Page 30 of Saving You

He licked his lips, then took a breath and nodded. “Here’s hoping because divorce and child support do not get along well with my fuckin’ salary.”

Ridge winced. “Tell me about it. Neither does private tutoring and therapy. But here we are.”

“Here we are,” Grady echoed. Before he could say anything else, his phone buzzed, and he looked at the screen, grimacing. “Gotta take off. Lor needs me to pick up Sarah.”

“I’ll catch you later,” Ridge said as he watched Grady grab his stuff and head for the door.

“Don’t forget to tell Oz that I’m here if he needs me,” Grady called as he left.

Ridge didn’t have time to answer him before the door shut, but that didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to forget. If anyone deserved a little bit of good news after all the bullshit that rained down on him, it was Oz.

CHAPTER EIGHT

OZ

The lighton Oz’s desk blinked, and he looked up at the doorway to find Cassie—the school counselor—hovering in his doorway. She offered him a hesitant smile, which was weird because he liked to think he was a welcoming guy. He was the new one, so yeah, maybe people were unsure about him, but he wasn’t a dick.

Or if he had been, he hadn’t realized it. He tried not to be shitty to the hearing staff at the school, and Cassie was a CODA, so her signing was even better than his, considering it had been her first language.

‘Come in,’ he said, gesturing her past the threshold.

She didn’t move. ‘I have a student who wanted to speak with you. She’s having some trouble adjusting.’ She used the sign for talk, which was his cue to dig his processor box out of the desk and switch them on. ‘Her name is Tai.’

Normally, he hated being asked to take time away from grading papers, but he didn’t feel that way when it came to the kids. He remembered what it felt like, being a total fish out of water the first time he set foot in an ASL class. His hearing devices were big and obvious. Everyone expected him to already know everything. To be some kind of expert.

And his first professor hadn’t been understanding the way he’d expected him to be. He was harder on Oz than anyone else and later told him it was for his own good. Maybe it was, but it had sent Oz into a panicked spiral, and he hadn’t gone back for ASL 102 until his junior year—and he was even more behind then.

He had a different teacher that time though. A patient one who understood his journey because he’d come from a hearing family too. That’s when Oz learned to breathe, and that’s also when he decided he knew what kind of teacher he wanted to be when he went for his teaching certification.

‘Is she in my class?’

‘She will be. Her ASL skills are very beginner. She’s going to have an interpreter with her.’

Oz wasn’t unused to the presence of interpreters in his classes. He had a handful of students who were either still learning or were Deafblind. He’d long since adjusted his teaching style to make sure everyone was following along.

But he was curious why this brand-new student he’d never met wanted to speak with him. Not that he was going to turn her down.

Cassie stepped aside after Oz nodded a second time, and the young girl shuffled in. She was very short, with very long dark hair, and she was wearing a thick sweater that hung past her fingers. He could see the lights on her CIs blinking in her hair, which reminded him to put his own on.

It took a second for him to adjust, and by the time he was ready to speak, Cassie was gone, and the door was left open barely a crack.

“Hey, Tai,” he said.

She blinked. “Oh. You have an accent.” She didn’t. Not really—at least, none that he could pick up. “Sorry. That was rude.”

He couldn’t help a small laugh. “Hey, Deaf blunt. We tend to say what’s on our mind, and I’ve learned to be less offended by the truth. I have an accent because I struggled to hear with my CIs when I was little. The technology wasn’t as advanced as it is today.”

“Oh. Um. I don’t know what to say to that,” she confessed.

Oz couldn’t help a small laugh. “You’re fine. But hey, is there something specific I can help you with?” He really didn’t mind that she was there. It took the edge off the stress he felt during his downtime. Teaching was distracting, but the moment he was alone at his desk, all the chaos from the weekend started creeping in.

And so did the humiliation from not only kissing Ridge but dragging him into his family drama. Ridge didn’t seem to mind. He’d put up a fight when Oz offered to come clean, and his reasons all made sense. But when Oz was alone in his place and stuck reliving what had happened over and over again, he felt a little like throwing himself into the sun.

He’d banned himself from looking at his phone or his non-work emails to avoid the inevitable tidal wave of bullshit that was coming his way. His phone was on silent, but he had a feeling when he looked, he was going to have a novel’s worth of messages and calls from his mom and sister.

“I went to two classes today,” Tai said. “I’ve been here for a month taking ASL.” Her fingers twitched the way his used to when he was following his professor’s advice to fingerspell literally everything when he was alone so he got used to processing whole words like reading rather than naming the letters in his head. “Today, they let me sit in on the art class, and…I was lost. I wasreallylost. Even with my interpreter, my brain won’t go that fast, and sometimes I feel like leaving my old school was a big mistake.”

“Do you sign at home with your family?”

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