I didn’t sleep well and I woke up in a foul mood. To make myself feel better, I put on beautifully sexy lingerie in a deep rose color that looked great on my pale gold skin with all my honeyed hair. The dress I wore over top was new, from a really cool vintage shop in town called Entrance Only, and it made me feel like a ballerina because it wrapped with a big bow at my little waist and was pale pink. I curled my long hair into loose waves, slicked a subtle dusky lipstick over my naturally pouty lips and nodded curtly at my reflection in the mirror. I looked like the ultimate lady, the wife of a lawyer, the daughter of a professor. I looked like myself.
I hated it.
It didn’t really feel like me, not the new Cressida who rode on the back of motorcycles, got drunk on weeknights with strangers and let teenage boys feast on her pussy in the middle of her classroom.
Which was exactly why I donned my good girl armor. I couldn’t let those things happen again. Not only because it was morally suspect but because I simply couldn’t afford to lose my job. Shamble Wood Cottage needed a ton of repairs, I had to fund my voracious book-buying habit and I was racking up law fees because William refused to sign our gosh darn divorce papers. Without a divorce settlement or alimony for him, I’d need to work at EBA for the next five years before I could even make it financially possible to go back to school.
So, armor and good behavior.
Warren picked me up for school at quarter to eight, his smile bright as I entered the car.
“You look amazing,” he complimented as I buckled up.
I smiled slightly at him. “Thanks. I had a rough night and wanted to feel pretty.”
He laughed as we pulled out of my driveway. “Fair enough, but you look pretty nice every day.”
“That’s sweet, Warren, but I’m still not going to sleep with you,” I reminded him drily.
He laughed again and shook his head. “I didn’t offer to drive you to school so you would sleep with me. I mean, that would be chill, but honestly, I live close by and I’m not crazy about the idea of you walking across Entrance by yourself.”
“I’ve been fine,” I pointed out. I’d been making the walk for the last two weeks while my car was at Hephaestus Auto. When I called them the other day, a gruff man had told me that my car was better off in the dump but that they were working on it. So, I’d been walking until yesterday when Warren had noticed and offered me a ride.
We rode in silence listening to an oldie’s station Warren let me choose and Elvis Presley’s Heartbreak Hotel came on. My gut clenched as something sour blossomed inside me. I both hated and loved that both King and I loved Elvis especially because I listened to his music all the time. It meant that even when I didn’t want to think about my too-sexy-for-his-own-good student (which was always), I did. The song reminded me that I’d have to find a way to stay unmoved by our transgressions of the day before and reaffirm my position as just his teacher.
Warren and I had just pulled into the parking lot when my phone rang. Focused on facing King in our fifth period, I didn’t look at the screen before I answered.
“Hello?”
“Cressida Irons,” my mother’s voice trilled over the line. “I’ve been calling you every day for the last week. Where in heaven’s name have you been?”
I dropped my forehead against the glove compartment with a painful thud. The one thing I didn’t need this morning was a lecture from Phoebe Irons.
“It’s my mum,” I told Warren with a wince as I covered the speaker on my phone. “Unfortunately, I have to take it. Do you mind?”
Warren smiled and handed me the keys. “I have a mother too. Take your time and just get the keys back to me sometime later today.”
Thank you, I mouthed as I raised the phone to my mouth again.
I waited until he’d exited the car to say, “Hi, mum, just been busy with school. It’s the last two and a half weeks of the winter trimester.”
She made a disappointed noise in her throat. “Not an excuse to leave your mother’s phone calls unreturned.”
“No,” I sighed when she paused for my response.
“Really, Cressida, I know you are going through some kind of horrible mid-life crisis—”
“Quarter-life crisis,” I corrected her automatically because I’d never been so aware of my age before. “I’m only twenty-six years old, mum.”
“Twenty-six years old and married. You’re hardly a spring chicken anymore.”
Ouch.
“I want you to come to Sunday dinner this weekend. You haven’t been home since Christmas,” she ordered.
