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  “Fuck. So I’m basically going to walk into an execution?”

  I shake my head helplessly. In all honesty, I have no idea.

  “Maybe they’re calling me for something unrelated. What if Scarlett is just fucking with you?” he asks. “She could have just been fucking with you, right? Fucking with us? She wasn’t in there. She doesn’t know what happened. You could have just been asking for extra tutoring or something,” he stammers rapidly, searching my eyes for reassurance.

  “Zach, calm down,” I beg in a tense whisper.

  “Call me Mr. Clark, Kay—Recruit, I mean. Fuck. Does it even matter at this point?”

  Again, I have no way of knowing. I can’t offer him any concrete reassurance. I’ve never been in a situation like this.

  “What are you going to do?”

  Zach Clark pulls his pants up, takes a deep breath and squares his jaw. “What else can I do? I’m going to go in there. Play it cool. See what they’re calling me in for. And play it by ear.”

  I offer the most encouraging smile I have in me and give a quick nod, trying to camouflage my feelings to anyone who might be observing us. “You have great instincts,” I tell him. It’s the only certain fact I know right now.

  A nearby classroom’s door swings wide and a stream of students flood the hallway around us. Zach switches to undercover mode and raises his voice. “Thank you, Recruit.” He takes a step past me. His voice is lower now but loud enough for my benefit.

  “Fuck. So much for us coming out of this unscathed.”

  Chapter Ninteen

  Zach

  “Sit down, Zach.”

  “You got it, Maude.”

  Maude Strauss stood at 6’1” and despite being one of the nicest women on campus, was wildly intimidating. Her experience and physique made her a woman everyone agreed should not be trifled with.

  “Do you know why I’ve called you in here today?” she asks me in the same all-business tone I’ve used myself in the field.

  Playing dumb, I keep my face completely neutral with just a hint of inquisitiveness. “Honestly, I have no idea why I’ve been officially called to your office. I mean, last time I was called in here, there were cookies.”

  Maude sighs wearily. I can tell there will be no cookies this time.

  She gets right down to business. “You can probably guess that I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, someone who tolerates sexual harassment.”

  Her facial expression is impassive. She appears almost bored. Excellent police-face, I admit to myself. Her fingers drum on her desk. Indications of procedure being followed. A tension is present, but it’s one that is directed towards a particular target or goal.

  Maude continues, “And today, it was brought to my attention that someone is claiming that you sexually assaulted a recruit. What do you have to say to that?”

  “Maude. That’s absurd. I can see why someone might think that, but I was merely helping a recruit deal with some internal problems they were having. The timing just happened to be past curfew. They snuck out of their dorm to look for someone to speak to and I was the only instructor around,” I explained carefully, keeping all physical movements very matter-of-fact.

  “Which recruit, Zach?”

  I clear my throat to clearly answer her, as if testifying in court. “A Ms. Kayla Thomas.”

  Strauss nods her head. “And she’d corroborate this story?”

  “Absolutely.”

  She stands up and takes a few steps in the open area behind her desk. Her office is sparse, but she didn’t need much decoration with the view of the woods coming through large windows on two different walls. I almost felt like I was summoned to a woodland cabin.

  “Well, that’s a relief. I’d hate to lose you, Zach. Unfortunately, we still have to conduct an investigation. I’m going to ask that you take a temporary paid leave until the investigation is over. You know how it is. Whenever a formal complaint is filed against an employee, we just have to do this whole rigmarole.”

  She’s pacing in front of the windows behind her desk. She turns to face me as she smiles apologetically. “My hands are tied.”

  She takes a breath and clasps her hands behind her back, resuming her pacing. Her voice is now firmer, more reassuring. “But I wouldn’t worry much.”

  “Right. So should I head back to my class or—”

  “No,” she answers with a resolute tone. “You’ll need to leave campus immediately. We’ll find someone to cover for you. But like I said, don’t worry too much.”

  Maude starts to pat my shoulder sympathetically as she walks me out of her office. “Now, I do have to have security escort you out, but again, it’s just for show. Don’t worry about it and more importantly, don’t talk to anybody about it. The last thing we want is rumors spreading, right?”

  “Right.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Kayla

  They’re escorting him out. Security is escorting him out.

  Scarlett really did report him, and now he’s being fired. Holy shit. Just last night, he was seduced by me. After that first time, begging me to be strong for us. Asking me to endure the loneliness in order to graduate from the police academy unscathed. And I wasn’t able to do that for him.

  I was so needy and selfish that I got the man I love fired from the only job he’s ever enjoyed.

  A throng of recruits huddles at the bank of windows overlooking the parking lot. Murmurs surround me. Half of them think it’s some kind of family drama. Half of them think it’s an instructor-on-instructor sex scandal. Half of those suspect the Scandinavian-born assistant for his firearm course. I’m in a daze, not talking to anyone.

