Page 20 of Dark As Coal

But I learned early on to never push Coal. He would make his move when he was good and ready, and I had to honor that.

See, I no longer used my room at the clubhouse.

If I was there, I ended up in his bed every night.

Unfortunately, he had yet to stay the night at my house. But that was okay. We were a work in progress.

They say the best things come to those who wait for it, and fight like hell to keep it once they have it.

And if I ever had Coal, you best believe I was going to fight like hell to keep him.

Last night, he had to take care of something for the club.

And since they had some boys there, and I got a bad vibe from one of them, Asher had been cool with me not being there.

Therefore, as a result of his body not being beside mine, I had tossed and turned all night and ended up sleeping like shit.

Even though I was tired, I tried not to let it get me down today.

See, there were days I freaking loved being a teacher.

And then there were days when I absolutely abhorred it.

Like today.

Every single kid woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.

And being that most of them were either five years old or six years old, I had been wanting to pull my hair out by the time nine am rolled around.

They didn’t want to learn more numbers.

They didn’t want to know how to sound out words like bug, dog, dig, gig, zig, or zag.

Nor did they care about listening to me when I told them not to throw things.

And by the time lunch rolled around, eight parents had to be called due to a food fight that had been started because Jamison told Owen that his momma was nothing more than a whore.

And Owen being Owen… nobody insulted his momma.

That was the only time I smiled in the whole day.

I hadn’t remembered sending a text to Coal on my way back to the classroom once the last student had been sent home.

Nor had I recalled him replying.

Nor my response to him.

It wasn’t until I sat in my car in the teacher’s parking lot with music playing, decompressing that there was a knock on my window.

I jumped at the sound and then felt my whole body relax when I saw exactly who it was and then I frowned.

Hurriedly, I lowered my window and asked, “Coal? Is everything okay?”

He lifted one single brow at me and asked, “You don’t remember texting me?”

“Umm…” and with that, I tagged my phone from the cupholder and pulled up our text thread.

And that was when I saw it.

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