I hadn’t been home since Christmas because it had been an absolute unmitigated disaster. I’d given in to my loneliness and my mother’s insistence and attended the family celebration because I was a weakling. Christmas Eve hadn’t been too horrible. It had started off with awkwardness between my parents and me, which was unusual because we used to be so close. My father was a professor of Greek and Roman studies at the University of British Columbia so it was safe to say that I’d inherited my dorkiness from him. We read the paper first thing every morning, first together at the kitchen table when I still lived at home and then over the phone for a morning debriefing when I lived with William. He loved to quiz me on current events, debate with me over moral quandaries in the media. He was my husband’s best friend, which meant that I saw my dad just as much as a married woman as I did when I was growing up.
My mother and I were part of the same book club, we went for power walks every morning before I went to work at EBA, and we talked on the phone at least once a day. Since leaving William in September, all of that had stopped. My parents hadn’t allowed me to move back in with them. They couldn’t fathom why I was leaving such a good man and they were actually angrier than William had been when I’d told him I wanted a divorce.
So, I’d taken what meager money I’d had in my own bank account to get a little apartment too close to East Hastings Street for comfort and, when that money started to run out, I’d turned to Lysander. With the money he’d lent me, I’d bought my little house in Entrance six weeks after leaving William and I’d never turned back.
That Christmas Eve was the first time we’d seen each other in two months and I’d foolishly thought they’d embrace me. Mum would make me her famous hot chocolate that was more chocolate than milk and dad would whip out his latest research for me to read over and give him notes on.
Instead, the awkwardness followed by a house-shaking fight.
I’d never fought with my parents like that before. We all shouted, called each other names and, regrettably, I’d told them that they were awful parents for giving me to William.
The night had ended in tears on all sides.
The next morning, despite assurances that they wouldn’t ambush me, William had been next to our Christmas tree when I descended from my room. When I’d immediately turned to go back upstairs, my mum had demanded that I speak with him or she would never see me again.
I’d spoken to William. He’d graciously forgiven me for my ‘tantrum’ and asked me to come home. In response, I retrieved the divorce papers I’d tried to send him in the mail four times from my briefcase by the door, and handed them to him. In an uncharacteristic bout of anger, he’d tossed them in the flaming hearth then told me I wouldn’t survive without him to guide me or without his fortune. He’d stormed out, my parents began to shout again and I’d hastily retrieved my bags and left.
So, you can imagine that I wasn’t looking forward to a repeat performance.
“I can’t make it this Sunday, mum. As I said, it’s end of term and I’m swamped with work,” I said, studying the texture of Warren’s dashboard like it held the secrets to the universe.
A loud, nails-on-a-chalkboard silence followed.
“William was here yesterday. One of his colleagues asked him out, you know. You probably remember her from his work functions because she is uncommonly pretty. Natalie Watson, her name is.”
Great, we’d moved onto target practice. My mum liked to shoot arrows at random tender spots until they stuck. If she wasn’t my mum and I wasn’t her bullseye, I would have respected her for her ruthlessness and tenacity.
“Great, mum, you should encourage him to say yes,” I said.
Another silence, shorter this time while she collected herself for another attack. “He would be better off with someone like her who could properly appreciate how much William works.”
I rolled my eyes. For some reason, my parents and William were convinced that I’d left him because he worked too hard.
If only it had been that easy.
“Probably,” I agreed lightly. “Listen, mum, I’m at school and I have to go in now. I’ll answer next time you call, okay? Maybe we can talk about what you’ve been reading lately. I just finished a great book, The Ghostwriter by Alessandra Torre.”
She sniffed. “I read that ages ago when it first came out.”
Anger pricked over my scalp. “It only came out a few months ago, and I don’t have much time to read for pleasure now that I’m trying to make ends meet.”
“You wouldn’t have to make ends meet if you’d stayed at your proper place by your husband,” she fired back immediately.
I leaned back in my seat, ran a hand over my closed and throbbing eye sockets. “Okay, have a good day. Talk to you later.”
“If you don’t talk to William, Cressida, don’t be surprised if he takes matters into his own hands,” she warned ominously before hanging up.
Great.
