not what I wanted to see from you, and then to know that you had a crush on someone else, when I thought you were the cutest thing in the classroom, I guess… I lashed out, and I was not kind.”
“And I reacted terribly. It never even occurred to me that you might have been doing that because you were jealous.”
