Page 38 of Promises We Meant to Keep (Love in Massachusetts #1)

thirty-eight

“You figured out why I didn’t get the interview.”

Elia stared at Kamryn as she cracked open the door to her apartment. Her heart raced, and her body was filled with unrestrained energy that told her she had to do something, anything, to make it dissipate. But there was no direction to it at all. So she’d ended up here. Just before midnight, standing in front of Kamryn’s apartment, and begging to be let inside.

“I did.” Kamryn stood up straight, her eyes still alight with the energy from the day. But she looked exhausted. She looked worn out and torn down. “Come on in.”

She opened the door wider, stepping to the side. Elia brushed her fingers across the top of Kamryn’s hand as she walked by, her heart skipping a beat or two briefly before she was fully ensconced in Kamryn’s world.

“What the hell happened tonight?” Elia asked, still standing in the center of Kamryn’s living room with her jacket wrapped tightly around her.

“Want a whiskey? I think I deserve a drink after this, and it’s much better to drink with someone than alone.” Kamryn strolled toward the kitchen, not answering Elia’s question. “Take your jacket off, this is going to be a while.”

Elia was stunned speechless. Kamryn seemed to have none of the energy that Elia did. She was all sorts of calm, and just that fact irked Elia. She was once again left in the dark, not knowing exactly what happened. The call from the apparent new board chair hadn’t relieved all of her concerns, and it didn’t answer all of her questions. She almost hadn’t even answered the phone since it was so late, but both Kamryn and Simone had texted and told her to answer it.

Elia pulled at the buttons on her jacket and dropped it onto the back of the dining room chair. She curled her fingers around the top of it and leaned. Kamryn was taking her sweet time finding glasses in her cabinets and then pouring them each a good dose of whatever whiskey she had in her hand. Elia couldn’t make the label out from there, not that it mattered.

She just wanted answers.

“Kam…”

“I promise you, I’ll answer everything you want to throw at me. Just give me a second. It’s been a hell of a week.” Kamryn capped the bottle and snagged the drinks, her hips swaying but more from exhaustion than intention as she walked back around and handed Elia a glass. “Can we at least cheers to the fact that this is mostly over for now?”

“But…how?” Elia held her glass dumbfounded, unmoving when Kamryn held hers out.

Shrugging, Kamryn sipped her drink and then moved toward the couch. She sat down heavily, sighing as she toed off her shoes and made herself comfortable.

“Kam…”

“Elia,” Kamryn answered, a tease in her tone. “I figured for someone as smart as you that you would have asked as many questions as possible during that phone call.”

“I was a bit stunned and blindsided.” Elia moved around and sat next to Kamryn on the couch, their knees bumping. “I didn’t exactly have the wherewithal to come up with any questions.”

Kamryn frowned and took another sip. “Mrs. Caldera is the one who altered your personnel file.”

“She… but why?”

“To protect you.” Kamryn took another sip, raising her eyebrows in Elia’s direction as if she was making a point, but Elia didn’t follow her line of thought. “You have more friends here than you may have realized.”

“She didn’t want anyone to read it?”

“She thought it was time that the past faded into the past, and she was worried with Susy as president of the board that it would come back up. She wasn’t wrong, but her methods leave a lot to be desired. I had to terminate her.”

“Oh, Kam.” Elia reached out and touched Kamryn’s arm, her fingers curling around Kamryn’s wrist. Heat seared into her skin from just the touch. Elia didn’t want to let go either, so she lingered there as long as she felt safe before retreating back into the bubble that she had created.

“Susy, Heather, and Yara are no longer on the board.”

“Jensen told me that. Did they step down?”

“Mostly. Heather threw the biggest fit. I found out at the wedding that Susy has been spreading rumors about you, some true, most untrue. Simone helped me to uncover even more and to trace them back. Susy has had a vendetta against you, and the creation of the ethics team with Heather and Yara was fully with the intention of getting you out of Windermere. We were able to prove that tonight. In case you’re wondering, Simone has taken over chairing that team, and I’m working with her to rebuild it from scratch, again.”

“Simone will be good for that.” Elia lifted the crystal glass to her lips and finally took a sip of the amber liquid. It burned going down but not as much as everything else lately had.