A knock rattled against my window. I screamed, dropped my phone into my lap and whipped around to see Tayline’s face pressed grotesquely against the glass, Rainbow holding her stomach and belly laughing behind her.
“You freaks,” I yelled through the door. “You gave me a freaking heart attack.”
Tay peeled her mouth off the window so she could join Rainbow in her cackling. I shook my head but their antics immediately made me feel better after the toxic phone call with my mother. I grabbed my messenger bag from the ground at my feet and swung out of the car.
“That was almost murder by surprise,” I lectured them both with my hands on my hips, using my best Teacher In Charge voice. “You’re lucky I have a strong heart.”
Rainbow wiped the tears from under her eyes. “Dude, that was priceless. We should start every morning like that.”
“Agreed,” Tay said, bumping my thigh with her hip because she was so short. “Thanks for the laugh.”
I rolled my eyes at them but couldn’t control my smile. “You guys are children.”
“Yeup, takes one to know one. It’s what makes me such a good teacher,” Tay nodded sagely as we made our way into the school together.
I’d taken to spending all of my breaks with the duo and I found myself in the surprising position of having my own friends. It was incredibly pathetic that I was in my mid-twenties and I’d never had girl friends outside of my mother’s book club.
Needless to say, I was enjoying Rainbow’s calculating wit and Tayline’s goofiness. They didn’t take life too seriously, which I loved because it meant I couldn’t take myself too seriously.
“So, I heard Warren finally asked you out and now you’re sitting in his car in the parking lot. What gives, Cressie? Don’t you remember that conversation we had at the beginning of term? We’re best friends now, we’ve claimed you, which means we should be the absolute first people who know about your love life,” Tay lectured me as we pushed through the doors to the main hall and entered the calamity of students and teachers rushing around before classes started.
“Honestly, I kind of forgot about it,” I admitted with a sheepish look that made them both burst into laughter.
Rainbow even slapped her knee. “That is wicked. If Warren knew that, his manhood would be in serious question. You know Pillow has been trying to catch his eye all year?”
Speaking of the woman, Willow floated down the hall past us on a cloud of very expensive and very strong Chanel perfume. Tayline coughed loudly but raised her eyebrows in innocent query when Willow shot her an irritated look.
I shook my head. “Children.”
Tay stuck her tongue out at me.
“So, you’ve been separated for months and you aren’t getting a little antsy for some action?” Rainbow asked.
They both followed me to my classroom, waited for me to unlock the door and turn on the lights before stepping inside with me. Rainbow sat in King’s seat in the first row right in front of my desk, which made the blush I’d been trying to keep at bay, flame to life.
“Oh, she is!” Tayline crowed.
“Hush.”
“Do you have a crush?” Rainbow asked, her eyes narrowed on me.
Insanely, I wondered if sitting in King’s desk was giving her some kind of intuition about us.
“Get up, get out of my classroom, children!” I ordered, clapping my hands to hurry them along. “Some of us have work to do before class.”
“Yeah because you were too busy crushing on someone to do your work after school,” Tayline called over her shoulder as I literally pushed her out the door.
“Don’t think you’re getting off this easily,” Rainbow warned even as I closed the door in their faces. “You’ve got until lunch, sister.”
They both stared at me through the window in the door but I turned my back on them before they could see the depth of my flush.
I collapsed in my desk with my head in my hands and asked myself when my life had gotten so complicated.
The answer came to me easily; the day I’d seen King’s gosh darn beautiful face across the parking lot of Mac’s Grocer.
I should have known it was coming. Mum had practically announced his arrival in her phone call that morning. Still, I wasn’t prepared for the announcement that came over the PA system at the end of my fourth period history class.
“Mrs. Irons, please report to the front office, your husband is here.”
Immediately, my students shifted in their seats. I was close to my students so they knew that, in my mind, I didn’t have a husband anymore. My hand remained poised over the white board mid-way through writing out the conditions of the Paris 1918 Peace Treaty. I could not believe that William was at EBA.
“Miss Irons?” Benny called tentatively. “You want me to go with you to the office?”
Immediately, my chest tightened with love and dread.
Benny; my sweet, sweet boy.
