Page 33 of Breaking Rules

“Did you have a good day yesterday?”

The smile that lit up her face made anything she might say worth it.

“I did! Mommy had a sleepover!”

My smile froze. Hell,everythingin me froze. “She did?”

“Mm-hm.” Evanne leaned forward in her seat. “She read me a story, and then when I got up yesterday, we had breakfast together, the three of us.”

And that answered the question as to whether or not the sleepover had been because Alec had needed to go on some emergency trip or something.

Evanne kept going. “Then we did a fashion show and watched a movie and played with my robots.”

“It sounds like you had fun,” I said woodenly. I wanted to ask if Keli had spent the night again last night, but that would’ve been completely inappropriate.

And I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer to that question.

“Now that Mommy’s back from her trip, there’s all sorts of things she said we can do together. She wants me to write them down.”

As Evanne started listing all the things that she wanted to do with Keli now that they’d been reunited, I couldn’t help but wonder if this meant Keli was back permanently. If so, would that mean Alec and she would go back to their original custody arrangement? If they did, I assumed that would mean Keli would be the one taking care of Evanne’s school things. I didn’t like the idea of having to see her numerous times throughout the year, but the positive side to that would be that my time with Alec could be separated from time with Evanne.

Except I didn’t know what Keli’s return meant for her relationship with Alec. Things didn’t seem to be going back the way they had been, at least not based on what Alec had told me of their relationship. He and Keli hadn’t done anything together with Evanne, barely interacting with each other at all. Which begged the question, did that mean Keli was trying to become a bigger part of Alec’s life too? And if that was the case, where did it leave me?

Too. Fucking. Confusing.

The bell rang, breaking me from my thoughts. The kids scattered as they always did. Some preferred to talk to their friends until their rides got here, and only then would they get their things and put on their coats. Others knew their parents, or drivers, or nannies were already waiting and went straight to the coatrack to gather their things. A couple of the students changed what they did from day-to-day.

Evanne was one of those, and today, she wanted to talk to me.

Any other time, I would’ve been thrilled to spend some one-on-one time with any of my students, even the ones who acted up in class. I was a firm believer in establishing a rapport with students in casual conversations that weren’t dependent on asking and answering questions. Plus, I genuinely enjoyed talking to Evanne.

I just wasn’t sure how much more I could fake being excited about all the things Keli and Evanne were going to do together, and that just made me feel like shit because I should have been happy that Evanne was excited to be spending time with her mom. Instead, I was wallowing because I didn’t know where I fit in that world anymore.

IfI fit.

“Mommy!” Evanne squealed as she took off toward the door. “You came!”

I turned, a polite smile on my face. My jealousy wasn’t her fault. I was Evanne’s teacher first. She had to take precedence. I couldn’t ever forget that. Not even when Keli gave me a smug as fuck look as Evanne hugged her.

I just needed to know if that look was only about Evanne’s excitement over seeing her…or if it was her way of telling me that she was back in Alec’s life too.

Twenty-One

Alec

Dammit!

Thanks to two red lights, I was ten minutes later in getting to the school than I’d wanted to be, which meant I was there five minutes after school let out for the day instead of five minutes before. In my head, I knew it wasn’t the end of the world. Kids were sometimes at the school up to fifteen or twenty minutes after the end of the day, but those other kids weren’t my responsibility. They weren’tmykid.

The parking lot wasn’t full when I pulled into a spot, but it also wasn’t completely empty. The parents and staff I passed all had the same pinched, harried expression, and I wondered if I looked the same. I hated when I got off schedule, when the control I needed slipped through my fingers.

My shoes squeaked on the tile floor as I made my way down the hall to Evanne’s classroom. I’d passed two teachers before I realized that they were giving me sideways looks, and not the usual admiration I received when I went places where the money I spent made a difference.

I suddenly realized the most likely reason they were watching me.

Shite.

I may not have heard from the police or from a lawyer, but that didn’t necessarily mean Cornelius Harvey had kept our encounter a secret. Or, also a possibility, someone had seen at least a portion of the altercation but didn’t know the facts.