Veiled Innocence

Chapter Eighteen

Present…

Right and wrong.

Two words, each made up of five letters, with two very different meanings and very different outcomes.

“What do you think is going to happen if you talk to me?”

“Nothing good.”

I turn to see Doc looking at the black-and-white photo taped to my wall.

Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss.

It’s the only thing I allow myself to imagine as I lie here night after night. I pretend that I have escaped my marble prison and that he will come and find me. But as I look to the door of my confinement and see my name below Doc’s, I know that can never be.

Doc nods in agreement before he speaks again.

“What did you think would happen if you confided and trusted in him?”

I reach for the watch around my wrist and trace it with my finger. “Exactly what did happen.”

“And what was that?”

Raising my eyes, I give a tight smile and repeat, “Nothing good.”

“Okay,” Doc chuckles. “I’ll give you that.”

“How kind of you.”

“Well, no one could call you being in this place good, could they? Come on, Addison. Work with me. Let me help you, or at least tell me…why did you do what you did?”

Ahh, Doc is smart—trying to make me admit to what’s on paper without saying what that is. The problem is, I’m onto him. I know his game.

We always have a choice. The real decision is—do we pick right, or do we pick wrong? Or do we float around in the grey area, somewhere in between?

“Addison?”

“Yes?”

“This empty room is lonely. So is an empty heart.”

I take in the small space that’s been allotted to me, my marble palace, and when my eyes come back to the photo on the wall, I find I have nothing at all to say.

He’s right. I am lonely, and I have no one to blame but myself.

Past…

“Hey, talk to me.”

Scooting in against Grayson’s side, I laid my ear over his heart. Thump, thump, thump.

“Addison?”

I rested my chin on his chest and looked up at him. “Okay, let’s talk.”

He pulled a pink flower loose from my hair, twirling it slowly before bringing it down to brush against my nose. Grinning, I sat up and kneeled beside him, tugging on my shirt. He rolled toward me and propped his elbow up, placing his head in his hand.

“I’m waiting.”

“Not so patiently, it should be noted,” I pointed out.

He pretended to zip his mouth shut, and I couldn’t help my laugh as I plucked some grass from his hair. “I love how you see me.”

The expression on his face was intensely sexual, but also tinged with a hint of self-admonishment. “Do you? Sometimes I don’t even know what I see when I look at you.”

“You see more.”

“More?”

I sighed as he stretched his arm out and stroked warm fingers along my cheek. In that moment, I could have sworn every sound around me disappeared, as if we were in a world of our own.

“You see under all of this,” I said, gesturing up and down my body before laughing when I realized I was kneeling in just a shirt. “Well, you know what I mean.”

Grayson ran his fingers along the line of my neck, and I closed my eyes as he traced a path down my arm before taking my hand.

“How could anyone look at you and not see everything I do?”

Bringing our fingers to his bare chest, he moved them until we were tapping out the beats of his heart. One, two three. One, two three.

So steady. So safe.

I shuffled closer to his side so that my knees were touching his skin, and that was when he stilled our hands and sat up so his lips were by my ear.

“It’s time to stop counting, Addison. Just let it go and relax with me. I’ll keep you safe.”

I swallowed and felt a tear roll down my cheek as he dipped his head and pressed his lips to the side of my neck. His fingers tightened around my own and held them still as I let the silence be just that—silent.

“I’m scared by how much I need you already,” I admitted.

His mouth brushed over the shell of my ear, and he confessed, “So am I.”

Wanting to get even closer, I crawled up onto his lap and straddled him, wrapping my free arm around his neck. He circled my waist, pulling me in tight.

“What happened the day of Daniel’s accident?”

I pressed my forehead against his and felt the warmth and security that only came when he was near.

“Time stood still,” I whispered.

“Tell me.”

We were so close that our noses were touching. “You already know. Miss Shrieve told you.”

“I went to her because I want to understand. Help me to see. Show me all of you, Addison. The parts that no one else sees—show me.”

I shut my eyes, needing the anonymity it afforded so I could retell the memory that broke me.

“I was late. My dad had been talking to me about joining the track team. He’d said it was something we would have in common, like a father and daughter kind of thing.”

“So you chose hurdles with Helene?” Grayson questioned as he stroked a hand up my back.

“Helene? Oh, Miss Shrieve? Yes.” I gave a self-deprecating laugh. “He’s never once been to a track meet.”

I took a deep breath and tentatively touched his chest. When he nodded, I placed both of my palms against him and continued.

“I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t care about that in the scheme of things…but I do. I signed up for him, and now he can’t even find the time to come and see me.”

“Why do you still do it then?”