“Or I could go for you and tell him to fuck off?” Carson suggested as I turned around, catching sight of his massive football player arms flexing in teenage bravado.
Every since I’d turned him into the Headmaster, Carson had been surprisingly active in my classes. He’d always been a fairly bright student but I got the sense he was ashamed of his behavior with King that day and wanted to prove to me that he was a good kid.
No one laughed at his suggestion, but a few other students nodded their heads as if that was an acceptable option.
I wrangled up a smile and affixed it awkwardly between my cheeks. “Don’t be silly, guys. He may not be my husband anymore but he isn’t a monster. Remember, there are two sides to every story.”
“Every time you talked about him, your face went blank,” Ally Vandercamp told me with a wise nod. “We never liked him. You’re way too pretty to settle for some old, boring banker guy.”
“Lawyer,” I automatically corrected. “And Ally, you shouldn’t jump to conclusions like that.”
She was right, William was old and boring, but that didn’t mean she should think that.
“I heard Mr. Warren thinks you’re hot,” Ally continued, unperturbed. “You guys would make a super cute couple.”
“Totally,” Aimee chirped.
I was beyond grateful that King was not in this class.
“Okay, enough about my personal life,” I told them sternly. “I’m going to the office to deal with this and you all are going to open your textbooks to page 318 and read more about the Paris Peace Conference.”
“Yes, Miss Irons,” they all parroted back at me.
I shot them a droll look that had some of them laughing as I collected my purse and headed to the front office.
My steps were slow and heavy taking me there but still, I arrived before I was fully ready.
William stood before the reception desk with his hands in the pockets of his neatly pressed flannel trousers, his thick salt and pepper hair brushed back beautifully from his high forehead. His elegant, masculine beauty was impossible to deny even though I was no longer drawn to it. He presented himself impeccably from the Phillip Patek watch at his wrist to the glossy sheen of his expensive Italian loafers. His suit was custom-made, one I’d ordered for him last Christmas from Ermenegildo Zenga Bespoke for $25 000, and I knew that if I drew closer to him, he would be wearing the cologne I’d first begun to buy him when I was a fifteen-year-old girl with a crush. I’d saved up my allowance for six months to afford the Clive Christian C cologne but the expression on his face when I’d given it to him in the back hall that Christmas had made it totally worth it.
My estranged husband stopped talking with Georgie the moment I stepped through the doors but he took a moment to collect himself before he turned to face me. When he did, his face was a handsome mask. I knew the sight of me had to have affected him but there were no tells, no tick in the jaw or flexing of the hands. Just nothingness.
“Cressida,” he said in his smooth, dulcet tones.
A friend of his had once told me that William was like a Canadian James Bond without the smarm. I hated that I agreed with him though it was for different reasons. Like the fictitious spy, my husband was incredibly two-dimensional.
“William,” I returned. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to see my wife.”
I stood, slightly stunned by his audacity, as he strode forward, took me by the shoulders and pressed a kiss to my cheek.
“What are you doing?” I hissed into his ear as he pulled away.
He smiled but it didn’t suit his face the way it suited King’s. It was impossible not to compare the two now that I’d sort of had both. They were the only two men to ever touch me sexually and now William was here at school, in King’s domain. Goosebumps broke out like a premonition written in Braille over my skin.
“You won’t return my phone calls or my emails so I decided to see you in person,” he said as if he was the most reasonable person on the planet and I was a shrew. “I have a very important client dinner to attend at the end of the month just outside of town here and I thought you could accompany me. I even bought you a new dress.”
I seethed. Visions of punching William in his clean-shaven throat, slamming his head into Georgie’s half-moon-shaped desk until his perfect head was bloodied, swam through my mind like shark-infested waters.
The audience, Georgie and now Shawn Walters, one of the Math teachers, were now both avidly watching and kept me from acting upon my baser instincts.
Thus, I cleared my throat of fire and said, “I’ve mailed you the divorce papers four times now, William. I see you every other week at court-mandated couple’s counseling for exactly this reason, so that we can talk about our problems is an appropriate venue. What in the world would make you think that the middle of the day at my place of work would be a good time to discuss the dissolution of our marriage?”
