Page 76 of All In Good Time

There was nothing else to say. Less than half an hour, and she’d completely stripped him bare.

Fool.

Sighing, Ms. Roylance laced her fingers together around her knee. “I won’t talk to your dad—for now. If this keeps up, I’ll have no choice.” It was a blessing and a warning wrapped in one.

He swallowed, not feeling better at all. “Sure.” He stood up before she dismissed him, and turned to the door, rushed to escape.

“You know, my consultations are not only for when you’re in trouble, you’re welcome here whenever you want.” Her words followed him out the door, cut short as he closed it behind him harder than he meant to.

He wished the door closing would be the end of it, but it was just a gateway into another problem.

Becca walked down the hallway, directly toward him. The only mercy being that she was looking down at the floor, not even aware that he stood straight ahead.

Derek’s chest burned—whether from holding his breath or something else, he wasn’t sure, but he didn’t want to look further into it and risk her raising her gaze. If she did, she would see him standing pale-faced in front of the counselor’s door.

The dumb choice would be to leave the school and risk getting caught—furthering the trouble he was already in. Dumb choices were his specialty now, so he did what he did best and turned away from the office to the front doors before she noticed.

He let go of the breath that was burning in his lungs, but even after a deep inhale, the pain lingered like a steady flame.

29

July 1985 | Before

He remembered the exact dayithit him.

It was Becca’s seventeenth birthday—July 15th.

Hot, humid, sunny mid-July, and Derek was far, far away from the cool water of the community pool—unlike where he’d told everyone he would be. Hanging out at the mall was for little girls with pigtails and airheads like Marty Parr. But he wasn’t going from store to store to “hang out”—he was there on a very specific mission, and one he wanted to complete successfully on his own.

Becca had told him repeatedly not to worry about getting her a gift. She didn’t think it was fair, when she hadn’t known about his birthday until it was too late.

Derek disagreed. He thought she deserved every little thing she could get, and he wanted to be the one to give at least some of it to her.

However, the problem was that he had no idea how to pick out gifts, much less ones that could make a girl hug him in gratitude. So, he figured the best way to find the perfect thing was to go to a place that had everything—the mall. There had to be something somewhere.

And it took alongtime.

Shirts didn’t have much of an impact. Plush bears were too cliché. A small little silver ring looked cute, and he could imagine he’d love how it would look on her, but it wasn’t her style.

Nothing connected to him the way it should to be worthy of her.

The last place he would have willingly gone into was the small candle shop tucked away in the corner. He paused outside the entrance and glanced between the store and the rest of his options—all behind him and all duds.

He sighed and rubbed his face.

The things he would do.

With a sigh, he reminded himself he wasn’t going into a place like this for himself. He was going for Becca, and that was all that mattered.

He stepped into the shop and walked through the short aisles lined with candles. The girl at the counter glanced up from her newspaper crossword, clearly bored by the lack of foot traffic the shop got. She raised a brow when she saw who it was.

Derek internally cringed when he recognized her. Cammy or Sammy or something from his math class.

She didn’t greet him, but her eyes followed him through the candles as he browsed, pretending she wasn’t staring.

He’d start hearing about it soon.

Derek Stokes buys himself candles. What could that possibly mean?

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