Page 25 of Drive To Survive

The surprise that crossed Everly’s face when I walked into the waiting area with my arm around Rhett sent a dart of shame through me. I was a grown man, not a teenager. Avoiding the mother of one of my students was a dick move. I fancied her, but I had more than enough control to tamp down my raging hormones. I was thirty-one, not seventeen.

“Hi.” Her soft voice jerked my dick into action. “It’s been a while. How’ve you been?”

I cocked my head. “Can I have a word? Adele will watch Rhett.” I shot a glance over at Adele, and she nodded, immediately rising to her feet.

“Come on, Rhett. How about a donut? Or maybe an ice cream?”

“Ice cream, please,” he said, grinning.

I headed for my office, my heart spiking with every click of Everly’s heels on the tile as she followed me. My self-imposed absence from her hadn’t cooled my attraction toward her one little bit. If anything, fire burned hotter in my stomach, and the one thing that would put out the flames was off-limits.

“What’s wrong?” she asked the second I ushered her into my office and closed the door. “Is it Rhett?”

I sidled past her, making sure we didn’t touch, and sat behind my desk. I pointed my chin at the chair across from me, and she took it.

“Is Rhett still fighting at school?”

She frowned, and all I wanted to do was kiss the creased skin between her brows, to feel the softness beneath my lips.

“No, he isn’t. In fact, Miss Carmichael, his teacher, said he seems to have settled down quite a lot. She’s really pleased with his progress, and I know it’s far more to do with coming here than anything related to the school itself.”

I nodded and scratched my cheek, wondering how best to approach this.

“Rhett almost launched into the pit lane while a car was exiting the garage, and I had to grab his arm to stop him.” She gasped, but I pressed on without allowing her to interject. “Immediately afterward, he rubbed it, and I thought I’d hurt him. I asked him about it and found he had a huge bruise on the outside of his arm.”

“Oh yeah, no, that wasn’t you. He did that at school the other day. He was playing baseball and a ball hit him on the arm.”

Well, fuck. One event, two very different excuses. Except instinct told me the version Rhett gave to me was the real one. I withheld a sigh. It looked as if I had no choice other than to get involved in someone else’s business.

“Sorry, but that’s not what happened.”

EVERLY

It felt so good sitting in the same room as Nico after he’d shunned me for weeks. My stomach tightened at the scent of his cologne mingled with what I guessed was a musky soap. It smelled good on him. All I wanted to do was to walk around the desk, straddle his legs, and kiss him. So far, I’d struggled to concentrate on anything other than how attracted I was to him.

And then he uttered his last sentence.

“Sorry, but that’s not what happened.”

I frowned, leaning forward. “Why would you say that?”

“Because Rhett told me a very different story.”

I smiled. “Kids lie, Nico. Who knows why they do, but they do.”

“I agree,” he said. “And he lied on this occasion. To you.”

I widened my eyes, and my mouth dropped open. Who the hell did he think he was? This man, who’d worked hard to avoid me, was now trying to make out that he knew what was happening in my son’s life better than I did. His mother.

“I’m sorry,” I said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of my tone. “Let me get this straight. You’ve known my son for five minutes, and already you think you know him better than I do? I can tell when he’s lying.”

“If that were true, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Nico said in the clipped English accent that made him sound so authoritative. “Don’t you even want to know what he told me?”

I drew in a ragged breath and twisted my lips to one side in what I hoped looked like an attempt to humor him. “Please, enlighten me.”

He fiddled with a pencil, then set it to one side. “He said Brad did it, whoever the fuck he is, and that I couldn’t say anything because his dad was mean.”

He shifted his chair back a few inches and crossed his legs while I desperately tried to process what he’d said.

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