“I have a small box of Leigh’s things that she had in her locker,” Mr. Holland said. “It’s not much since school hadn’t been in session that long.”
I bobbed my head as I continued to stare at Leigh’s masterpiece.
Mr. Holland placed his hand lightly on my upper back. “Come on before the bell rings.”
I said goodbye to Ms. Gross and walked out of the empty library with Mr. Holland, trying to keep my shit together. If I had stayed any longer in the library, I would’ve bawled like a baby.
We navigated the halls until we banked around a corner. Fidgeting with his tie, Mr. Holland stabbed a thumb at a locker. “This is Leigh’s.”
It took me a minute to zero in on what I was looking at. When I did, I lost my breath.
Coming here was definitely the wrong decision.
I was a second away from losing it. Aunt Kari thought I should cry, that crying would expel all the pain and sorrow that was building up inside me. And fuck, I was on the verge of pouring out all the tears I could.
Pictures of Leigh and her friends were taped to the locker with flowers on the floor like a shrine. The sight of it gutted me like a sharp fishing knife to the stomach.
“The students don’t want me to take any of this down,” Mr. Holland said. “But I’ll have to soon.”
I pointed at the locker. “Are Leigh’s things in here?”
“The box is in my office. Let’s head there.”
I puffed out my cheeks, running a hand through my hair as sweat beaded up on the nape of my neck.
Get the box and get out.
I swore after I left there, I would be curling up in my bed again.
The admin office came into view, or rather the glass box of hell as Lucas and I had called it when we were in high school.
Mr. Holland had been known to intimidate students when they got into trouble. I knew that firsthand. I’d been frightened the first time I was sent to see him for fighting. I’d been a freshman and had gotten into one brawl with a senior who’d thought he owned the school. I’d won that fight and had also won the respect of my peers. Despite that, the penance I’d received had been well worth Mr. Holland’s wrath—a month-long detention and scrubbing graffiti off walls in the boys’ bathroom.
“Are you still as mean and tough as you were when I was here?” I asked in a light voice. I needed some other distraction after the last thirty minutes of misery.
Chuckling, he opened the glass door to the admin office. “Let’s just say things haven’t changed much since you were here.”
Thoughts of fights and his strict management skills swept out the door as we walked in, and I laid eyes on none other than the woman who seemed to be showing up everywhere I went.
Haven batted those ball-teasing green eyes of hers at me as she sat prim and proper, dressed in a pair of whitewashed jean shorts and a low-cut T-shirt.
Damn.“Follow the Yellow Brick Road” started in my head. I wanted to lick my way from her toes up her tanned, toned legs, stopping inside her thighs to nibble a tad before I settled my tongue on her clit and took her right to that orgasmic palace at the end of the yellow brick road. Man, the blood was pooling in my groin already as I thought about all the things I could do to her.
“What are you doing here?” I asked in a harsh tone. “Are you stalking me?”
Mr. Holland cleared his throat. “Do you two know each other?”
Haven rose elegantly as though she’d been trained on how to act. I imagined as a senator’s daughter, she had. She held out her small hand, showing off her pink-painted nails that matched her lipstick and cheeks. “I’m Haven Hale,” she said to Mr. Holland.
Mr. Holland shook her hand. “Robert Holland. Mr. Bridges told me about you.” Then the principal addressed me. “I’ll get Leigh’s box.” He ambled around two desks then disappeared into a back office.
The two ladies who worked for Principal Holland stared at Haven and me.
I shoved my hands into my jeans pockets. “What are you doing here?”
“You really need to come up with a new question for me,” Haven said.
“It seems you’re always in my face. If I recall, you told me to stay away from you. Yet you’re following me.”
