Reluctantly, he prepared to leave the room, even though he was hungry for any glimpse of Rose’s stubborn chin and shining, bitter-coffee hair. Starving to claim the privileges she’d promised him in the dimness of his bedroom, the chance to render her unclothed and undone under his hands. Desperate to tell her how her attention, her tenderness toward him, had transformed him into the man he’d always dreamed of being.
No. That wasn’t quite right.
She hadn’t changed him. She hadn’twantedto change him.
But her total acceptance had changed everything around him, cleared away the fog, until he could look at himself in the mirror over his bathroom sink and see himself for what he truly was.
Not Mute Boy or Old Sobersides.
He was a man who would sacrifice anything to protect Rose, even though she didn’t ask for protection from him or anyone. Even though most people wouldn’t even see that she sometimes needed it. He’d dive into frigid dunk tank water. Make her coffee suitably dark and bitter. Insist to Dale, an all-too-familiar bully, that she reclaim her Honors World History classes next year.
He was a man who paid attention. Who understood her thick, gleaming armor and could help her shed it whenever it got too heavy for her. Who nevertheless appreciated its beauty and the reasons she’d donned it.
He was a man who made her snort with laughter.
He was a man she trusted to keep her secrets.
He was a man who adored her intelligence, her will, her wit, and her beauty.
Above all: He was a man who could make Rose happy.
That is, if they were ever alone again.
By the time he’d woken the morning after her visit to his home, she’d left for school hours before, leaving only a neatly folded blanket and a note as reminders of her recent presence.
Relax, Martin. I’ve got this. Talk to you this afternoon. —R
When she’d phoned him after school, as promised, Bea had already arrived to take care of him, and he’d had to cut the call short.
Each night he was absent, he and Rose had talked at some point, but he’d always remained too aware of Bea’s presence somewhere in the house to share anything more private than test strategies.
And once he could move comfortably enough to return to classroom duty, he and Rose were working almost around the clock to prepare their students for the AP and state tests, and neither had the time or energy for any sort of intimate conversations or encounters.
So, yeah. It was fair to say that he was a bit frustrated. In the sense that a tornado was a bit breezy, or Dale a bit dickish.
The bell rang for the beginning of the period, and Rose closed the door.
Dammit. It didn’t matter how much he wanted to bask in her presence. He needed to vacate her room before he got in her way.
But once he got halfway to the door, the intercom blared to life.
Tess’s voice rang out, clear and authoritative. “Attention, all faculty, students, and visitors. We are conducting a scheduled lockdown drill. Please follow standard lockdown procedures, rather than Run, Hide, Fight procedures. I repeat, this is a drill.”
With a final crackle, the intercom went silent.
Fuck. He’d completely forgotten. Now he wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and Rose had one more person in her classroom to consider during the drill.
She spoke over her shoulder as she jogged to the door. “Chase and Ariana, get the blinds. Everyone else, either squeeze into the closet or get in the corner behind my desk, just like we practiced. Leave room for Chase and Ariana. No talking, not even whispers. Phones on silent. Understood?”
The kids, well-versed after years of these drills—a fact that never failed to hurt him—went about their business quietly as Rose threw her deadbolt, flicked off the overhead lights, and covered the window in her door with the appropriate laminated sign. Green to indicate the safety of the room’s inhabitants, rather than yellow to indicate injuries or—God forbid—red to indicate the presence of a shooter in the classroom.
A black sign would tell authorities to expect fatalities inside.
The blinds descended one by one to the windowsills, and the room turned gray and dim as Chase and Ariana finished their task and joined their classmates.
Most classes had at least a few giggling or whispering kids during lockdowns, since the unimaginable had somehow become banal in the last decade. But Rose’s kids remained in absolute silence, their eyes following her.
Slipping off her heels, she carried them in her hand as she hustled barefoot toward her desk. Given the number of students in her class, though, there wasn’t much room for a woman her size to hide behind it, and there certainly wasn’t enough space left in the closet.
