I excuse myself from the table, and Shelby is likely happy to be able to discuss anything besides Addie Severson. There are still about ten minutes left in the period, and Nate is almost certainly in his classroom. We won’t have much time to talk, but I can at least give him a heads-up before he has her in his class.
The halls are mostly empty, since we are in the middle of fifth period, and the heels of my Givenchy leather boots sound like gunshots as they echo through the empty space. I pass a girl with far too much black eye makeup, but that is far from the worst thing these teenage girls do. When I get to Nate’s classroom, the door is closed, which strikes me as a little strange. I peer through the window on the door, and sure enough, Nate is inside. But he’s not alone.
He’s with Addie Severson.
I raise my hand to knock on the door, but before I do, something stops me. I take a step back, ducking slightly out of sight. If Nate was looking hard, he would see me. But not with a quick glance.
Nate and Addie are deep in conversation. I don’t know what they’re saying to each other, but it looks like she’s crying. What is he saying to her that is making her cry? Then again, it doesn’t take a huge amount to make a teenage girl sob. Taking away their phone usually does it, in my experience.
And then Nate reaches out and takes her hand.
Okay, this isn’t necessarily suspicious. She’s crying, and he’s comforting her. Granted, it’s not the most appropriate way to comfort your student, but it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever seen. Although he’s not patting her hand. It seems more like he’s holding it. At least sixty seconds have gone by, and his hand is still touching hers. Why is his hand still touching hers? This has reached the upper limit of appropriateness.
But then something happens to make me forget all about the hand-holding. Something happens that makes hand-holding seem like…well, hand-holding. Something that makes me want to throw up the few leaves of my salad that I managed to choke down.
He’s kissing her.
No, he’s not just kissing her. It looks like he’s trying to figure out how her lunch tasted. That kiss… That’s not a first kiss. That’s a kiss between two people who have kissed many times before and probably done a lot of other things.
And now it all makes sense.
I understand why Addie hates me so much. I understand why she was sneaking around the bushes on the side of my house. I understand why every time I try to tell Nate about something she’s done, he defends her. I understand why my husband has zero interest in sex with me except when he wants me to do something to help her.
That bastard is cheating on me. With her.
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Chapter Forty-Eight
EVE
I DON’T KNOW if I’ve ever been this angry in my entire life.
Part of me wants to burst into the classroom and bust them on the spot in front of the students and teachers who will soon be filtering out of classrooms. It’s what he deserves after all. I imagine the shock on his face, morphing into humiliation as everyone discovers what he has done.
But I don’t do it.
I recognize that if I bust Nate here now, I will ruin three lives: his, mine, and Addie’s. He deserves to have his life ruined, but I don’t. If I make a scene and expose him this way, I will never be able to continue working in the school. It will be too humiliating. And his shame will taint me as well.
As for Addie, the truth is she doesn’t deserve it either. Whatever else I can say about her, she is only sixteen years old. She’s a child. It’s not her fault she fell in love with her handsome English teacher. It was Nate’s responsibility to keep this from happening.
That’s why I don’t expose the two of them in front of everyone. But I do one thing: I take a photo.
The age of consent in the state is sixteen. So Nate won’t go to jail for this. It’s not statutory rape. But his teaching career will be over. My husband will be disgraced, and everyone will find out about it.
My life as I know it is over.
I walk back to my own classroom in a daze. I don’t know how I am going to teach a math class in five minutes. I’ll have to assign the kids some problems to do and just make them work on it for most of the period. All my lesson plans are out the window.
I reach the door to my classroom just in time to bump right into Addie Severson. She’s got a little smile playing on her lips—recently bruised from kissing my husband—but the smile drops right off her face when she sees me. She doesn’t want to be in this class any more than I want to have her here. She bows her head and walks quietly to her seat, dropping her bag on the floor.