What He Never Knew (What He Doesn't Know, #3)(62)

Sarah whimpered a little, fisting her hands in my shirt, and I tugged her in even tighter. I couldn’t get her close enough, couldn’t surround her with myself enough to feel like it was adequate protection.

“And I want you to know you didn’t do anything wrong,” she mumbled into my shirt, the one she was staining with her tears. She pulled away enough to look up at me with a sniff. “You didn’t. Okay?” She rolled her lips together. “But we… we can’t…”

“I know,” I said, finishing for her. “I know. You don’t have to say it.” Then, I tilted her chin with my knuckles, searching her eyes — the eyes of the strongest woman I’d ever known. “I promise, Sarah, that I will never hurt you again. I will never betray your trust. I respect you, and the boundaries between us. And I’m so sorry I ever made you question that.”

Her brows pulled together, eyes welling with tears again as she shook her head and buried it in my chest. I soothed her, holding her tight, one hand cradling her head to my chest as the other held her to me.

The pain she felt radiated through me, and I closed my eyes, chest aching as the unwanted imagery hit me. Had he held her down against her will, forced himself on her and not listened when she’d screamed for help? My stomach twisted, nausea washing over me at the thought. I knew he wasn’t in jail, and that was perhaps what upset me most.

How was he still teaching? How was he free to do whatever he wanted, and Sarah had to live with what he’d done to her?

I squeezed her to me tighter, shaking my head as a resolve set deep into my bones. As Sarah sobbed, as she broke in my arms, I repeated the vow I’d made to her, over and over, until it was solid as steel.

The need I’d felt before to protect her expanded, taking over everything inside of me. I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to forgive myself for adding to her pain, for showing her yet again the way the power of a teacher can be abused. But I knew one thing was certain.

I would do everything to keep her safe.

And I would never cross that line again.





Sarah



I learned very quickly after that day that if there was one, solid truth about Reese Walker, it was this: he was true to his word.

I asked him not to tell anyone what I’d told him — namely my uncle — and not to pressure me into telling anyone else, either. After all, I’d already tried to tell someone, and I saw how far that got me. It was over, what had happened between me and Wolfgang, and I wanted to leave it behind, to let it go.

Reese respected that.

I knew it couldn’t have been easy for him to do, to not tell my family what happened or take me straight to the police station. I could see it in his eyes, in the crease between his brows when he’d agreed to keep it between us. He didn’t like it, but he agreed because it was what I wanted.

True to his word.

And for the first time since it happened, someone else knew what I’d been through. It was the relief I never knew I needed, and it seemed to unleash what I’d been holding back at the piano.

After I’d dried my tears and blown my nose about eighty times that day, we had our first piano lesson since he’d kissed me. It was short, but it was our first step into normalcy — and after that, the rest came just as easy.

Within a few days, we were back into our lessons, picking up right where we left off. We were back to Reese instructing from the corner of the room, not touching me, not holding me, not looking at me like he wanted to devour me.

Within a week, we were moving on to new challenges — transposing, fighting the bad habits I’d developed from earlier teachers in my life, and, as always, vulnerability and tension at the piano. We discussed piano and nothing else, just like we should.

The Fourth of July passed with both of us working at The Kinky Starfish — Reese playing for the patrons while I bussed tables. On his break, we stood outside and watched the fireworks over the city, and it’d been the closest we’d stood since he hugged me in his kitchen when I’d told him about my wolf.

And now, a little more than two weeks after the night Reese pressed his lips to mine, we were completely back to normal — well, as close to normal as we could get. I saw him on lesson days and, sometimes, for brief breaks at work. He would assign me pieces and critique my execution of them, giving me new things to work on. I was getting stronger, feeling better — my wrists and fingers finally able to keep up with the demand I put on myself as a musician. I wondered if the strength came with my admission to Reese, or with our practicing, or perhaps a combination of the two.

Everything should have felt perfect.

But there was a stirring inside me, one that had come to life the night Reese had touched me. And though I knew it was the right thing to keep our distance, to put those walls back up between us, to move forward as student and teacher and nothing more — I couldn’t deny that I missed him.

I missed talking, missed laughing, missed opening myself up to him and listening when he did the same. I missed that connection, though it was still there, under the surface, buzzing like the universal om of the universe. It was the strangest thing, that we were still together, yet Reese felt so distant now.

He said he would never cross that line again, that he would respect me and the role he played in my life.

And, again, he was true to his word.