Page 19 of Bad Teacher

He chuckled in her hair. “I’ve had it quite often and never had this type of outcome.”

“That’s hard to believe. Looking the way you do.” Just because he wasn’t interested in a serious relationship, didn’t mean the man was a monk. What if he slept around? Wasn’t any of her business, but a pang of jealousy still stung her.

“You’re the first person I’ve slept with after losing Celine.”

She sat upright on the bed. Hadn’t his wife died a couple of years prior? A sense of female pride ran through her. A second later, she regretted it. Why did she feel excited to know she’d been the one who took him out of a female drought? His losing his wife had probably hurt him. She shuddered. “It’s been a while for me too.”

He propped himself on his elbow, lifting his gaze to meet hers. “What’s your excuse? Divorce?”

“No.” Indecision lumped in her throat. She’d never told anyone new in her life about what happened. But, Theo wasn’t a permanent fixture. After she helped him with his daughter and their attraction subsided, he’d be a warm memory on cold nights. Why not use this time with him to practice opening up? Her stomach plummeted at the idea of him leaving her immediately after finding out—chastising her, as she’d done to herself so many times.

“What aren’t you telling me, Violet?” The amusement dissipated from his face. He regarded her with curiosity, and a touch of compassion in his eyes. “I feel like you allude to bad times in your life, but you never go deeper than the surface.”

A twinge of trepidation stabbed at her, like she’d been stripped of her clothes when she least expected. He’s perceptive. “Isn’t that what our fling is? Superficial?”

“There is nothing superficial about how fiercely I want you. And while I’m not in the market for a new wife, I’d like to help you if I could.”

She chewed her bottom lip. Help her? There was a good chance he’d pick up his clothes and leave if she told him she’d abandoned her children for eight months. No, not abandoned, she reminded herself. Sought help so she could take care of them the way they deserved. “Over a year ago, I had severe postpartum depression.”

He nodded, encouraging her to go on.

“I didn’t experience it when I had Amanda, but after Trevor I was down a lot. And the depression actually triggered a part of my past that I had bottled inside when I left New York.” Probably much earlier than that, she added to herself, bitterly. “My biological father had been raised in a very strict home, and when I was born, a girl and not the boy he wanted, he punished me. My mom couldn’t have any more children after I was born.”

He grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “I’m so sorry, Violet.”

Tears welled inside her, and without delay they stung the area behind her eyes and tightened her cheeks. She could blink them away, but why fake it? A weight still sat on her chest. She’d lied to a lot of people, for a long time—even to herself. “He would lock me in the closet, sometimes for hours if I failed to do anything remotely compliant. Sometimes he hit me, and when that happened I actually preferred, even though it hurt. Because I knew then that he wouldn’t lock me away afterwards.”

A dark emotion crossed his eyes, darkening them to a matte black. “Tell me where this motherfucker lives.”

Tears rolled down her cheeks, and she wiped them with the back of her free hand, stifling a mix of a cry and a nervous chuckle. The concern in his face, the hard contours of his expression offered her temporary solace. Of course he didn’t mean it—why would he, he barely knew her—but the thought of having someone in her corner, after so long, warmed her heart.

“He’s dead. One day he tried to hit my mom and she defended herself with a baseball bat,” she said, remembering that day when she came home from a regular day as a sophomore in high school, and found police cars parked on the driveway. Bile rose from her throat, but she swallowed the bitter memory. She hoped after his death his mother would become the mother she’d always wanted, but it only underscored Bette Manning’s narcissistic personality.

“Where was she when he was doing all these things to you?”

“She looked the other way and explained to me that he was trying to discipline me the same way he had been. Also, she didn’t want to give up the lavish lifestyle he provided for her.”

He sat next to her, without letting go of her hand. She appreciated the silence, the lack of judgement. Would he also support her when she told him the rest? She took a long, deep breath, weighing her options. She could stop here, and finish the story as a survivor. No. I’ll go until the end.

“One day I was putting my baby’s clothes away in his closet, and the images of me being locked in one all of a sudden unraveled in my mind, and I couldn’t breathe. My therapist later said it was some kind of post-stress traumatic disorder that I never got treatment for.”

“That’s terrifying.”

“Yeah. So from that day on, something just clicked, and I couldn’t function anymore. I went through the motions and talked to people, but barely felt present. I had hallucinations, and these terrible dark thoughts of bad things happening to my children. Because of me.” Because I could turn out just like my father. She understood now that wasn’t the case, but that fear had threatened her like a firearm pointed at her head. How could she have kept on parenting when both her parents had been so awful?

He took her hand to his lips and gave it a gentle kiss.

“I was losing my sanity… little by little, and afraid I’d become a crazy mom.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, her fingers trembling. “One night, I took off. I wrote a note and left my family—I knew I needed to be apart from them to get better.”

He regarded her with understanding. “Where did you go?”

“To New York. I confronted my mother first, and we had a long conversation. She’s a proud woman who doesn’t take responsibility for anything. Then I voluntarily entered a mental wellness clinic for treatment.”

He squeezed her hand again, offering her support. “Good for you. A lot of people don’t get help.”

She thinned her lips. “Yes, but… I was away for eight months.”

“Eight months,” he repeated, his voice above a whisper.

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