Page 62 of Sweet Surrender

You can’t give this all your bandwidth,she told herself. She knew that if she brought this back to Principal Chittenden it might seem like she was just trying to exonerate herself, but that wasn’t the case. She just hated to see Nick so crushed.

And the small, clear voice in the back of her head told her that the only reason he wasn’t trying now was that he felt like everyone had given up on him and assumed the worst.

Her timer went off, and the students who were still working on their papers came to the front to turn them in.

Nick got up too, slowly ambling toward her desk and arriving last. When she took his paper, which was empty of anything but his name, she thanked him, and he glanced up at her.

Nick’s expression left her shaken. His eyes were filled with unshed tears. He looked devastated, as if he truly didn’t want to disappoint her.

Why aren’t you trying?she wanted to scream the words.

“Tomorrow will be a better day,” she told him softly instead.

But he was already slouching back to his desk, looking much older than his seven years.

She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and saw that it was Cal turning in his seat, watching worriedly after his brother.

Please let me figure this out,she prayed.I can’t let these children down, I’m their teacher.

The restof the day passed slowly. Becca spent her lunch break helping Aubrey Jensen retake a spelling quiz and go over what she had missed when she was absent the day before. Even though it was supposed to be her free time, Becca felt grateful to the little girl for getting her mind off the Lawrence boys for a few minutes, and letting her help in a way that was meaningful.

After the final bell rang and the children filed out, she gathered all the materials she would need for tomorrow’s lessons, as well as the papers she needed to grade from today, then headed for the hook where she hung her coat.

But she stopped short as a wave of certainty washed over her, clearing away all her other thoughts. There was one more thing left for her to do.

Becca moved back to her desk. Maybe she would feel foolish for it later and think she had thrown away an evening, but she grabbed the folder where she had stashed Nick and Cal’s math tests and went through the last week’s papers to grab every bit of their work since Nick had joined her class.

Maybe no one else believed it, but Becca wassurethat something else was going on with Nicholas Lawrence. It was an itch in her brain that she just couldn’t scratch, like when she was reading a good mystery and she knew she had all the clues, but couldn’t see how they fit together yet. Becca might not be Sherlock Holmes, but she knew her way around a classroom.

She was going to get to the bottom of this once and for all, and she was going to do it tonight.

21

ZANE

Zane parked his truck in front of the school for the third time in the past few weeks, wondering what in the world his sons could have gotten up to now. He hadn’t spent this much time at the elementary school since he was a student here himself.

The decorations on the houses surrounding the school were just as lavish as they had been back then—pine wreaths, lights twinkling through the snow on the bushes and trees, manger scenes, plastic Santas, and even boughs of holly and balls of mistletoe strung over the front doors.

But to Zane it didn’t feel much like Christmas. He felt like all the holiday spirit was overshadowed by the pain he felt over his boys, and if he was honest with himself, over his own broken heart.

What’s wrong with me? I didn’t feel like this when Brandy left,and she was my wife.

But there was just something about Becca that made him believe she was meant for him, even if he couldn’t really explain it. Part of it was in the way she didn’t judge him for being quiet—which ironically made him talk more than he ever had around anyone else.

And it was also in the way she rolled up her sleeves and jumped into anything that needed doing, unafraid to make mistakes. Zane wouldn’t have joined that choir and sung in front of the whole town for all the money in the world. But the way Allie told it, Becca was happy to be at rehearsal, even after the stress of her first day teaching.

And she certainly hadn’t been afraid to start calling meetings and moving kids around during her first week either.

But mostly, it was the way she interacted with Nick and Cal that had truly won his heart. Watching someone spend time with them, with love and without judgement, had shifted something inside him. He was a different man now, and he was finding it impossible to go back to the way things were before, no matter how hard he tried.

He had always told himself that he’d never find a woman who could deal with the chaos of his boys. But it was clear that Becca could handle them just fine, and a whole class of twenty more children as well, all with a smile on her face.

But she got it wrong with the boys’ schooling,he reminded himself.It was all a mirage…

“Thank you for coming, Mr. Lawrence,” Miss Wiggins said with a smile as he entered. “The meeting is up in Miss Hawthorne’s classroom.”

He signed in and then headed down the hallway and up the stairs, bracing himself for the worst and reminding himself that the boys were only in her class together until the holidays. Whatever was wrong, surely they could all hold it together for just a little longer.

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