It was William’s turn to frown. “Cressida, there is no need to speak so harshly.”
Oh my God. I was this close to tearing out my hair and I freaking loved my big head of hair.
I took a deep breath as I vaguely registered two more people slipping into the room.
“I’m sorry if it seems like I’m angry though, to be honest, it is almost undoubtedly because I am angry. I do not appreciate being ambushed at my place of work,” I told him in what I felt was, irrefutably, a calm tone.
“You tell him, girl!” Tayline chorused from where she suddenly stood with Georgia, Shawn and Rainbow behind the desk.
I shot her a look but she only raised her hands in the air in the universal sign for ‘preach.’ Giving up on her before smoke came out of my ears, I turned back to William and made my voice sweet because I knew honey worked better than vinegar with men like my ex.
“Why don’t we go outside? We can speak more privately there.”
He hesitated, which was smart because I was being tame with our audience but would absolutely not be if I were alone with him. I decided to take the decision from him and immediately pushed through the door that led to the teacher’s parking lot. A moment later, William followed. I knew if I cared to look that the little grouping left inside would have their noses pressed to the windows but I focused on William instead.
“Seriously, what were you thinking coming here and making a scene like this at my school?” I asked, my anger still starch through my muscles but the hurt was creeping in, wrinkling my resolve.
Did he really care for me so little?
“I wasn’t the one making a scene. I merely wanted to speak with you, Cressida. You didn’t give me the chance at Christmas and those sessions are a joke. I wanted to give you a chance to tell me what you think went wrong in our marriage so that I can attempt to fix it with you,” he said.
It was a good response. Or it would have been if I hadn’t had the exact same conversation with him a good twenty to thirty times before.
I ran a hand through my hair and tried to find my inner zen. “I honestly don’t know what to say to you anymore, though. I don’t love you, William.”
He stared at me for a long moment before he nodded curtly. “I understand that I work a lot—”
“It wasn’t about the work,” I practically growled. “You can’t give me what I need anymore.”
He snorted. “There are very few things that I can’t afford to give you.”
“For Pete’s sake, I don’t mean financially. I mean emotionally, sexually.”
“You’re just going through something right now. In another six months, you’ll be begging me to let you back into the house,” William said for the umpteenth time; he just kept extending the timeframe it would take for me to return to him.
“I won’t,” I said gently, stepping forward to touch his arm lightly.
His huge dark brown eyes stared down at me, confused and belligerent. “You’re being ridiculous. You have to know that I can’t give you any money when you’re acting like this. It wouldn’t be fiscally responsible of me to support your mid-life crisis.”
“Quarter-life,” I corrected automatically, just like I had that morning with my mother.
“You know I have this big merger coming up and your mother is almost literally sick with worry every day that you keep up this charade,” he pushed, driving the bamboo slivers further and further under my nails.
“Stop it, William. Now, you’re just trying to be mean.”
“She’s going to the doctor next week. Your father is very worried,” he continued with the same infuriating calm.
“I said stop it,” I hissed, stepping closer and up on my toes so I could try to get in his face.
“No, not until you come home. You think I don’t care, Cressida? I’ll show you just how much I care if I have to tie you up and lock you in our bleeding closet,” William said, again, calm as can be.
A shiver worked itself up my spine like a creepy, crawly thing.
“You good, teach?” A new, hoarse voice said from behind me.
Normally, I tried not to curse but I felt that the arrival of Zeus freaking Garro warranted it.
“Fuck.”
“Cressida?” William asked, instantly straightening and moving into me so he could place his hand in a possession of ownership on my waist. “Do you know that… man?”
“Better question is, does she know you?” Zeus demanded, stepping into my line of sight.
He was wearing his leather cut over a skintight white t-shirt that defined his abs in a way that was somehow more indecent than being totally bare-chested. The purity of the shirt contrasted beautifully with the plethora of black outlined feathers that wrapped around his biceps and upper forearms like the tips of angel wings and the other tattoos that crept up his neck under his beard. He looked like a menacing, badass biker; the villain in this bizarre scene.