“For now, Jensen has taken over supervising your position at the school.”

Elia jerked her head up at, locking her eyes on Kamryn’s in confusion. Kamryn was staring at her intently, as if trying to read between the lines for what Elia was thinking and feeling.

“It’s only temporary until Marshall Dean returns from parental leave in a few weeks,” Kamryn added.

“I’ll be supervised by the Assistant Head of School? Not by you?” Elia tightened her grip on the glass, but she wasn’t understanding something. Kamryn wasn’t telling her something intentionally, and she was completely lost as to why the change was happening.

“I told them about our relationship.”

“Kam.” Elia’s heart sank, and that same fear from before came rushing back. “They fired you?”

“No, they didn’t fire me.” Kamryn’s lips twitched upward, a small smile taking over what had been exhaustion for such a brief moment. “They extended my contract to the end of the year.”

“What?”

“And in order to avoid a conflict of interest and favoritism, they’re placing you under different supervision. Marshall will be back in a few weeks, and I’ll update him about the changes going forward.”

“I don’t even know what to say.” Elia set her drink onto the coffee table. “I don’t know whether to be pissed off that you did all of this without talking to me first or to thank you.”

“Both is probably a good place to start.” Kamryn knocked back the rest of her drink and added her glass to Elia’s. “I couldn’t tell you about a good portion of that.”

“I understand, but it still involved me.” Elia stared down at her hands. “And to tell them about our relationship? We’re not even—”

“I want to be,” Kamryn interrupted. “And I want to make that very clear. If you want to be with me, Elia, then be with me. But even if you’re not because of our history, the board deserved to know. I need to be as open with them as I possibly can, and our relationship causes a conflict of interest when it comes to certain things, even if we don’t continue to be in a relationship together.”

Elia steadied. Kamryn still wanted to be with her? She wasn’t sure she’d be as gracious as that, not with the way Elia had treated her lately. She’d ignored all sides of a personal relationship between them—or at least she’d tried to.

“You don’t have to answer me about that tonight if you don’t want to. I know this is a lot to take in at once.” Kamryn stretched out her legs and pointed her toes. “And you haven’t had a lot of the information that I’ve had.”

“You asked me to trust you, and I didn’t.”

Kamryn turned sharply to her at that.

“I didn’t trust you,” Elia repeated, making sure that her point was clear. “I pushed and nearly bullied you into accepting my resignation, and you just stood there and took it.”

“In all fairness, Elia, I pushed and nearly bullied you just as hard. I just needed you to stay long enough for me to get things in order and make things happen. I needed you to stay until after this meeting, so you could choose to leave on your own terms. And if you want me to accept your resignation, then I will. I won’t hold you here any longer. I’ll curse you when I have to teach your damn classes until I can find a long-term substitute, but that’s the extent of it.”

Elia’s lips parted in surprise. She was free to leave. And it was the first time that she’d truly felt that. She had all the power now, to leave or to stay, to make the decisions about whether or not their relationship continued. Kamryn had laid it all out so beautifully for her, giving her all the options and more, and the absolute freedom to make these choices.

“I don’t want to leave,” Elia whispered. That much she knew to be true right in this moment. She’d never wanted to leave Windermere. It’d been her home for so long and she was comfortable here.

“I’m glad to hear that.” Kamryn snagged her glass and started toward the kitchen.

Elia stayed on the couch, sitting in silence as she processed through everything she’d just been told. It was so hard to not be the one doing anything, to not be defending herself, to not be trying to keep up with all the accusations and politics that came with teaching and especially with teaching in a private school.

“So can I burn your resignation? Because I’ve been dying to do that, in all honesty.” Kamryn sat back down heavily, but she hadn’t returned with a refilled glass.

“Sure.” Elia smiled at the comfort and ease that they’d found again. “The board didn’t have questions about when you were my student?”

“They did.” Kamryn ran her fingers through her hair. “But they didn’t seem to question my answers when I gave them.”

“Because they’re the truth.”

“Yeah.” Kamryn grinned and rubbed her hands over her face. “I know it’s not all done and solved, and now I have to hire a new administrative assistant and get a temp in this week, but I feel like I can honestly say that the drama is done.”