I could feel my anxiety rising as his question echoed in my head. No one ever understood why I continued. They all thought it was for the glory. No one knew it was to try and stop the all-consuming guilt.

“Because if I quit, it means it was all for nothing. Doesn’t it?”

Grayson gave a small shrug, and I could tell he was trying to understand, but could he? Could anyone?

“So instead you became the best on the team?”

“No, that was luck.”

“Luck and talent. You forget, I’ve seen you fly down that track and over those hurdles like you were born to do it. That’s not luck.”

“It doesn’t matter what it is. None of it does. I put all of my spare time into training and making sure I’m the best because if I’m anything less…”

“Then what? Daniel died for nothing? Who told you that?”

Defensive, I shook my head. “No one.”

“Bullshit,” Grayson fired back as he frowned at me.

I could feel myself wavering. He knew I was lying. He’d met my mom and dad. It was obvious to anyone that we weren’t one big, happy family, but to someone as smart as Grayson? It wouldn’t take long to work out that the only thing keeping the Lancaster’s functioning were lies and unrealistic expectations.

“We’re not done with that, okay?”

I’d seen him in this mode before. It was teacher mode, and I knew he wouldn’t let it go, but right now he was after the…more.

So I gave it to him.

“Daniel looked right at me that day. I ran down to the crosswalk between the high school and the elementary school. There were other kids around, laughing and talking as we waited for the light to change. For some reason, I looked over the road at him, and it was like time stopped. I couldn’t even hear the crosswalk signal as it beeped and then he was just—gone.”

“Jesus,” Grayson cursed as his fingers tightened on my waist.

“Maybe if I’d been on time?” I suggested, not really expecting an answer.

“It could have still happened. You don’t know, and you never will.”

I lowered my eyes to my hands and fidgeted as tears began to fall. Trying to get a hold of myself and failing, I looked back at the man studying me with concern.

How do you explain to someone that you not only let yourself down, but everyone who ever believed in you? And how do you trust them with that secret without offering up what is left of your broken heart?

The answer is simple, you can’t. So instead, I gave Grayson the shattered pieces that remained.

“He was my baby brother. I couldn’t get to him…I couldn’t save him. I just stood there with everyone else, as the truck…”

“Oh, Addison. Hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to say any more.”

Grayson pulled me into his arms so our chests were flush against each other. Heart to heart.

I ran my hands around behind his neck and hugged him to me, discovering that once I’d started talking, I couldn’t seem to stop. It was kind of like the tears that I couldn’t seem to get under control.

“One minute Daniel was standing there, and the next…the next, he was on the ground…just lying on the road. He wouldn’t open his eyes…wouldn’t look at me, and there was blood…so much blood around him. I just needed him to say something, anything…but he never did and then she took me away.”

“Who did?” Grayson asked as my tears fell down onto his shoulder and back.

“Miss Shrieve. She took me away from him…forced me to let him go.”

I pressed my face into his hair and took a deep breath, trying to calm myself.

“One, two three. One, two, three. The crosswalk signal beeping was all I could hear after that, over and over. I started counting, trying to focus on anything but what was in front of me.”

Grayson pulled back slightly, and his eyes held mine, steady and serious. “So the counting is a new habit? Since the accident?”

It was time to trust and offer up the final pieces of me.

“Yes. It helps calm me when I get nervous or anxious...like a safety blanket, I suppose.”

He reached for my left wrist and circled the watch there. “The same with the constant time check?”

“Yes and no.”

I looked down and touched the timepiece.

“Doc tells me it’s an obsession…it’s something I need to do without even realizing it, probably because I was running late that day. See, that’s what was so funny the first day in your class. I couldn’t believe I was late. I’m obsessed with time. Everyone knows that. I always need to see it or hear it…and now I sound like a crazy person.” I laughed, but it sounded out of place in light of the current topic—hell, maybe I was crazy. “Shit.”

“No, no. Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what? Be embarrassed that I’m so fucked up? I don’t even know what it’s like to be normal anymore. I don’t even know who I was before that day.”

Grayson took my shoulders in a tight hold and shook me gently—trying to get me out of my own head.

“Addison, no one could go through all of that and come out the same. Who’s asking you to be that girl? Child or adult, that doesn’t make you crazy. It makes you human.”

“Yeah?” I mocked, feeling my crazy morphing into misplaced anger. “Tell that the to the rest of them. Tell it to my father, who avoids me unless he needs someone to slap around, or my mom, who comes to every track meet just to make sure I win. Because if I don’t…what was the point of me being late that day? The only way I made it through these last two years was to be someone else. If I am the best and the most popular, how can anyone pity me?”

