Page 82 of The Forbidden Note

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.”