Is that what this odd feeling was? Completeness? The end to what Elia had never truly believed would end? Had Kamryn finally succeeded in doing that? Elia blinked, looking Kamryn over in a new light. She hadn’t truly seen her as admin before this week, but with the way Kamryn had held herself during their confrontations and with the ethics team and the board?

“You deserved this job, Kam. Far more than I did.”

Kamryn’s brows drew together, a definite sign of her confusion as she threw a look in Elia’s direction. “You would have been just as good if not better as Head of School.”

“No. I wouldn’t have.” Elia had never been more confident in that. The jealousy that she’d allowed to take over her when Kamryn had first started was completely gone. “You’re really good at this job.”

“Well… thank you.” Kamryn smiled again, her cheeks tinging pink from the compliment. “That’s high praise coming from you.”

Elia smiled in response, her heart fluttering lightly. “You deserve it.”

“So do you. Still one of the best damn teachers that I know.” The last bit of tension disappeared from Kamryn’s face.

Elia wanted to bring it up, and she’d half expected Kamryn to. Then again, that wasn’t exactly Kamryn’s style, was it? Elia snagged the glass off the coffee table and tilted her head back, swallowing the rest of the liquid in one long gulp.

She stood up, copying Kamryn’s moves from before to put the glass away. She needed just a few more seconds to center herself. When Kamryn had said they could be together, her heart had leapt right before fear had taken over its place. She was so used to living in fear, wasn’t she? It was almost like she hadn’t been living at all for the last few years. She’d simply been existing within the world in a way that she would make as little impact as possible.

But Kamryn had paved the way for her to do something different, to live more truly to herself than she had been. And she couldn’t ever be more grateful to Kamryn for that. The silence was loud, and the call to fill it with something was strong.

But what exactly did she want to say?

What did she want to do?

She still had all these decisions to make and things to do, but there was only one thing that called through that loud echo of silence.

Kamryn loved her.

Love.

She hadn’t let that sink in until now, but Kamryn had told her in the coffee shop bathroom that she loved her. And she’d been so unapologetic in it. She hadn’t wanted anything out of it, she hadn’t wanted anything from Elia, and here they were.

Elia set her glass in the sink and turned around, eyeing Kamryn over the back of the couch. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she’d already pulled off her suit jacket. Elia’s lips tingled, the memory of their almost kiss in that bathroom coming back fully. What she would have given for Kamryn to give in and just push her against the wall, to take the decision from her so she didn’t have to make it.

But Kamryn wouldn’t ever do that.

That wasn’t who she was.

The memory of their last kiss, the tenderness and hope and fear that had mingled all within it. The memory of their first kiss—or at least what Elia considered their first true kiss. Kamryn all hot and bothered by the board dealing with the very issue she’d now resolved. She’d kept all of those promises, hadn’t she?

And that first kiss.

Wholly unexpected, awkward, and hot as hell. Elia hadn’t been touched so reverently by someone before, hadn’t been held so closely and carefully, and never in such a public setting. Each of those memories was one that Elia never wanted to forget. But more than that, she wanted to make more.

“Kam?”

“Hmm?” Kamryn replied from the couch, barely moving.

“Did you want another drink?”

“No.” Kamryn yawned. “I think I’m done for the night. I could really use the rest instead of staying up later.”

Right. Kamryn was exhausted. Elia had seen that the moment she’d laid eyes on her that evening. She couldn’t imagine the number of hours and the tension that Kamryn had been holding in the last few weeks. Rinsing out her glass, Elia dried her hands on the towel on the counter before heading back to where Kamryn sat.

Elia walked around toward her jacket, intending to leave, but she stopped short when Kamryn’s gaze reached hers. She didn’t want to leave. She wanted to stay and take care of Kamryn and make sure that she got the rest that she needed.

“Did you have any more questions?”

Elia shook her head, biting her lip before she settled on what she wanted to do next. Instead of grabbing her jacket, she strode back toward the couch and slid onto the cushion next to Kamryn. She had one more chance to get this right, and that was exactly what she needed.

“Yes,” Elia said, full confidence in the word.