Grayson took my hands and gently squeezed them. “I think for most, it’s the easiest emotion to feel when someone is—”

“Damaged?”

“I was going to say suffering.” Grayson ran a hand up through his own hair and cupped the back of his neck. “That’s why you’re attracted to me, am I right? Because I didn’t know you back then?”

“Honestly?”

“Yes, Addison. I want you to be honest, please. Always.”

“At first, yes. But not now.”

“Why, what’s changed?”

“I told you. When you look at me, you see more.” I cradled his face in my hands and let my eyes roam over him. “And when I look at you, I see for the first time the possibility of everything.”

“Fuck,” he swore under his breath. “How do I fight against someone like you?”

“You don’t. I can be good, Grayson. I can behave. Just say you want me. That you want to be with me always.”

“How?” he asked, circling my wrists. “How could this ever work? We’d have to sneak around. We’d barely see each other outside of school.” He shook his head like he couldn’t believe he was even contemplating it and touched me under the chin. “Do you want that? Can you live like that? Always watching what you say and when you say it? Not ever being able to tell anyone anything?”

“I just want to be with you, is that so wrong?”

“No. But the law says otherwise. My position as your teacher makes this impossible. Right or wrong? I don’t know which is which anymore.”

“This is right. Right here. Just you and me. Anywhere else and it wouldn’t even matter.”

“Yes, but we aren’t anywhere else, Addison. It is what it is.”

Grayson caressed my hair and then repeated the gesture several times without saying anything.

How could something so simple be so comforting?

“I wish it were that easy. There’d be no problems if you were out of school.”

Sitting back slightly, I placed a hand against his chest. I was starting to feel frustrated. I couldn’t help my age any more than he could help his occupation. “But I’m not, and you’re here anyway.”

His eyes latched onto mine, and the beating of his heart sped up as if I’d just reminded him of whom he was with.

“Yes. I’m still here. That should show you how much I’m willing to risk.”

I traced one of his brows and promised, “I will never betray you. Not ever.”

Grayson closed his eyes and tipped his head back to face the sun, and I couldn’t help but lean in and place my lips against his throat, trying to soothe his obvious agitation.

“I never knew.” He took my lips in a kiss that was as tender as it was passionate before he spoke again in a state of astonishment. “I never knew that I’d risk everything, even my freedom, just to touch someone. Just to touch you.”

“And now that you know?”

“Now I have a choice to make.”

One year.

If I’d met her only one year later or waited a fucking year—none of this would be an issue. But that wasn’t the case.

As I held the girl sitting in my lap, I knew I’d crossed lines and broken laws. The shocking thing was, I didn’t care anymore.

“What are you thinking? Tell me,” she encouraged as she fingered my hair gently.

“I’m trying to decide what we should do.”

Addison frowned. “We? I can make my own decisions, Grayson. I don’t need you to make them for me.”

“Yes, but they may not be the right ones.”

“And yours are?” she accused as she moved off my lap and away from me. “You’re not doing anything differently than I am.”

Lunging forward, determined to make her listen, I pushed her back on the grass and hovered over her.

“No. I’m not. I’m naked in the middle of a field with a student. My student. I need to think for a fucking minute. I feel like I’m three steps behind because I never thought I’d be standing here to begin with. God, when did this become my life?”

“Let me ask you something,” Addison posed, her blue eyes full of sincerity. “If I wasn’t your student, what would you want?”

After the story she’d just told, my answer was easy and honest. “To take you away from here and start over somewhere new.”

A beautiful smile, one that I’d never seen, appeared on her lips. She seemed like a completely different person. “I’d go with you.”

“For a day?” I asked skeptically as I played with her hair.

She covered my heart and vowed earnestly, “Forever.”

I blinked down at Addison and was reminded that by law she was still a girl and ultimately…

“You are my student, Addison.”

As she nodded, I wondered where we would go from here.

“So, what do you want?”

Before I knew what I was saying, “I want Brandon gone” was out of my mouth and hovering between us.

She lifted up and kissed the corner of my mouth. “That’s easy.”

“I want you to graduate.”

Kissing the other corner, she promised, “That I can do.”

I tangled my fingers through the back of her hair and held her in place as I looked her in the eye and made it very clear. “I want to help you.”

“I want that too.”

She touched my cheek, and as her eyes fluttered closed and her black lashes swept her creamy skin, I couldn’t help but kiss it and confess, “I never want you to stop needing me.”

When her eyes opened, she softly kissed my mouth and asked, “Then what choice do you have left to make?”

She was right, what choice was there?

Right or wrong, it had already been made.