Page 28 of Promises We Meant to Keep (Love in Massachusetts #1)

twenty-eight

Elia rapped her knuckles against Kamryn’s hotel room door and waited. They’d spent hours talking since the last ethics team meeting, but that still left them in an awkward spot in terms of how they were going to handle everything. And Elia couldn’t get it out of her head.

She’d been so hyperfocused on the kids all day to keep herself distracted, but now that they were tucked away in their rooms preparing to sleep, Elia was lost. She couldn’t stop thinking about everything she’d confessed to Kamryn, about the ethics team, about all the upheaval that was playing out around her.

Kamryn opened the door, squinting at her behind a pair of reading glasses, which were absolutely adorable on her. Elia immediately felt her lips turn upward and her body relax a bit. “Hey, since when do you wear reading glasses?”

“Since I hit thirty-five and my body started to think I was an old crone.” Kamryn winked. “Was there something you needed?”

Elia’s lips parted in surprise because she wasn’t being immediately invited in. She’d thought—well, hell, she’d thought that the intimacy they’d created between them so far wouldn’t end this quickly.

“Just to talk.” It was the simplest way for Elia to say that she needed to be in Kamryn’s presence, and that she needed to feel and hear her voice, no matter what they were talking about. “About the ethics team.”

“Right.” Kamryn dropped her voice and glanced up and down the hallway. “Everyone is in their rooms?”

“Yes, and Bailey is going to check on them in an hour to make sure they’re all asleep.”

“Good.” Kamryn stepped to the side and opened the door wider, allowing Elia to finally walk in.

The air was frigid. Kamryn must have the air conditioner turned on. Elia wrapped her arms around her chest and walked inside. The desk was littered with papers and Kamryn’s laptop. There were even papers strewn about on the end of the bed. Kamryn immediately started to clean those up, sliding them back into the folders they must have come from.

“I got a bit lost in work, sorry.” Kamryn shoved the folders onto the desk and closed her laptop, dropping her reading glasses on top of the lid. “In all honesty, I got the glasses because I’ve been staring at the computer way too much lately.”

Elia stared hard at Kamryn. “Maybe you shouldn’t work so much.”

Kamryn snorted and shook her head. “Impossible right now.”

Guilt slammed Elia hard. She had no doubt that this was because of her and because of Yara and Susy and Heather bringing up her whole sordid past in one go. And Elia hated it. She just wanted to make it all go away so that maybe she could go back to living in peace again. Not that she’d done too much of that before.

“Did you want to talk about the bachelorette party tomorrow?” Elia asked, sliding onto the edge of the mattress while Kamryn continued to stare at her.

It wasn’t the reason she’d come in there, but it would at least be a distraction. Then again, hadn’t she wanted to avoid distracting herself any longer?

“No.” Kamryn sighed heavily. “What I want, right now, is to go back a few more weeks and live like I didn’t know any of this.” Kamryn waved her hand over the papers. “These are the personnel records, kind of. They’re the complaints that I’ve found, and I’m trying to piece them all back together.”

“How many personnel files were wiped?” Elia wasn’t sure if she should even be asking that question, or if Kamryn could even answer it.

Kamryn sighed again and ran her fingers through her hair, closing her eyes. “More than just yours, so that’s a bright spot in your favor.”

“Unless they think I erased everyone else’s files to make me look innocent,” Elia mumbled and stared at the odd design on the carpet under her feet. She shivered, the cold air hitting her skin in a way she didn’t expect it to.

“I think it was Miller.” Kamryn frowned.

“Really?” Elia looked directly at her. She could imagine Miller doing something like that. In the last few years, he’d definitely taken liberties in other things and thrown his weight around with the board, but there was no reason he’d go into her personnel file and erase that. He’d been fully aware of what had happened, just like he should have been.

