Principal Harris is waiting, fingers templed and arms bunched in front of his ill-fitting grey suit.
Harris is a small, unassuming man whose head barely tops his massive chair. The light bounces against his balding scalp, always with a sheen of sweat like his body knows he’s guilty and needs a way to express it.
“Have a seat, Miss Jamieson.” He points a crooked finger.
I fold myself into the chair and grip the handles. The room is unfamiliar to me. The walls are black and gold. Expensive artwork hang together in a sickening mash-up. Almost like the buyer chose by price tag rather than cohesion.
My eyes return to Harris and I shift in my seat. I’m uneasy. Uncomfortable. It’s one thing to see Harris at school events or during teachers’ meetings, but I’ve done my best to never end up alone in his office.
It’s not because I want to stay out of trouble.
It’s because seeing his face makes me think of Sloane.
The night she went missing, she got a phone call.
From Harris.
She took the call outside. I never heard what she said.
I only know she never came back.
Thinking of Sloane makes my heart scream in pain.
I close my eyes.
For a moment, I descend into the darkness.
Into sadness.
Regret.
Rage.
My fingers form tight fists and it takes a load of restraint to keep them at my sides.
Harris smiles at me. “This is our first one-on-one since your hiring interview, correct?”
I dip my chin.
“It feels like just yesterday you shuffled through those doors, slid your resume in front of our hiring committee and told us you wanted to give back to the school that changed your life.”
I bite down on my lip, hard.
“As you know, you’re the youngest teacher at Redwood Prep. Only a few years older than our seniors. Some would say, the age difference isn’t much at all.”
“Who would say that?” I interrupt him.
His lips curl up even more, edges hiking so high over his face he looks like the Joker.
I stare expectantly at him.
“The general public,” Harris says slowly.
I tilt my head. “Is the ‘general public’ the reason you called me into your office?”
Harris pauses, taking stock of me. I’ve tried my hardest not to be aggressive with him. In nearly a year at Redwood, I haven’t spoken in meetings or disagreed with any of his policies. When Cadence and Serena were in trouble, I fought him at every turn, while still remaining as docile and unassuming as possible.
He licks his lips, shifting in a way that reveals his displeasure. “Are you upset, Miss Jamieson?”
“Just trying to figure out why I’m here.”
“Relax. This is a friendly chat.” He flashes those big teeth at me. “No need to be nervous.”
I almost snort.
“Would you like some tea? Coffee?”
I would like you to get to the point. “No.”
He lifts his gaze carefully from me to the awards framing his walls. “How do you like it here at Redwood?”
“It’s fine.”
“For an English teacher, you don’t seem to use descriptive language.”
“I like the cafeteria food.”
He laughs and it makes my ears bleed.
“I’m curious. Why did you want to become a teacher?”
I pinch my fingers together. “I told you at my interview.”
“Tell me again.” Harris swivels his chair toward me and smiles. “Please.”
My breath escapes on an exhale. “Reading was my escape from a reality that was less than appealing. I fell in love with words and wanted to share that love with others.”
“Mm.” He bobs his head. “That passion must be contagious. I heard students are begging to join your class, almost as if they can’t get enough of your curriculum. Or perhaps, they can’t get enough of you.”
“What exactly are you insinuating, Mr. Harris?”
“Just trying to figure you out.”
“You picked an inconvenient time to do so. I have a class to teach.”
His eyes narrow, a flash of annoyance.
We stare at each other.
Principal Harris backs off first. “Miss Jamieson, it feels like there’s something you’d like to say to me.”
“What could I possibly have to say?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”
He’s talking in circles and, maybe if things weren’t so dire, I’d go on that ride with him.
Today, I don’t have the patience.
“You’ve obviously heard something unflattering about me.”
“I wouldn’t call it unflattering.”
“I wish you’d call it something.”
His upper lip goes stiff. “It’s more like an observation.”
“You observed that my age and popularity amongst the students are a concern. Maybe even a weakness. Did I misunderstand?”
Harris folds his arms over his chest. “Here at Redwood Prep, we value honesty, excellence and propriety above all else.”
I almost laugh. What propriety? The kind that allowed him to call out a sixteen-year-old girl ten o’clock at night?
“You’re young, beautiful,” Harris gestures to my pencil skirt. “It might be confusing for students to look up from their textbooks and see someone who could so easily be their friend, perhaps even their lover—”
“Principal Harris.”
He flashes his teeth again. “Sorry. I misspoke. I meant to say their crush.”
My entire body bristles with annoyance. “I can’t control what the students feel. I can only control my own behaviour.”
“Have you, Miss Jamieson?” His voice is quiet, sneakily prying at my skin.
“Have I what?”
“Been controlling yourself.”
I inhale sharply as visions from that night at the hotel fill my head. Zane’s hands in my hair. His moans against my lips. His tongue between my legs. My fingers scraping over the heat of his jeans.
“Yes.” My voice is dark, sharp, slicing.
Harris bends his head in an accommodating nod.
“It doesn’t matter how close I am in age with the students, my capacity here at Redwood is as a teacher. I’ve done my job well and professionally.”
His high-pitched, almost cartoony laugh gives me chills.
Harris emits a harmless, bumbling fool vibe. It’s so easy to overlook him. To count him out. To convince yourself he wouldn’t possibly do anything as disgusting as he has.
Every muscle inside me coils as he rises, rounds his desk and leans against it. His new position puts him right in front of me. I smell the disgustingly thick scent of his after-shave.
