Page 118 of Learn Your Lesson

“What?” Livia shrugged. “Hot teacher with an awareness of his trauma? That screams big dick energy to me.”

“Who’s Noah?”

I tried to ask the question casually, but the way everyone’s heads snapped in my direction, I had a feeling the words came out more gruffly than I was aiming for.

Chloe shrank under my gaze, tucking her hair behind one ear. “He’s just a friend.”

“A teacher friend at her school,” Grace corrected.

“Who is apparently very hot, divorced, and tripping over himself trying to tell our girl Chloe here that he’s into her,” Livia added.

“And I mean honestly, who could blame him?” Maven asked. “I’d trip over myself, too.”

There were some laughs at that, and then I thought I heard Jaxson asking Chloe for details. I thought I heard Vince telling them all to bug off and leave the girl alone, to let her keep her dating life private. I thought I heard Carter say something about hownothingwas private in this little group of friends.

But I couldn’t be sure of any of it.

Because I was barely breathing, staring at Chloe with a war of emotions raging inside me.

She was into a guy at school.

He was into her.

My blood boiled at the thought, throat tightening, ribs refusing to expand and give my lungs the room they so desperately needed. Jealousy and anger surged through me like rival tidal waves, each of them battling for the top spot.

But on the heels of them was a deep, horrible sadness.

Because I knew this was a good thing.

Chloe was the most incredible woman I’d ever known. Every manshouldbe tripping over themselves to get her attention.Sheshould be crushing on a man who can give her what she deserves.

I wanted her to be happy.

But fuck if I didn’t want her to be happy with me.

The reality that I couldn’t make that a reality was more sobering than any ice bath I’d ever taken. I stared at her from across the circle, all my friends’ laughter subdued like I was drowning under water and watching from the bottom of the pool.

Chloe was blushing and giggling at something someone had said, her eyes on her feet.

But then, they lifted to mine.

Her smile fell, the color draining from her face. She swallowed beneath what I knew was a hard stare from me, one powered by the jealousy and rage I couldn’t quell.

Somehow, I forced a breath.

And then, I forced a smile.

“Well, before you two get serious, I think you better bring him by the house,” I said, hoping the joke would play off, that I could somehow make it sound like a tease, that I could somehow convince her I was unaffected. “I promise to only polish one gun while I grill him.”

There was a pause from the group, and then Carter burst into a laugh that made everyone else release, too. He clapped me on the shoulder, shaking his head.

“Will Perry, forever playing the role of Daddy,” he said with a grin. “Stop playing, though. You don’t own any guns.”

I cocked a brow at him. “That you know of.”

And with that, the conversation turned away from Noah the Hot Teacher.

I waited long enough until I could make the excuse that I needed to get Ava down to sleep, and then I snuck away, holding my shit together as I got my daughter cleaned up and into her bed. The sun and water had her falling asleep before I could even read a full page of a book, and when I slipped out of her room, I walked slowly down to the guest one down the hall.