Page 36 of To Believe In You
She turned to glare.
He took a step backward, bumping the far desk. As he lifted his hands again, she glimpsed his tattoos. Love and hate. The lit match.
The door scraped open, and Chris stepped in with a cheerful hello.
Matt skirted her like he might a rattlesnake. He greeted Chris but missed a step in their handshake. With a triumphant grin, Chris called him on it and headed toward the classroom.
Matt cast a wary glance at Lina, as if on the verge of apologizing, but her expression must’ve warned him off. Women weren’t perfect either, but in her experience, men were far more likely to deceive, use, and discard people they claimed to love.
10
Matt ought to know better than to poke a bear, but from the moment he left Lina fuming in the office, he knew he wouldn’t be able to leave well enough alone.
On the other side of the glass walls of the classroom, Lina spent Chris’s lesson—and the ones after—scowling at her computer. Wheels were likely turning under her blond curls. Arguments and comebacks in the making.
Matt’s mind churned out the same. As much as he tried to focus on his lessons, he dissected what she’d said.Allmen led double lives?
Sure, a lot of men—and, to his point, women—justified addictions and a slew of other sins, but by blindly lumping all males together and assuming a general untrustworthiness, Lina wasn’t leaving room for God’s work in a person’s life.
Matt had heard plenty of relapse stories. He’d lived that story a few times. But he’d also heard stories of redemption, and he was determined to claim one for himself. From the little he’d heard, Philip seemed dedicated to the same.
To be fair, Lina’s reaction likely hadn’t been about him or Philip. To have turned so potent, the venom must’ve been storing up for quite some time. She’d been saving it for Shane, and Matt and Philip wandered into striking zone.
If Lina realized the same, she didn’t want to talk about it, because when Matt’s last student was five minutes from finishing, she exited through the back door of Key of Hope.
Cute. She didn’t usually cut out this early.
It said a lot about the men she was used to that she thought leaving the disagreement between them was a better solution than having a conversation and reaching an understanding, if not a full resolution.
Matt saw his student off, caught up on his notes about the day’s lessons, and punched out. As he swiveled from the computer, a tan lump under Lina’s desk caught his eye. Her purse. She hadn’t left for the night.
Maybe she wasn’t dead set on avoiding him, and a little effort could give them the chance to end the day on a better note.
He headed for the back door, angling as he passed Samantha in the hall between the classrooms. “How’s Bailey doing?”
“Fully recovered, and she knows if those boys bully her again, they’re going to be the ones with problems.”
“You have my number.” The instructors had exchanged contact information in case anyone needed a lesson covered, but defending an innocent first-grader was a much higher calling.
“I meant they’d have problems with the principal.” Already behind him, Samantha laughed ruefully. “But I might take you up on your offer.”
“Do that.” Matt passed into the alcove at the back. The stairs to the second floor and its storage closets and meeting room ascended to his left. Ahead, the door to the parking lot looked like something out of an old-school detective’s office, wooden with frosted glass. The lettering affixed to the outside showed as a shadow in the dim foyer. Matt turned the antique doorknob, and the sticky evening met him.
The weather in Lakeshore constantly surprised him—how cool the mornings could be, and yet, how even this far north, on the shore of Lake Superior, August could still pull a few punches that left him eager for air conditioning.
August.
Sobered, his step slowed on the concrete stairs leading down to the cracked asphalt.
For too short of a time, he’d had a friend named August.
Matt had sped after Lina without a plan for what to say or how to say it. He’d only known he’d wanted to prove her underlying assumption—once leading a double life, always leading a double life—wrong. He’d wanted to convince her change was possible.
He’d have likely offended her worse rather than convince her of anything.
August was the key to fostering understanding instead. If he shared his story, maybe she’d see that not all men were leading double lives. Some succeeded in their commitment to change.
Now, he just had to find her.
