Hissy Fit (Southern Gentleman 1)

I felt my heart warm, loving that he was protective like his father—and his uncle.

His uncle that I hadn’t seen nor spoken to in well over forty-eight hours.

At first, I’d beaten myself up about it. Told myself that he was having second thoughts about what we’d done. Then I realized that the cell towers were out due to the weather we’d had roll through, and he didn’t know where I lived.

And this morning, all hands had been on deck when it came to helping clean up around the school, meaning I hadn’t seen him there, either.

Hell, I was honestly surprised we were even at school today since we didn’t have power in all of the buildings.

The cafeteria ovens and microwaves were being run off of generators, and luckily it was spring, meaning it wasn’t oppressively hot.

And, if I was a guessing girl, I would say that today had been more productive than other days because there was nothing to inhibit the children from learning. There were no cell phones out, or disturbing influences. I’d taken almost all of my classes outdoors so we could do work in the sun—and I had to say, my kids in every class had given me better work than I’d had from them all school year.

“Yo,” Johnson called, startling me. “Is something wrong, Mackie?”

I looked up to find Mackie way closer to me than to the rest of the group, causing me to slow my pace.

Johnson along with a few other players stopped as well and hung back until Mackie was back in line with them again.

I felt a sense of relief wash over me as Johnson hung back to walk with me.

“Hello, Johnson,” I called softly. “Have you seen your uncle lately?”

He gave me a droll look. “Before or after he kicked our asses during practice?”

I felt my lips twitch.

“Uhhh,” I hesitated. “Was it bad?”

“We ran two miles, then did a thousand burpees. Do you know how long that took us?” He paused, looking at me with a sense of exhaustion about him.

I was scared to ask what a burpee was.

But I did it anyway.

He looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “You don’t know what a burpee is?”

I shook my head.

Then he surprised the ever-loving crap out of me by dropping into a push-up position on the ground, doing a push-up, then snapping up into a squat position before jumping in the air.

“That,” he winced, “is a burpee. You’re lucky I was able to get up from doing it. I burned a thousand and two calories during that workout. That means I can have four hamburgers for dinner and it won’t matter.”

I laughed, which was when I looked up and spotted Ezra leaning against my car.

I also spotted Mackie’s glare over his shoulder moments after that that wiped the smile straight off my face.

A shiver slid down my spine, and I wondered what it was that I’d ever done to the kid.

I’d never sent him to the principal, and I’d never said a word to him except to call his name on the roster during our sex-ed class to make sure he was in attendance.

I groaned inwardly.

“Bye, Uncle Ezra,” Johnson called as he passed. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

Ezra snorted. “Says the person that does stupid shit all the freakin’ time.”

He flipped Ezra off before walking to Ezra’s truck that had a crack in the windshield—just like mine did—only on a much smaller scale.

As we’d left the night of the storm, it became apparent quickly that the loud bang we’d heard outside of Ezra’s bathroom window had been a tree limb falling down on top of Ezra’s truck.

That’d been nothing compared to mine—which was a metal sign falling from the bleachers above where my car had been parked, impaling it.

In fact, the metal sign was still there because neither Ezra nor I could get it out. Though Ezra did manage to cut the majority of the pole off the sign.

He’d tried to take me home, but I’d refused, saying my car was perfectly functional.

He’d reluctantly agreed since Grady had been repairing damage to their garage as we’d been leaving.

The impaled sign was on the very right side of my windshield, completely out of my viewing space, and the only thing, cosmetically, wrong with the entire windshield. There weren’t even any cracks branching off of the impaled object.

Tomorrow I’d be taking it to a body shop, but until then, I was stuck with it.

The funny thing was, the sign said ‘violators will be towed.’

I felt a blush hit my face the moment that Ezra and I were alone.

He took it in, and immediately grinned as he caught sight of me.

“Hey,” I whispered, feeling like I’d swallowed a chili pepper.

Ezra grinned. “Hey yourself. What are you doing here so late?”

I grimaced. “Grading papers and inputting them online. I was going to put it all in last night, but since we didn’t have power, I had to do it in the library with about eight other teachers trying to accomplish the same thing. Luckily, the cafeteria loaned out their generator for the night.”