“I don’t know who else would have access to do it other than Jessup, but from what I can tell, there were files erased after Jessup left.” Kamryn sat next to her, their shoulders brushing. “I don’t know yet. I just started looking through everything tonight. I need to meet with the team on Tuesday—so I’m going to miss the next practice again—to go through even more of this.”

“Kam, the kids need you at practice.” Elia hated that she felt like she was trying to guilt Kamryn into everything. But if the kids were going to trust Kamryn to actually teach them, then she needed to be present.

“I know they do, but right now, I think you need me in those meetings more.”

Elia needed her there? That thought warmed her from the center of her chest. Kamryn did actually care about her, she just had to remind herself of that.

“Are you my knight in shining armor?” Elia meant it to sound like a light tease, but it didn’t. It sounded pathetic, like she couldn’t even manage to stand up for herself anymore and needed someone else to do it. That thrill of hyper-independence reared its ugly head, and Elia wanted to latch onto it.

But it had also been her downfall more times than she could count.

“Hardly,” Kamryn answered. “If anything, I’m the bodyguard you never wanted.”

“What?”

Kamryn frowned and then ran her hands over her face. “What I didn’t tell you was one of the conditions that I agreed to in order to allow you more freedom.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Yara wanted to bring down the hammer on you, put you on restriction after restriction, and I refused to do it.” The stress lines in Kamryn’s face were so tense. This was weighing so heavily on her, and she was right back to that guilt. “I agreed to one, and that was it.”

“Which one?” Elia wasn’t sure that she wanted to be asking that question. What would it mean for her ultimately? Could she even continue teaching? Had she already broken the rule that she didn’t even know was in place.

“I get to supervise you, closely, while you’re with students.” Kamryn grimaced. “You already do everything else on their list aside from having a paid person to observe all your interactions with students.”

Elia shuddered. She really was being thrown back eighteen years ago, wasn’t she? “I had to do that for a while during the initial investigation.”

“I know,” Kamryn answered. “Yara was quite forthcoming with that information. And that you were required to pay for that person’s time.”

“I was,” Elia whispered. It had been a strain on her finances, but Abagail had managed to give her a loan at the time, along with a place to live. “I was under a microscope, as I would expect with anyone accused of something like that.”

“Yet they still allowed you to teach afterward.”

“Because Rylann confessed that she’d made it all up.”

“But where is that confession? Because I haven’t found it yet.” Kamryn pointed to all the papers on the desk. “And that’s what I need, to prove that you were innocent eighteen years ago.”

“I don’t know.” Elia worried her lower lip. “I wasn’t ever given a copy of that because it was considered confidential on the school’s side.”

Kamryn wrinkled her nose. “I thought, originally, that the investigation into the complaints had been well done, and it might very well have been, but with no evidence to support that, I don’t even know what to think any more.”

“I hate what this is doing to you,” Elia said, unexpectedly not just to herself but to Kamryn. The look on Kamryn’s face was confirmation enough of that. “It’s not worth it.”

“Of course you’re worth it,” Kamryn retorted.

That hadn’t exactly been what Elia said. She wasn’t struggling with her self-worth. She was struggling with the drama that seemed to come from her, from the chaos that she seemed to bring with her into every relationship and every conversation lately. It would be so nice to just go back to how it was before.

“This isn’t worth it,” Elia reiterated. “Fighting them.”

“Of course it is.” A deep line formed in the middle of Kamryn’s forehead. “First, I need to know what’s going on at the school and what else was hidden. Your situation is just one of many that could be hiding away and causing issues that I don’t know about. But second, I won’t stand for injustice, Elia. You have to know that about me.”

Elia did know that, but she also wasn’t convinced that this was an injustice at this point. The accusations had been made years ago, she was found innocent of them, but it wasn’t like that was happening anew this time. And she had to keep reminding herself of that. This wasn’t a new threat. It was the same one that she had faced before and beaten.

“I do know that,” Elia answered. “But also know this about me… I’ve been down this road before, and I’m not sure it’s worth it to go down there again.”