  “Oh shit, that was fast,” someone says in my ear. I turn to see Scarlett behind me, laughing. “Good riddance, right?” She whirls around and saunters off, practically skipping like a care-free child.

  The only reason Scarlett must be acting so unabashed and malicious has to be because she knows no recruit will start fist-fighting with another recruit if they want to stay in the academy. She’s right. I may know how to throw a punch but I also know I can’t just start throwing hands the second the opportunity presents itself. Even with a face as punchable as Scarlett’s.

  I watch Zach drive away from campus and can only imagine what’s going on through his head. If he didn’t hate me before, he certainly must now, regardless of the progress we’ve made.

  There are now eight hours of daylight left that I have to suffer through. Alone. With no hope of seeing Zach anytime soon. God. Or ever again?

  “Ms. Kayla Thomas,” a fellow recruit wearing a page’s badge pokes his head into the classroom and calls out. “Phone call for a Ms. Kayla Thomas, from your uncle.”

  I’ve never been so glad to not have a real uncle.

  I follow the recruit to the administration building, where he points out a rotary-style phone to me, instructing me to pick it up.

  “Um… Hello?”

  On the other side, I expect to hear Zach’s voice.

  “Kayla, it’s me.” Thank Christ.

  “So here’s the deal, if you end up getting called into Mrs. Strauss’s office, tell her that you snuck out of your dorm and into the instructors’ dorm. Tell her you needed to talk to someone about how depressed you are. That’s the best I could come up with off-hand, and Strauss seems to have bought it. I won’t be allowed back on campus until the investigation is closed but… I don’t think I’m fired. I— I don’t know. Strauss was a bit vague on that, unfortunately.”

  I was relieved to hear that he wasn’t outright fired for whatever Scarlett reported to Mrs. Strauss, but I still feel guilty about Zach getting in trouble for something that never should have happened.

  In a hushed tone, terrified we’ll be overheard, I reply to him. “Zach, if your job is on the line, I give you my explicit permission to throw me under the bus. Really. I was the one who snuck into your dorm, you had no say in what happened. It was all me and if anybody needs to get blamed
for what happened, it should be me.”

  “You’re not the only one to blame, Kayla. We’re both at fault. And should it come to point where one of us has to be thrown under the bus, I’ll happily take the fall. I told you I was going to help you make Dad proud. I’m a man of my word.”

  With him elsewhere, and after being convinced I’m far out of anyone’s sight, I feel comfortable enough to let a few tears flow. “Thank you, Zach. As soon as you’re cleared, I swear I’ll have more self-control. No more fuck-ups.”

  “As will I, Kayla. This will blow over quickly. And we’ll get right back on track,” he promises.

  I hear his words but am not quite listening at this point. I’m plagued with a nagging feeling that this conversation is missing something important. I hear myself respond affirmatively. I hear myself bid him farewell. And I voice my hopes to see him soon.

  But something keeps me from ending the conversation in such unchallenged terms. The partnership we’ve created is beyond special to me, but a thought I can’t ignore slowly dawns: we may be too much of a risk to continue at this time.

  “Wait, Zach. No, I was wrong. Let’s…”

  Fuck. I can’t bring myself to do it.

  “Let’s what?”

  “We should break up,” I blurt out.

  “You cannot be serious.” His voice has gone low, deadly and grim.

  I feel my body tense up at the gravity of his tone.

  “Why would you say that, Kayla? We just agreed, if we stay away from each other, if we stay smart, we’ll be fine. Just fine. Do you get it? This whole investigation nonsense will blow over and everything will go back to normal.”

  “It won’t,” I correct him. “This isn’t normal. Having to hide our relationship from the world is not the slightest bit normal. We shouldn’t have to do this.”

  I hear him groan and slam whichever one of his fists he has free on his steering wheel. “We don’t really have the liberty to be holding hands and skipping down campus. There are rules against it. We know it’s not manipulation. We know we’re more than two subjects in a very clear power imbalance. So it doesn’t have to be a big deal. Keeping our relationship hidden is our only option.”

  Once more, I correct Zach. “It’s already a big deal. You were escorted out of your job like a criminal. And hiding isn’t our only option. Breaking up is also an option. A pretty good one, considering our circumstances.”

  In the silence that follows, I visualize my frustrated lover looking around the car, searching, as if he’ll be able to find an object, a weapon, any device that could help him win this disagreement. After all, he taught our class that obstacles were just targets to overcome.

  “Look, we can think of it as a break. Just until I graduate. I’ll see what I can do about transferring out of your class to avoid any temptation from both our ends,” I suggest.

  He frantically interrupts me. He tries to sway the argument his way. “Stop, stop, stop, don’t be ridiculous. You don’t have to do any of that, alright? Just calm down, we can make this work.”

