Page 12 of Fall for You (Flirting with Forever 4)

And well … it’s awkward. I slept with the woman. I had no fucking clue that she was Olivia’s teacher. The last thing I want to do is make problems for either of them at school.

The look on her face when she saw me in her classroom hit me square in the gut. I can’t imagine it was easy for her to talk to me as if she hasn’t had my hands on her, hasn’t seen me naked, hasn’t felt me inside her. I’d hoped we’d eventually try to be more than just a quick fuck, that we’d be able to give us a chance. Maybe even date or something like that—although dating at thirty-seven with a teenage daughter feels daunting, not to mention tricky as hell. And now that I know Quinn is Olivia’s teacher? It’s just an extra layer to deal with.

I don’t honestly know what the right path is yet, but undoubtedly, I’ll be going over and over it in my head until I come to some sort of resolution that works for all of us. I do

n’t know how or even if I should tell Olivia that I’d like to explore a relationship with her teacher or how she’d react. And Olivia has to be my first priority.

Even if it means I can’t see Quinn anymore. Not like that.

Chapter 7

Quinn

At three thirty, right on the dot, a soft knock sounds on my door. That has to be Olivia. “Come on in.”

The door creaks open and sure enough, Liam’s daughter slips inside the room and shuts the door behind her. “Hi, Ms. Lockmore. Um, are you ready for me?” She stands there, thumbs hooked through the straps of her backpack like they are some sort of lifeline and if she lets go, she’ll fall. She shifts her weight from foot to foot, looking at me expectantly.

“Of course. How about you slide one of the desks over here next to mine, and I’ll show you what we need to get you caught up on.”

“Okay. Sounds good.”

Once she’s settled next to me, I pull up all the assignments she’s missing on my laptop. “I can print this out for you and we can check them off as you go. For many of these, I can give you partial credit if you’re willing to do them and turn them in.”

She bites her lip and nods. “I can do that.”

“I think we should backtrack and go over the information from this quarter, and then we’ll see how you’re doing from there on the current lessons.”

“Okay.”

Olivia is strangely quiet as I go over information about Mendelian inheritance, which addresses the idea of dominant and recessive genes in organisms that sexually reproduce. I find the topic fascinating, but I can’t tell what she’s thinking at all. She’s not super talkative in class, but she always participates when called on and had—up until nine weeks ago—seemed to understand what we’d been studying.

“Why don’t we stop here for the day? That way you can go back and do these worksheets on Punnett squares and get those in before we move on. Sound okay?”

“Yes. Thank you for explaining it all again. I know it’s a pain in the butt when you already had to teach it once the first time around.”

I pat her hand. “Teaching is what I love to do, Olivia. I’m happy to help you out. You don’t have to feel badly about it at all.”

She takes a deep breath and begins to put her biology textbook and her spiral notebook back into her backpack. “If you say so.”

“I do. And if there’s anything you need, anything at all, you just let me know, whether it’s during tutoring or in class. I don’t want you to fall behind on the new information while we are focusing on catching you up.”

She eyes me warily. “I’ll try my best to pay attention in class and not have this happen again.”

I cock my head to the side, watching several different emotions flicker in her eyes. Huh. Something’s going on. I can feel it by the way she won’t look at me for more than a few seconds, in her body language, and by the way she keeps gazing around the classroom—almost like she’s remembering something. Shit. I don’t want to overstep and certainly don’t want to upset her unnecessarily on her first day of tutoring.

Olivia boosts her backpack across her shoulders and onto her back. “I think my dad is probably waiting out front for me.”

With a quick smile, I scoop my things up and deposit them in my school bag. “I’m on my way out. I’ll walk with you.”

As we step outside into the chilly March air, I see that she’s right. Liam is leaning against the back of a RAV4, his phone to his ear. When he sees us approaching, he says a few last words, and then disconnects the call, sliding his phone into his back pocket.

I approach him with slight trepidation, unsure how I’m supposed to act around him, but in the end, it’s not terribly difficult. I cross the road with Olivia and smile as I watch him hold out his arms to her for a quick hug and a kiss on the top of her head. She turns and waves at me before climbing into the passenger side of the waiting vehicle.

Once she’s inside the vehicle, he turns back to me. We don’t say anything for a few beats, just stand there semi-uncomfortably.

He runs his hand over his cheek before he finally asks, “So, how’d she do today?”

Well, at least his daughter is a fairly safe area of conversation. Sort of. If you discount the part where I’m her teacher and he’s her father, and we’d fucked each other silly. Not just once but twice.

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