“Even if you have support this time?”

“I had support last time.” Elia wouldn’t discount Abagail, and she certainly wouldn’t discount the fact that there were others who showed as much support as they could during that time. It was difficult, and eighteen years ago, she was convinced the entire world was out to get her. But looking back on it, that hadn’t been the case. “Rylann is the one who needed support, not me. She was crying out for attention, and she got it, but it wasn’t the kind that she needed.”

Kamryn pulled away slightly.

“You’ve been teaching for years, Kam. You have to have known students like that.”

“I do,” Kamryn answered.

“I blamed her for years, you know. I blamed Rylann, I blamed Yara, and I blamed myself. I put myself in a position to be easily accessible to my students, to be seen more as friend than teacher, and that put me at risk. I refused to do that again since.”

“Is that why you’re so closed off now?” Kamryn touched the top of Elia’s hand, curling her fingers around and squeezing lightly. “Because you’re so different now.”

“I am.” Elia’s shoulders stiffened. “And it’s for good reason.”

“In some ways, I’m glad you changed,” Kamryn said, a glint in her eye that Elia wasn’t quite sure where to place.

“Why’s that?”

“I find the mystery behind an icy heart absolutely attractive.” Kamryn chuckled nervously, as if she knew this wasn’t the time and the place but she was stretching to lighten the mood.

“Are you saying that you wouldn’t have found me attractive twenty years ago? If you were who you are now, I mean.”

“Absolutely not.” Kamryn winked. “Why do you think I liked Lauren so much?”

“Lauren.” That was something that Elia hadn’t really thought about or wanted to think about. Lauren had been one of those troubled students that Elia had tried to keep her eye on from a distance. She always seemed to have a dark cloud around her. And that was still the case all these years later. If Kamryn was attracted to the women who needed fixing, then it would make sense why she and Lauren had been together forever, and why she struggled to break it off entirely. “I want you to think about something.”

“Sure.”

Elia knew this could be the end of what they’d started, but she wanted to make it clear. “I don’t need you or want you to fix me.”

“Elia—”

“I’m serious, Kam. I don’t want it. I can deal with my own problems and my own neurotic habits. I don’t need you swooping in and thinking that I’m suddenly going to be someone different than I am today.” That cold air wasn’t the only thing bothering Elia, clearly. But she’d said her word, and she wasn’t going to let it go this time.

“I don’t want you to change,” Kamryn said slowly. “I don’t know why you think I do want that, but I don’t. You have changed in the last two decades, just like anyone does, but I don’t want to change you.”

“It doesn’t sound like that to me.” Elia covered Kamryn’s hand on hers briefly before removing it. “Let me know what you need from me for tomorrow.”

“You’re still planning on coming?”

Elia stood up and started toward the door. She hadn’t really thought there was another option in that sense. She’d agreed to go with Kamryn, and she enjoyed spending time together. What harm would it do at this point, honestly?

“Sure. Besides, then you’ll be absolutely certain that I’m not doing anything inappropriate with a student.” Ah…so that’s where this is coming from. Elia bit the inside of her cheek. “That was—”

“Anger,” Kamryn finished for her. “Resentment, perhaps.”

“Yeah,” Elia agreed. “And I took it out on you.” She really was going to need to find a way to navigate this, and the intricacies that they’d created and put into place that were causing so many complications and unintended hurts.

“That’s fair,” Kamryn responded. “I didn’t exactly tell you before now what we’d decided on at the last meeting.”

Elia pressed her lips together tightly, clenching her molars together. “You didn’t. So, for tonight, I’ll relieve you of your duties for a bit.”

“Don’t leave like this, Elia.” Kamryn stood up and followed her. “Don’t leave hurting.”

“There’s no way to resolve this hurt tonight.” Elia touched Kamryn’s cheek lightly, but she didn’t pull her in for a kiss, the war inside her too strong for that to be a possibility right now. “Good night, Kam.”