He lifts a phone to my face.
On the screen is the picture of me and Zane walking into the funeral parlor.
Harris’s lips curl up and I can tell he’s enjoying this. It makes me wonder if we were both hiding our disdain for each other all these months. Maybe he feels as good letting it out as I do.
“You want to explain this, Miss Jamieson?”
“A student asked for help planning a family member’s funeral.” I slip my fingers together and tilt my chin up. “That’s all it is.”
“You met a student after school.”
“Yes.”
“Alone.”
My heart thumps. “Yes.”
“You meet Zane Cross often?”
I go stonily silent.
He smirks. “Let me ask it another way. Is this the first time you have met Zane Cross after-hours?”
“Is there a rule that I cannot meet students outside of Redwood?” I glare at him.
There isn’t such a rule, and if there was, he broke it long before I did.
“Perhaps not, but there is a rule about inappropriate conduct.”
“What is inappropriate about this?”
“I would say there’s no reason for his hand to be on your back…” Harris baits me. He zooms in on where Zane’s hand is possessively pressing into my shirt. “Does this look appropriate to you, Miss Jamieson?”
“Zane Cross,” I lick my lips, “was being a gentleman.”
I almost choke on the word. ‘Zane Cross’ and ‘gentleman’ don’t belong in the same sentence.
“I believe you, Miss Jamieson. I do, but you can see how easily these things can be misconstrued.”
“I’m not following.”
“Rumors are… such a dangerous thing.” Harris pockets the phone and smiles, a dark show of teeth that sends alarm bells ringing in my head. “We’re a high profile school. We teach high profile students. Sons and daughters of congressmen, millionaires, celebrities. The public eye is constantly turning toward us, looking for their next story. Hungry for someone to fall off their pedestal.”
He forces a laugh. “I don’t want to see anyone knocked to the ground. Especially from our staff. You see, in these cases, students aren’t the ones who have to pay. It’s the teachers who lose everything. Pretty, young teachers like you fall the hardest.” He lifts a pen and lets it clatter on the table. “So easily shattered.”
For a moment, there’s silence.
I stare at the pen, watching it roll back and forth.
Finally, I ask, “Have you ever stacked dominos, Principal Harris?” I lean forward. “When one domino falls, the others go crashing down too. And the last to crash? That one falls harder than the rest.”
His lips twitch into a scowl.
I stare him down. “I don’t mind falling first, but I guarantee you that when one falls, there’s no stopping the rest.”
He laughs again. I can’t stand the braying, obnoxious sound of it.
“Why do I feel like that’s a threat, Miss Jamieson?” The smile is still on his face, but his voice is hard. He flexes a wrinkled fist around the rim of the desk.
“I’m just making an observation.”
Harris thumbs a finger over his nose and returns behind his desk as if he needs to sit in his fancy chair to feel powerful.
I get up. “Are we done here?”
It’s not a question as much as it is an announcement that I’m done.
My feet carry me to the door.
“You’ve been asking about what happened six years ago,” he says abruptly.
Inside, shock careens through me, but I arrange my face into a blank stare before turning around. I expected my investigation to get back to Harris. It would have been naive of me to think I could question Redwood Prep personnel without alerting the principal.
Harris frowns, his voice a cold whisper. “Let it rest.”
“And if I don’t?”
He waves the cell phone around. “I’ll have no choice but to investigate this matter fully.” A slow, victorious smile crosses his face. “And expose the results of that investigation to the school board and to the law.”
His tricks are the same.
It’s funny how he hasn’t changed.
“Go ahead,” I coo, and Harris looks at me like I’m crazy. He opens his mouth to spit another veiled threat when I lift a hand. “Let’s see if the board has a problem with me spending time with my step-brother.”
“Step-brother?”
The door suddenly bursts open.
Zane prowls into the room, a vicious look on his face and his eyes locked on Harris. Moving quickly, I slip an arm around his waist, partly to reinforce what I just revealed and partly to hold him back.
“Zane, you’re just in time.”
A hot thrill snaps down my body as he rakes his gaze over me. His eyes land on my smile and then drop to the arm I have around him. Blue and gold flecks start burning.
“Principal Harris wasn’t aware that our parents had gotten married.” I face the old man and smile tightly. “Zane, Dutch and Finn are my family. We’re very close.”
Harris blinks in an exaggerated fashion.
“Does that clear things up for you? Or do you have more questions?”
A frown takes over his mouth and he slides both palms on the desk. “No more questions.”
The musical chimes ring.
I unwind my arms from Zane. “I have a class now. If you’ll excuse me…”
Both men stare at me, but I don’t care. In fact, I feel numb. Winning that match didn’t bring me any satisfaction. The war isn’t over yet. Revealing Zane as my step-brother got me off the hook this time, but it’s a band-aid on a bullet wound.
The claws are out now.
Harris knows what I’m after.
And all bets are off.
I need to make progress on Sloane’s case fast before Harris finds a way to kick me out of Redwood and keep my mouth permanently shut.
Jinx: And The Plot Thickens…
With rumors of Snare King and Sexy Teach being a pair, all eyes are on them. Including the dukes and lords who run this kingdom. And let’s just say… the powers that be aren’t pleased.
The royal brothers have their fair share of enemies, but it looks like Sexy Teach just earned one of her own.
This twisted Cinderella story isn’t what you expect.
Be careful, Sexy Teach. Forbidden love… bites.
Until the next post, keep your enemies close and your secrets even closer.
– Jinx