  I speak sharply to him while still maintaining my hushed voice. “You stop it, Zach. Of course, I don’t like how upset this makes you. Of course, I don’t like it either. But this is what has to happen. Think about it. Plausible deniability. It’s the best option for the both of us. Otherwise, you run the risk of getting fired. And I run the risk of dishonoring my father.”

  “Again with this honor thing,” he angrily groans. “Since when do you care so much about honor? Never in my life have I heard you talk about honor. Dad dies, and it’s immediately ‘honor this’ and ‘honor that’?”

  “Can you take one moment to listen to yourself, Zach?” I manage to ask without screaming at the top of my lungs. I realize I’m gripping the phone unnaturally hard, tensing up even more so with each word that escapes his irate mouth.

  In one last attempt to keep our relationship from ending so abruptly, he goes for my soft side. He’s cutting me right down to the core. “You want us to go back to not talking at all? Until you graduate? Do you realize how long that will be, of us not speaking? We just undid years of emotional distance and you want to ruin it all now?”

  “This is the smart move. I’m doing it for us. This is what’s happening,” I tell him decidedly.

  If he can’t see how breaking up could save us both, I’ll be the one who takes the shot. It’s the only part of all this that I’m certain of.

  “We’re done as of right now.”

  Zach sighs. “So you don’t want to be with me anymore? You’re serious about this?”

  Why can’t he see that it’s not that I don’t want to be with him? Quite the opposite. It’s too obvious to even re-hash.

  It’s just that, unfortunately, our timing is all wrong. And I can’t freaking believe he doesn’t see it.

  He’s the one who taught me how to maintain a detached, professional distance. He’s the one who showed me that sometimes it’s necessary to put our comforts aside for a greater good. He will see the rightness of this, in time. I know he’ll come to understand.

  Once I’ve graduated, of course we can try again, see if everything lines up as it should. But for the moment, we’re done. Just the way it has to be.

  “I’m serious. And I’d like it very much if you could respect my decision.”

  He hangs up.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Kayla

  Each day since Zach’s unceremonious departure from campus has been filled with paranoia.

  We’ve all heard there is an ongoing investigation regarding the sexual misconduct. We’ve all heard it was Zach who was accused. Yet, over a week has passed without me getting called into Mrs. Strauss’s office even once. From my understanding, Mrs. Strauss should be well aware that I was the one and only student that snuck out of their dorm to talk to “Mr. Clark” that night.

  I get even more nervous, contemplating what the hold-up could be. Deeper background checks. Maybe private investigators getting called in. Maybe photos of us in the woods. Shit.

  Focusing on academic work has grown incredibly difficult with each day that I’m not called in to give my side of the story. Every time a faculty member or stranger peeks their head into a classroom, I seize up by instinct, thinking they’re going to call my name and escort me to the office of the dreaded Mrs. Strauss.

  This has started to affect me so much that I keep growing nauseous at the thought of having to speak in front of Strauss. People don’t typically speak of her unless it’s to regale others with a traumatizing story of her ruthless ways.

  It makes me sick to think about it. Literally sick. Maybe it’s the anxiety or the fear, but I definitely feel physically affected by the stories of my peers who have had the crap-luck of having to confront the head of the disciplinary board. I just finished an assignment on the physical toll stress takes on the human body, and all my symptoms match. This is clearly making me ill.

  Footsteps echo out in the hallway outside our class. This must be it, I think.

  “Excuse me, is there a Kayla Thomas here?” the familiar page recruit peeks his head inside our door to ask the class instructor. The teacher points me out.

  Finally, it seems that my time to step up to the gallows has arrived. Great timing.

  I ask permission to leave from my instructor, who nods. I gather my belongings and stand up. But the recruit, head down at his task clipboard, takes large confident strides inside our room, walks straight to me and just places a sealed letter on my desk. He turns, with rigid military precision, then walks away without saying a word on the matter.

  I sit back down, slightly embarrassed at the tepid laughter I hear from my classmates. But I am intrigued by the letter that rests in front of me. I wait until after I’m finished with all of my classes for the day and run back to my dormitory, making such a beeline for privacy that I reject the invitation of a few kind peers who ask me to go and eat out with them. I could barely hold down any food at the moment anyway, and I
had much more pressing matters to tend to.

  The letter gives very little information. All I can take from it is that I have two more days to worry about being face to face with Mrs. Strauss.

  A wave of relief flows over me. At the very least, I now know when I have to save my stress for.

  The relief escapes me shortly and without warning, my stomach flips and sends the small amount of food I had in me shooting back through where it entered. I’m unable to hold it down but thank my lucky stars that a trash can sat in my immediate proximity, just a few feet away. Not a drop of sickness lands outside of the trash receptacle, but nevertheless, I’m left to worry.