Page 68 of Finding Hope

Britt and I aren’t a thing, but the memory of her smile makes me smile. The hurt in her eyes when I threw her out of my home was burned into my brain, but the damage and haunting dreams have eased since she was over for pizza.

I don’t mind that she and I aren’t a thing, but I’ll be eternally grateful that she allowed me the chance to make her smile again. That she’ll live her life thinking of me fondly, instead of the monster I showed her earlier.

The peace her smile provides, the fact I no longer dream about the hurt in her eyes, means I owe her a lifetime of bail outs from people like Brad. So I’ll always be here, standing on the outside, and if she ever calls out, I’ll jump in and provide her a solid alibi to escape a date with a creep.

That includes not teaching those creeps how to fight.

I need to figure out a way to slip her my phone number. I can’t save the day if she doesn’t know how to activate the bat signal.

18

BRITT

LOVE LETTERS

Looking up when the final bell rings, my students whoop and jump up as though it were a fire alarm, such is their excitement to ditch me for the weekend.

Standing, I step out from behind my desk before they sprint to freedom. “I want you guys to read another chapter this weekend. We’re halfway through Courtney’s Crusades, and Iwillbe asking you questions on Monday!” I purse my lips when a dozen sets of pre-teen eyes roll. “Chapter eighteen! Read it, then write a paragraph on your thoughts. I’m reading ahead, so I know what happens, and I know it’s an exciting chapter.”

Like he sprinted as soon as the bell rung, Brad knocks on my classroom door and gingerly walks in. My students rush past him, darting under his arms and eliciting groans of pain as they bump him in their haste to escape.

I don’t even feel sorry for him.

Brad’s been at my door every Friday for weeks. Longer, even. And every single week, I come up with a new way to say no, a new evasion, a new ‘plan.’

At first, they were small fibs. I didn’t want to offend him, so I’d say I was sorry, but that I had plans. But when he would insist on coming back time and time again, my fibs turned to flat-out rejections.

No, I don’t want to date you.

No, I don’t want to get a bite to eat.

No, I’m not seeing anyone else. I just don’t want to date you!

But as disinterested as I am in another date with this man, he seems equally as disinterested in my answers.

Like a stray cat I shouldn’t have fed, he keeps coming back. If I’d known the single time I said yes would be the equivalent to tuna, I never would have fed him.

I dread Fridays, because I know he’ll be at my door as soon as the bell rings. I don’t know why he wantsme. He’s a nice enough guy, he looks good, he buys dinner. There are some women in this world who’d love him, and if he simply looked beyond me, he might find them.

Walking forward with a slight limp, I find my heart softening for the guy so obviously in pain, but then he sits his ass on the edge of my desk, and my sympathy flees as fast as my students.

Glancing around my classroom at the remaining few still packing up, I stop with surprise at Evie ‘Smalls’ Kincaid’s filthy glare.

If Brad was on fire, Evie wouldnotoffer the dregs from the bottom of her water bottle.

Sitting at her desk and slowly packing away her books, her blue eyes glitter with rage. I swear, it’s like Jack himself is in my classroom shooting daggers atBrad the Bore.

I look away before I smile and encourage her open hatred for a fellow faculty member. Turning back to Brad, I take a silent breath in preparation.

Get it done, get rid of him.

But before I get the chance to ask him to leave, he moves his legs and grits his teeth, which has me frowning with curiosity. “Are you okay?”

Totally – fake – relaxed, he shrugs. “Hmm?”

“You look like you’re in pain…”

“Me?” Shaking his head with arrogance, his breath comes out on a hiss when he moves too much. “No,” he squeaks. “I’m fine. How was your day, Britt?”

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