Anyone But Rich (Anyone But..., #1)(63)

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Is it a bad time for me to visit her?”

“Well, yes.”

“Is she okay?”

“She is.”

“Tell me what the fuck is going on,” I snapped. I pushed past him and started walking toward her room.

“Mr. King, if you’ll just—” I heard his footsteps trailing as he tried to catch up with me.

I knew I’d just asked him to tell me, but my feet didn’t seem willing to listen to my brain’s orders to stop. I half ran to Kira’s room, and when I yanked the door open, I saw a woman I didn’t recognize. Her name was written in dry-erase marker on the board, and the students looked bored out of their minds with worksheets in front of them. “A substitute?” I asked.

“Can I help you?” asked the woman.

The students spotted me, and the room broke out in excited whispers.

“Quiet! Please!” the woman shouted as she slapped her palms down on the podium. It managed to dim the sound but not extinguish it.

Principal Lockett finally caught up with me and gently pulled my arm to get me back out in the hall. I let the door close behind us.

“Where is Kira?” My voice was level, but I felt a barely contained rage threatening to boil over inside.

“I didn’t have a choice, Mr. King. I truly didn’t. They said it was her or me, and—”

I started walking away. I didn’t need to hear any more to know exactly what had happened.

“Mr. King!” Principal Lockett called. “I really am sorry. And if there’s anything I can do to help—anything at all—just ask.”





Chapter 23





KIRA


The biggest downside of not being a drinker was how pathetic my self-destructive moments were. Instead of passing out with a bottle of wine in a drunken blaze of glory, I buried myself in ice cream and daytime TV. Infomercials were my drug, especially the ones where they cut things. The Slap Chop might as well have been porn. I’d bought one once, but then I realized you needed to finely chop vegetables, meat, nuts, and other small objects only if you cooked. So I ended up with a pile of chopped onions and no idea what to do with them. Still, I occasionally whipped that bad boy out and Slap Chopped away my frustrations.

I’d already eaten enough that I had to untie the drawstring on my sweatpants to make room for my swelling stomach. It was an official ice cream baby.

Once again, Rich King had led to the destruction of my well-laid plans. Only this time, it hadn’t been because of any cruelty on his part. I’d been complicit too. After his warnings of what his parents might resort to, I hadn’t fully believed him. At least not until Principal Lockett had pulled me into his office after first period and let me know he was going to have to fire me. I didn’t even blame him. The tears he was obviously trying to hold back told me it wasn’t his choice.

I didn’t call anyone. I grabbed the essentials out of my classroom—the few things that were mine—and carried them out. I was able to get my things during planning period, which meant I didn’t have to face any of my students. As much as part of me wanted to tell them I was being unjustly fired, I also suspected Principal Lockett had been browbeaten into doing it.

So I stayed quiet. Since Rich had dropped me off that morning, my car wasn’t in the parking lot. Thankfully, I lived only about five miles from the school, so I’d taken the long walk home and used the time to think about what I was going to do.

The culmination of my grand plans was apparently double-chocolate ice cream with Oreos and a private in-home screening of Look Who’s Talking, because if talking babies and John Travolta couldn’t cheer me up, what could? Genius struck halfway through the movie, driving me to get out the Slap Chop and dice my Oreos into smithereens so I could sprinkle them on my ice cream.

It was as good as it sounded in my head.

Rich showed up a little after three. He knocked so hard I thought he was going to break the door down. I half expected him to yell at me for not calling him and telling him what had happened, but as soon as I opened the door, all he did was wrap me in a tight hug. After a few seconds, he started running his hand through my hair. It was hard to feel bad in those arms of his. I closed my eyes and breathed him in, letting him rock me slowly in the doorway at the bottom of the stairs to my condo. I also sucked in my stomach, just a little. He didn’t need to know I was carrying a dairy child that didn’t belong to him.

He’d never actually seen my tiny little home. I wasn’t sure I wanted him to either. What would it look like compared with all the palatial places where he’d probably lived?

“We’re going to fix all of this,” Rich said quietly.

“How?” I asked.

“I have a really stupid plan. But it’s the good kind of stupid.”

I pulled away from him to frown up at him. He looked excited but a little crazy.

“Should I be scared?”

“Probably,” he said. Rich dropped to one knee.

I watched it all happen in a daze, like when the bullets start to fly in an action movie. Time slows down, and all sound is reduced to a whooshing kind of roar. Except there were no bullets flying. There was just the most drop-dead gorgeous man I’d ever met falling to one knee and reaching for something. As if some kind of commentary was required for a moment this shocking, my stomach let out a deafening gurgle of surprise.