Lessons in Corruption (The Fallen Men 1)

“I’m only going to say this once, so listen up. You lied to me, you took advantage of me,” he opened his mouth to protest but I held up my hand. “Whatever your reasons were, even if you did like me or whatever the hell you kids call a crush these days, what you did was manipulative and disgusting. Even if you refuse to show up to class, I am your teacher. From here on out, I expect you to be in that class, to participate by raising your hands and respecting my authority in that classroom and to hand in your work on time. That is all I expect from you. What I will not accept from you is any reminders about our more intimate time together, no overtures at reconciliation and no inappropriate comments. From here on out, King, I am so far from ‘yours’ that I would rather be anyone else’s. Is that understood?”

He stared at me for too long. I could feel the cool calm of those pale eyes douse my anger again and again until I felt waterlogged and fizzled out but I held out hope that he would get me, that this nightmare of a situation would just end before it turned into real drama. Job-ending drama, being forced to return to the husband who refused to divorce me kind of drama.

Finally, he sucked in a deep breath and nodded curtly. “Sure, Cress, I gotcha.”

“Mrs. Irons,” I corrected him.

His shoulders rounded and he scuffed his shoe on the linoleum floor like the child he was so that at first, I thought I had him, in his place all safe and sound. It wasn’t until I’d moved passed him to the door and was already moving through it that I realized I’d underestimated him again.

“For now, Miss Irons.”

Another apple.

It sat on the left corner of my desk like a cliché. Shiny, red and bright. It wasn’t the same kind of apple every day. It had been nine school days since King had made his big reveal as my student so I’d had nine different apples: Ambrosia, Granny Apple, Golden and Red Delicious, Gala, Honeycrisp and McIntosh. My impulse the first day he had arrived in class, walked to my desk and left the apple tied with a little note card to the stem, was to throw it out. Actually, I’d wanted to hurl it at his pretty face so that it smashed all over him, bruised and messed him.

I hadn’t done either, so points to me for impulse control.

Instead, each day I put the note in my desk drawer without reading it and left the apple on the edge of my desk until I could reward it to a student for a question well answered. I thought this approach showed that King’s antics were fruitless but he persevered, which made me wonder if he knew that I pulled out the notes to read them every day after a class. They were both a torment and a treat, lines of poetry scrawled in block letters. I’d memorized them all but the one from the day before, Monday’s was on repeat in my head.

Dreams shine like pearls in her eyes. I become an artist, a collector, stringing salt-water gems on necklaces that she may wear.

I sighed heavily but the kids didn’t notice. I was a sigh guy by nature so they were used to it. Besides, they were busy working in small groups on reading questions from Paradise Lost and EBA was a good school, the best, so the kids were good ones who were mostly happy to get down to work.

Only King watched me and I knew he did not because I looked at him (I made it a point to only glance his way when it was absolutely necessary), but because I could feel his eyes like sunbeams against my face. They warmed me always, made me feel watched in a way that was pure admiration, like he was a painter and I his muse. In a way, through his little apple poems and one-line compliments, I was.

After years of pinning for my dream man, I’d found him. A tall, golden blond Adonis, cool in the way only true rebels can be, kind in the way I’d never known a man could be, totally into me, and completely off-limits.

I’d never entertained anarchist or blasphemous thoughts in my life but the unfairness of the situation made me want to punch God (if there was one) right in the throat.

A loud giggle drew my attention to the group working in the front left of the classroom, their single-person desks arranged in a tight clump. I sucked air in through my teeth when I saw it was Talia laughing, her beautiful, professionally highlighted blonde hair pulled over one shoulder so that she could play with it coquettishly while she leaned into King. For his part, he was sprawled across his small seat, a position I’d come to learn was customary for him. He had his pencil to his paper but I could tell that whatever he was writing wasn’t for the assignment because he had a wicked smirk on his face. Talia was leaning over her desk to read what he wrote, uniform unbuttoned to a reveal a deep parenthesis of cleavage.