Free Within Sight (New Adult Biker Gang Romance) (Night Horses MC Book 5) by Sarah Sorana Page B

write a note.”
     
    I shrugged.
     
    “It’s just gym,” I said.
     
    “Coach Bost won’t dare say boo,” she said. “I finally got our mysterious girl to speak.”
     
    “What, was there a bet in the staff room?” I asked.
     
    “Pretty much,” she said.
     
    I didn’t know what else to say or do. I’d never talked to a teacher like that, like an equal.
    I slid into the cold metal seat of the desk nearest hers.
     
    “I can still graduate, right?” I asked.
     
    “As far as I’m concerned, you’ll pass my class. I don’t exactly have any control over the rest of it,” she said.
     
    “What would you do, if you were me?”
     
    “If I were a teenage girl who disappeared from high school for almost a week, who refused to talk for almost a month, who may or may not graduate, who has a mysterious unsuitable boyfriend who is probably way too old for her?”
     
    I shrugged.
     
    She leaned forward and looked me in the eye.
     
    “I’d shape the hell up. I’d walk at graduation. I’d smile. I’d cross my T’s and dot my I’s and not draw any more attention to myself,” she said.
     
    I heard the warning in her words and the iron in her voice.
     
    “Who are you?” I asked her.
     
    “I’m a teacher,” she said. “I’m from this town. I went away to college, met some crappy people, made some crappy choices, came home.”
     
    I eyed her.
     
    She sighed.
     
    “When you came back, when you didn’t talk… I’d seen that look in your eyes in the mirror.”
     
    “What happened?” I asked.
     
    “I had a really, really lousy roommate in college,” she said.
     
    I almost saw the story sketching out around her. I was sure it was as long as the story I’d not told her. Maybe longer.
     
    “Get some work done,” she said.
     
    She sat behind her desk and pulled a stack of grading to her.
     
    Our talk was over. She was the teacher again, with a gulf between us.
     
    She was right.
     
    I hadn’t noticed, but the whispers… they followed me like a wake behind a canoe.
     
    A boy coughed and said “Slut,” behind his hand.
     
    A girl said “God, she’s weird.”
     
    What was who I was to these people now. I saw it in their eyes. I was strange, foreign.
     
    Some kind of slut.
     
    Three periods of being aware of what they were saying, aware of their gazes, was almost more than I could stand.
     
    I didn’t trust myself to speak.
     
    As soon as the last bell rang, I was the fuck out of there.
     
    I cut through the woods and made it to my little apartment in twenty minutes.
     
    Merle showed up after I broke the third glass.
     
    “I hate being a fucking landlord,” he said, shutting the door behind him and re-locking it. “People texting me about someone throwing shit at walls.”
     
    I picked up another glass and eyed him.
     
    I didn’t throw it at him, but I threw it on the floor.
     
    Neither of us flinched at the shattering noise.
     
    “Come on, sweetheart,” he said. “What happened?”
     
    “Why the fuck are you here?” I asked him.
     
    He shrugged.
     
    “I figured I’d take you out,” he said. “Good thing I was in the area. Got some pissy texts from your neighbor.”
     
    “Oh, so you figured you could take me out now? I’d just come when you called, like I was at your beck and fucking call?”
     
    The irritated knocking on the wall didn’t get me to stop shouting. Even the pained look on Merle’s handsome face.
     
    He sat on the couch, my couch, and crossed his arms.
     
    “You done?” he asked.
     
    “Fuck you,” I said. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. Fuck all of them. Fuck those stupid fucking assholes.”
     
    “Ah,” he said. “Bad day at school?”
     
    “Oh, can it,” I said. “You’re not my fucking parent.”
     
    “No,” he snapped. “I’m sticking with you. So stop attacking me, okay?”
     
    That hurt.
     
    I sighed.
     
    I sat down next to him. I didn’t reach out to him, but I was there.
     
    “I hadn’t realized