Anyone But Rich (Anyone But..., #1)(23)

“Ambition can get in the way of what’s important. I’ll be the first to admit it. I’m ready to start making things right, though.”

He nodded sagely. “Very wise. I do wonder why you’re paying such particular interest to the allocation of funds for the theater department. I’d think you might want to see the plans for what we’re going to do with the athletics department or even the library.”

An image of Kira flashed in my mind. I saw the look in her eyes—old, old anger with a hint of curiosity. It was glimpsing something behind all the hatred that had me so interested, I thought. Trap a man in the dark with no sign of light and he’d resign himself to his fate, but give him the faintest sign of the sun and he’d try to fight his way free until his last breath.

Coming home to West Valley made me realize how deeply I’d buried the regret over what happened all those years ago. It hadn’t seemed like much at the time. A few words. A careless, cruel act of petty revenge. I’d been an idiot, and if she never forgave me for it, I couldn’t even blame her. Still, it didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try.

“Perhaps it was an old hobby?” Principal Lockett prodded when I didn’t respond. “A missed opportunity to feel the lights of the stage and the roar of the crowd.” He wiggled his eyebrows and hissed in imitation. “I have to confess. I always thought I would’ve been a natural on the stage, but never quite had the stature to land a leading role. Maybe the two of us aren’t so different, aside from the obvious points, at least.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “Thanks for walking me here.” I patted him on the shoulder a little too hard apparently, because his knees buckled. “Sorry,” I said, patting him again, more lightly this time.

Kira was sitting on the stage in the auditorium with a stack of papers on her lap and a mess of discarded folders to the side of her. She looked up when I came in and immediately jerked her head back down to her work.

“You can pretend I’m not here if you want, but I grew up with a brain-dead identical twin. I’m used to one-sided conversations.”

“I have a lot of papers to grade, and this is my planning period,” she said.

I looked around. “I don’t see any teacher’s assistants. Want a hand?”

She cocked an eyebrow. “From you? No. I’ll pass.”

I moved to the stage and hopped up to sit beside her. I took a peek at what she was grading, but she turned the papers to the side and scowled.

“I’ll make you a deal,” I said. “Ask me a random question from the quiz. If I get it right, you let me help. If I get it wrong, I’ll leave.”

“You’ll leave West Valley?” she asked.

“Damn.” I laughed. “No. The school. You really want me gone that badly?”

She watched me, but instead of answering, her eyes fell to the quiz. She was clearly searching for the most difficult question she could find. “How does Ophelia die in Hamlet?”

I looked up to the single stage light that burned bright overhead, searching my past for answers. I knew I had read Hamlet in high school, but the details were fuzzy. Thankfully, I’d always had a good memory—it was part of what made me so good at my job. “Got it,” I said with a grin.

The look of fear on Kira’s face was almost enough to make me laugh.

“Suicide.”

Kira straightened. I could see in her eyes she thought she had me cornered. “Not detailed enough. How did—”

“She drowned herself.” I did laugh then, because Kira didn’t bother hiding an ounce of her annoyance. “Sorry. Good memory.” I tapped my temple.

“Here,” she said. Her voice was cold, and she was making an effort to keep her eyes down and away from mine. “You can grade these. This is the answer key.” She shoved a small stack of papers at me and then set a single sheet down between us with the answers on it.

I took to the work quietly for a few minutes. Sitting beside her was oddly thrilling, even though nothing about my reunion with Kira had been going the way I’d expected. From that first day when I interrupted her class, to the party, and finally to catching her during her planning period, she had shut me down at every turn. Reality was slowly dawning on me.

Seeing her coldness was a slap in the face—a stark reminder that I had well and truly fucked up seven years ago. It took a special kind of grudge to grow stronger over time, but I was almost certain hers had festered and rotted like a wound. My coming back to West Valley was an explosion of foul memories for her.

“What will it take?” I asked.

“Six out of ten is a passing grade.”

“No. For you to forgive me. Or at least talk to me.”

She shook her head, eyes searching the empty seats. “You don’t get it, do you? It’s not about forgiving you. Forget what you did back then. I’m still alive and I’m doing fine. It’s about the fact that I know what you’re capable of, so I’d be an idiot to blindly trust that you’re different now.”

I let her words sink in and realized she had a point.

“Okay,” I said slowly. “Then I’ll prove it to you.”

She sighed. “I don’t want proof, Rich. I just want to get on with my life.”

“Yeah, I get it, but I’m not really giving you a choice. We’ve invested too much money coming here for me to just disappear, and this isn’t that big of a town. You’re stuck with me, so you might as well give me a chance to redeem myself.”