Page 28 of Grin and Bear It

“Before we get to that part, let's get the whole story out,” she said, her voice still gentle, but the command was definitely there. I could see now the teacher alongside the weeping woman of last night. I felt a surge of pride that this woman was my mate. She knew exactly what she was doing, and even if she couldn’t guarantee the outcome, she was going to forge ahead. “What was going on with you guys? Did you plan this? What were you hoping would happen?”

When the boys looked at each other I wanted to knock their heads together.Answer her!a voice inside me shouted, but thankfully I kept my mouth shut.

“We told you,” Knox said stiffly. “You were going to tell our uncles we were failing.”

“And why did that matter?” she probed. “You haven’t been doing the work, have you?” The two boys were slow to respond, but they shook their heads slowly. “You weren’t always on time with your assignments, but you’ve generally been good about getting work done. What’s changed?”

No, I thought, the word choked off in my throat. Ty shifted restlessly and Lin’s eyes widened. Cole scowled, staring at the whole process like it personally offended him, but me? I just wanted to stop this train and get the fuck off, because she didn’t know.

Bear shifters are a hardy lot. We don’t get a lot of the diseases that humans get and we tend to live long healthy lives, especially in Australia. But my brother and his sleuth weren’t in Australia when it happened. They wanted to go back to the old country and see some distant relatives, walk in forests our forebears had, see America. The stories we’d heard about shifter hunters seemed overblown and slightly hysterical.

Until they were all killed by some.

Even Sharney, who was human and couldn’t even take fur to try and save herself. My brother and his sleuth had, taking out some of the hunters, I’d been told, but not enough… I could almost feel the cool metal of my phone in my fingers, the way it started to buckle in my grip as the person down the other end of the line told me what had happened.

“How did you used to keep on top of your work… before?” she asked.

“Dunno.” Knox’s reply was blunt, shutting off all further communication and I understood that perfectly right then, almost supporting it. But Mads leaned forward, taking a long drink from his Coke, the only sound was his noisy gulps before he put it down.

“Mum helped us.”

“Right.” There was such sadness in her voice then, all expressed in just one word. She leaned forward, wanting to get closer but not daring to, not yet. “So what did she do to help you get your work done?”

Knox let out a long shuddering breath and I watched him blink and blink, knowing exactly what he was doing. He was holding it all back, but Mads wouldn’t.

“She…” His voice cracked on that, the can crumpling in his grip. “She used to get on us. We couldn’t go to training on the weekend if we didn’t get our homework done.”

Training? I knew the boys played basketball, but what had happened to that? I felt a flush of shame as I realised I had no idea.

“So she’d sit down with us in the evenings and look at what work we had to do, then help us if we needed to…”

Mads’ face contorted and Ellie’s fingers gripped the edge of the couch, keeping her where she was.

“And now she’s gone.” A small gasp at that, from Mads, from his brother, from all of us. “And nothing gets done.”

Chapter15

Fuck, I was completely out of my depth.

I knew there was a lot of trauma going on with the boys. There had to be, but that didn’t qualify me to go blundering in where angels feared to tread. My heart beat hard and fast, the need to sweep in and give the boys a hug burning hot in my heart. But I wasn’t the parent. We’d been told over and over in professional development sessions about being careful about overstepping. We needed to care about the kids to teach them effectively, but we weren’t their family, we weren’t their parents, and we couldn’t offer them the same consistency of focus, because students moved on and into other people’s classes each year, and then we were met by a whole new cohort.

But as I stared at the boys, I knew I had to do something, and it wasn’t leaving them to fix my house as punishment.

I glanced at Nash and saw he’d gone pale as milk, and that freaked me the fuck out. He was a nice man who’d volunteered to help me with my plumbing issue, not sign up for amateur hour therapy sessions in my lounge room. I sucked in a breath, scanning the other men’s faces, seeing a strange intensity in all of them.

“Look, I can’t help…”With anything, my mind supplied.You went too far, should’ve brought this up with the counsellor, not tried to tackle this on your own.“… with much,” I finished finally. “But I can help you with your homework. How many outstanding assignments do you have?”

The two boys looked at me then, Knox’s eyes sparking with anger while Maddox’s were filled with desperation.

“None—”

“All of them,” Mads corrected. His breath was coming in fast and noisy. “All of them. We’re gonna fail.”

“Fuck up, Mads,” Knox growled, then shot me a hard look, his brown eyes now a strange light honey colour. “What does it matter? We’re not gonna need any of this when we leave school. I don’t need to know about World War II or Hitler if I’m gonna become an electrician.”

“You wanna become a sparky too?” Tyson said with a grin. “Well, alright, little bro.”

“Maybe,” I said with a shrug. “A lot of what you learn at school isn’t directly related to the job you’ll end up having. Education tries to do more than just make you a good electrician. It’s about making you a good person.” I angled my head slightly to try and meet Knox’s eyes. “Something that must be working, because look at you two.”

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