Instead, I knew he was the demon on a black hog come to save me from my knight in shining armor. Unconsciously, I took a step away from William and closer to Zeus. Sensing this, the biker snagged me by the wrist and tugged me forward so that I fell in beside him.
“Yes, William,” I said although Zeus’s actions had rendered it unnecessary. “I know him. This is Zeus, um, Garro.” I turned my head up to look at the man looming over me and winced slightly. “I’m so sorry, I don’t know your real name.”
Zeus stared down at me for a long beat as if he wasn’t certain if I was human or alien. Then he said, “Zeus is my name on the streets and in the books now, teach. Don’t sweat it. Now, tell me what’s goin’ on, yeah?”
I sighed heavily, waved my hand in a very shocked William’s direction and explained, “This is my soon to be ex-husband. He would already be my ex-husband if he agreed to sign our very fair divorce papers but instead, he’s holding our joint account hostage until I go back to him.”
I watched Zeus’s face go from diamond hard to graphene, the hardest material in the world. I thought for a moment that he might just be the hardest man in the world and I wondered what I’d done bringing a man like him into this conflict with my husband.
My fears gave way to shock when he slung a weighty arm around my shoulders and kissed, kissed, my temple.
“Ah, the one you told me about last night before bed,” he said.
I blinked.
William blinked.
Zeus continued to speak, “Knew he was a fuckin’ piece of shit caught in your tire treads, darlin’, but didn’t think he’d be low enough to show up at the school to fuck with you.”
“Me either,” I squawked when he squeezed me to prompt a response.
He jerked his chin up at William. “You listen to this and you listen like your life fuckin’ depends on it because, Willie boy, it fuckin’ does. This lady is now with a Garro man and in case you’re so stupid you don’t know what that means, I’ll let you know. She belongs to The Fallen MC and no one fucks with The Fallen. Not even soon-to-be-ex-husbands with wallets bigger than their tiny pricks who think they can blackmail a woman into bein’ with ‘em.”
“Oh my God,” I said with the last of the breath left in my lungs.
I tried to inhale but choked on my inability to understand what was happening and started to cough. Zeus (not so helpfully) thumped me on the back with a mighty fist.
“Are you actually saying that you’re dating my wife?” William confirmed, his jaw unhinged with the weight of his doubt. “That my wife of eight years, the same woman who won’t watch sex scenes in romantic comedies and who hasn’t spoken with her brother in the nearly nine years since he went to jail because he’s a convict, that same woman, is involved with a notorious motorcycle gang?”
“Club,” I croaked out at the same time that Zeus corrected him too.
We shared a weird little smile.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. So, if you’re ‘bout done here, you can let Cressida go back to work and you can go back to whatever cage you came from and keep livin’ your narrow fuckin’ life,” Zeus ordered.
William stared at him.
I stared at him.
Zeus moved.
He used the arm around my shoulders to swing me into his front and then he tilted his head towards me so all William (and the nosey folks in the office) could see was his riot of crumpled, shoulder length brown waves. It probably looked exactly like he was giving me a big kiss. Instead, he pressed his lips close to my ear and said, “Just claimed ya, teach. Hope to fuck my son knows what he’s doin’.”
“I, I don’t know what, I mean…” I tried to say but King lifted a hand and pressed it gently over my mouth.
“Don’t lie to me, teach. Wouldn’ta helped you if I didn’t think you were a good woman. Now, I want you to step back when I let you go, look at me with stars in those beautiful brown eyes and then hightail it back into your classroom. Yeah?”
His eyes were so close to me I could see the loops of different blues and grays that made up his irises. Unlike King’s who’s were perforated and so pale a blue they glowed just like Arctic ice, Zeus’s were ringed like the trunk of an old tree. They were wise eyes despite their brutality and before I could overthink it, I nodded my acquiescence to his demands.
We broke apart, I looked up at him dazedly (not really an act as I was seriously bemused) and then with one last sidelong look at a ruffled William, I hightailed it to my classroom. Only when I was at the doors to the Humanities building did I look back to see Zeus leaning against his massive Harley with his arms crossed over his chest, watching as William’s car peeled out of the lot.
