The tears I’d held onto since walking into his classroom slipped past my lids and trailed down my face, leaving warm, salty tracks on my cheeks. I didn’t even have enough strength to stop them or wipe them away. All I could do was stare into his icy-blue eyes and believe him. My God, I actually believed him.

“Do you hear me, Aubrey? Do you understand me?”

I nodded, my words catching in my throat.

“You come to me next time.” He scribbled something on a sticky note and then slapped it on the front of his desk, right in front of me. “Call me if she ever does anything again. I don’t care what time it is.”

“I’m pretty sure handing your phone number out to female students is frowned upon. This may be your first year teaching, but I’d assume that’s common knowledge.” I tried to joke with him, tried to lighten the heavy situation with my own ironic humor.

He shrugged with a sly grin on his lips, the tension slowly fading away. “Yeah, I’m sure it is. But I don’t care. I won’t allow any of my students, male or female, to live in an abusive home and not have anyone to turn to.”

I folded the small yellow paper and curled it into my fist. “Am I your new Danny? Your new project? Is that what this is? I think you have a hero complex. You just want to save the poor, defenseless teenager.”

“Call it whatever you want, just as long as you have someone in your corner. That’s all I care about. Whether it’s me, or a girl in your gym class, I don’t care. You don’t deserve to live like this, Aubrey. And the faster you figure that out, the better your life will be.” He finally unwrapped his sandwich. “Now eat,” he said with a grin and a sparkle in his eyes.

I had wanted someone to talk to for so long, but I had no idea that it would’ve come in the form of a sexy, demanding history teacher. How ironic.

I was the girl he couldn’t protect.

And he was the guy I couldn’t touch.

“You said my call made things worse… What does that mean?”

I shrugged, contemplating how open I wanted to be with him. I had already told him things I’d never told anyone. This new openness felt strange, but good, too, like I had someone in my corner, just this once. “Just a lot of yelling, fighting. Well, not really fighting, because that would mean it went back and forth. But it didn’t. I sat there and took it. I didn’t get physically hurt, if that’s what you’re asking. She was pissed and made it known. That’s all you really need to know.” I expressed my contentment silently as I turned my eyes to the side to peer at him, letting him understand that I was okay.

“So,” he said after taking a bite of his own sandwich, “are you going to tell me what happened to your face now? The truth?”

The corners of my mouth curved upward as I picked out the onions and shook my head. “No. You don’t need to hear what she does to me. You already know the truth. You don’t need to hear the fucked-up story of it all.”

He laughed and it caught my attention, making me look his way. “Aubrey, I understand you’re a teenager, and teenagers like to cuss. In times like this, when it’s just you and me, you’re allowed as long as it’s not directed at me, but please refrain from it during class.” His grin remained, growing larger and larger as he spoke. “I know I’m young, but I can’t allow my students to talk like that. It’ll give me a bad reputation.”

“How young are you?” I asked, and then prayed that he wouldn’t deem that inappropriate. The question had popped into my mind and crept onto my tongue before I could stop it.

He placed the sandwich on the opened wrapper in front of him and cleared his throat. “Twenty-four.”

“Soon to be twenty-five? Or did you recently have a birthday?”

His lips twitched as if he wanted to smile but fought against it. “I just turned twenty-four a couple weeks ago.”

I hummed to myself and nodded. “That’s cool. My birthday is next month.”

The overeager grin won and broke free across his face, showing off his straight set of pearly white teeth and the dimple on one side. Yet he kept his eyes down and didn’t say a word. My stomach dipped at the thought that he’d been thinking the same thing as I was.

Only one more year.

The rest of the week went by with ease, both at school and at home. Mr. Taylor’s class went back to normal, and it was as if no one remembered the outburst I’d had on Thursday. And as for my teacher, he greeted me in the morning like he had every morning before, and taught from his podium like usual. Like I said, back to normal—except for the quick exchanging of glances from across the room. The ones where we’d catch each other’s eye, and the split second of silence that followed burned like a spark of electricity igniting in my lower belly.

He’d ended class a few minutes early and headed back to his desk. The way his eyes kept lifting to where I sat, yet not quite making contact with mine, left me to believe he’d wanted to speak to me after class. But that had been interrupted by Rebecca when she lingered at his side with her hip pressed against the edge of his desk, her jean skirt riding up her thigh.

“Is this your girlfriend? Maybe your wife?” Her question caught my attention, causing me to snap my head up. Her fingers lightly touched a picture frame while her eyes remained glued to Mr. Taylor’s face.

I watched it all closely, from his expression to the inappropriate smirk she wore. But what warmed me the most was when he moved the framed picture out of her reach and said, “She’s someone I care a lot about, and that’s all you need to know.” His confession would’ve caused my blood to run cold, thinking of him with someone, but for some reason, his eyes met mine, calming me before I could get upset. Yet it did cause me to question my initial reaction. As if I had some claim to him. The thought of him with someone else made knots form in my stomach and my head spin.

That one glance made no sense to me, and I pondered it for the rest of the day and most of Saturday morning. We’d had a heartfelt conversation on Thursday, but after that, our verbal exchanges had become nothing more than any teacher would engage in with one of their students. A part of me wondered if the connection I’d felt had only been one-sided, but then he’d catch my eye. He’d look at me, pierce me with an intense gaze as if silently telling me something, and then I’d find myself believing there was more between us.

Crazy, right? He was my teacher. I was his student. His underage student. And he was seven years older than me. It had to have all been in my head. Nothing more than a naïve girl seeing what she wanted to believe when an attractive, older man gave her attention. I was smart enough to see the truth.

Those were the thoughts that consumed me, took over my dreams Friday night, and ate away at me until I finally forced myself to snap out of it. Saturday afternoon, I decided to head up to the library. Mom had been quiet ever since her explosion on Wednesday night after coming home from work and yelling at me for the questions she had to field off. The questions caused by Mr. Taylor’s intrusion. My mother didn’t like when anyone involved themselves in our lives. I didn’t know how to take her silence, so I eased into a conversation with her. I told her I wanted to check out some books, knowing she wouldn’t have a problem with me leaving the house. The weekends were always the hardest at home when we were both trapped inside together for endless hours. Just as I’d hoped, she allowed me to go, and then agreed to pick me up at six when the library closed.

That gave me almost three hours to wander around and enjoy some peace and quiet sans the awkwardness of being in the proximity of my mother. It was heaven, so naturally, the time went by too fast.