Page 18 of Speak

“I’m not sure. I didn’t get a good look at it but Melissa Hartman swears she's lying. Said she heard her talking on her phone through the door in her room.”

“Melissa Hartman is a gossip and a twat, ladies. She’s friends with fuckingAddison Cleary, for Christ sakes. That should tell you enough about her. What’s that saying?‘Two twats that stick together?”

The girls laugh and I want to laugh with them. Except I need them to move the fuck out of my way.

I finally get past the herd of excited young adults, and into the psychology department, heading straight for my assigned lecture hall. I can’t wait until autumn is in full swing so I can host class outside, weather permitting, of course.

My classroom is completely full, which is a good thing for me. I didn't know how good a career switch in my mid-thirties would be… but after… afterthatcase, (every person that works private cases as either a law enforcement officer or higher will tell you aboutthat one case)I quote-unquote “retired" and decided to teach instead.

I put in applications all over the East Coast, only applying at universities I knew would match what I was making for the FBIor greater, I was hired at Rayne-Moore.

I should have done my homework on the university for the elite. Nothing but various, old names on every building and their godawful offspring pranced around the halls and grounds. The audacity of some of these students had quite literally made me want to bang their heads against a very hard, sharp surface. I ignored every email from mommy or daddy and Whitmore praised me for not bending over for ‘those pretentious assholes.’

As soon as I’m inside the classroom, I write my name on the whiteboard. I partially go over the syllabus. There are groans when I say the part about our discussions which pleases me. Ilove being an inconvenience to these rich assholes. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve rubbed elbows with the finest and some of them were great. But most of them were fucking entitled human enemas.

I grew up in a single-story home in a small Texas townjust barelyon the right side of the tracks. That doesn’t mean I didn’tsee what happened on the wrong side of them because we were still too fucking close. My father raised me alone and was a mechanic where I also worked as a teen. The only building withmy last name on it is blue, faded, rusty and hasn’t been turnedon in a decade since my father died.

I worked hard to be where I am. Nobody knew who a Harrington was and I worked hard to have them remember it later on in my life. I’d graduated high school early with honors just to get out of my small town and when I went to college I went on a seventy-percent scholarship and worked on the rich kids on campus’ cars to pay for the other thirty percent the school didn’t cover… only to go into law enforcement with my criminal psychology degree. Twenty weeks of training at Quantico and I worked my way up only for my budding career to come to an abrupt stop.

My hand trembles at my side, and I force myself to not look at it. I can sometimes still feel the grease stains on my fingers, like a stain of inferiority that I can never wash off. No matter what I did, myfingernails always had grease under them. Then mud. So much mud… because that’s what growing up poor does to you – it leaves a stain you want to remove for the rest of your life.

It's when I begin to take attendance when what feels like hell breaks loose.

“Raven Monroe?” After a period of silence, I repeat her name.

“Here!” Comes a high shrill that is obviously not female and I move about the room to see a brunette with the silver streak in her luscious, thick mane I want to reach out and touch. Eyes the color of amber that should be incased and preserved like royal jewels that are framed by exquisitely long black lashes blink at me and then she gives me the slightest, almost non-existent shake of her head.

“Speak, Miss.” I almost growl when the fuckhead beside her, Anderson, tells me she can’t. When the whispers start, and people are calling her a freak, it almost feels too fucking good watching her freak out. I don’t stop them.

If I’m stained, she’s stained.

I order her and the handsome prick beside her to see me after class, just so the whispers stop and I can get a handle on my lecture again.

______

I stare after the couple as they leave, my heart twisting inside for the young woman with alluring big brown doe eyes that screamed innocence and purity. But what she did to make that fucking skirt of hers swish behind her was anything but pure or innocent. Especially wearing fuckingthosekind of fishnet stockings. The kind that screambend me over, tear these open and fuck me until I forget my name.God, I haven’t been tempted by a studentever. Not once in my three years of teaching have I ever thought of a student so inappropriately before.

She takes one last peek at me from behind her swoopy side bangs when she turns in the doorway, that silver streak in her wavy hair as alluring as the rest of her.

I have twenty minutes before my next opening lecture so I decide to pull out my laptop and do as Jonas suggested andJesus Christ.

Student Raven Monroe, 20, Daughter of Former Supermodel Sofia Paloma and John W. Monroe, CEO of Monroe Tech Industries Found in University Music Hall After Yellow-Jackets Win 42-0

Raven Monroe – Sent to Insane Asylum After Being Deemed “Violent”

Nurse Awarded $346K in Monroe Daughter Violent Attack

Article after article tore her and her family to shreds. Nothing was left private for her, even the pictures didn’t resemble the gorgeous vixen that was just standing in front of me, no. Some blamed the uniform, others blamed her family, her brother that was a student here, the partying, and one even blamed a secret society known as The Syndicate;an elite brotherhood that sacrificed virgins to gain access.

I scoff at that last one.

I look over the pictures again, cringing at the way the Music Hall custodian found her. I read over the fact that a paramedic that took both pictures and videos was fired effective immediately once they started circulating.

Good.

This poor girl.

No, not poor girl.Stupid. Stupid to come back here. Brave, of course, to want to overcome whatever demons she now fought in her head. I mean, to never speak again almost half a decade later? I sigh, looking at the lecture hall, how she sat at the edge of the aisle, for sure in case of a panic attack. ExceptI’dbeen the one to cause one, hadn’t I? But why didn’t she speak? The thought angered me. If she knew anything she should tell someone. Unless…

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