Page 53 of Learn Your Lesson

I told myself I wasn’t avoiding Will Perry as I stopped at every other table before making my way to hislast. It was just that he and Ava were in the corner. It was just that they happened to be sitting with three of my beststudents with fathers whom I knew wouldn’t be checking their watch and hauling ass as soon as the event was over. It was just because I had nothing to worry about with that little A-plus table.

It was certainlynotbecause I’d had a highly inappropriate dream about him last night, one where he slipped into my bed and raked my nightgown up and dared me to apologize one more time.

It wasabsolutelynot because that dream had woken me, or that I had given in to my desires and rubbed myself against the pillow between my legs until I found relief.

And it was one-hundred percent not because any time Ava hugged me, he watched me in a way that made me feel like I was the best thing that had happened to him.

Or that when his daughter wasn’t around, I felt those eyes on me in a much more heated manner — in a way that seared my skin and boiled my blood.

Nope.

It was definitelynotbecause of any of that.

As the Donuts with Dad event neared the end, however, I could no longer avoid that table in the corner — not that Iwasavoiding — and so, I made my way over with a bright smile, hands folded together in front of my pink skirt with sprinkles on it.

I’d paired it with a white sweater covered in glazed donuts.

The way Will’s eyes lingered on me as I approached that table made me feel like I’d dressed to theme a bittoowell, because I was fairly certain he was tempted to take a bite if I got too close.

God, why did he have to look at me like that?

It was too easy to convince myself that he felt something, too. That he found me attractive. That he found me irresistible.

Which was ridiculous, and likelyfarfrom reality.

Butwas it?

The room spun and time slowed as I walked the short distance to that table, Will’s eyes latched onto me every step of the way. He only let that gaze brush over my outfit for a split second before he held my stare, and he didn’t blink, didn’t waver, didn’t smile or wave.

He just watched me like it was torture to have me coming closer.

He was a sight with his long, chestnut hair down instead of pulled back, the strands of it shaping the hard edges of his jaw. As promised, he wore his jersey to match Ava, but he’d paired it with black joggers and sneakers that made him look both professional and cozy enough to curl up with on the couch.

His golden eyes held both heat and sadness, like there was a war inside him between holding on to the pain of the past five years, and moving forward into a future that was beckoning him to be reborn. The way he watched me made me want to hold him and let him cry just as much as it made me want to straddle his lap and do my very best to rememberanythingfrom thoseCosmomagazines I’d read years ago.

“Chloe!” Ava said when I reached the table, and she broke the spell I was under when she hopped out of her seat and threw her arms around my legs before breaking away excitedly. “Look what we made!”

She pointed to the middle of the table where a triangular dome of donuts had been built, a precariously leaning structure of deliciousness that looked as yummy as it did dangerous.

“Wow!” I said, bending at the waist and planting my hands on my knees to inspect the sticky architecture. “You all did this?”

Ava nodded emphatically. “Yep!”

“It was Gunner’s idea,” Gunner’s dad said proudly.

“And look what I drew!” Charlotte said from beside him, nearly knocking down their donut tower in her effort to show me how she’d illustrated the table of people she sat with — as donuts.

I had to cover my mouth not to laugh at the sight of Will as a donut — complete with long flowing hair, a hockey stick, and a scowl drawn with two deep black crayon lines between his googly eyes.

“That,” I said, taking the paper from her hands. “Is one for the wall.”

She clapped with glee as I left long enough to hang the drawing with a thumbtack on the cork board, and then I rejoined them, having a seat at one of the small chairs between Will and Charlotte’s dad.

I got caught up in a conversation with Mr. West about how his daughter had been doing since the death of their dog, that had been around since before she was born. I listened intently and assured him that she was doing great, all while I felt a pair of eyes burning into the back of my head.

Whywas it so hard to even look at him?

Eventually, Mr. West released me, and I smiled at the others at the table — finding them all engaged in activities or conversations. Even Ava was bent over a new drawing with Charlotte, the two of them delegating who would color what.