Page 68 of Before We Fell

“All right, sweetheart. Cake it is.”

Twenty-One

Lauren

Twenty minutes leftin the school day, and it crept along at a snail’s pace, meant to torture me with the anticipation.

A weekend away with Noah. I was packed, ready to head to Kansas City where he’d planned the entire weekend.

Needless to say, a lot had changed in the three weeks since that day at Oliver’s party.

We were together, yet doing our best to keep things quiet in town. That meant dinners at Noah’s house or mine, where we snuck through the mulched path with Riley. It meant lazy movie nights or me sneaking over for a few hours after Riley went to bed.

It was beautiful and sweet. And Riley took to me being there more often much more easily than I originally anticipated.

She remembered to call me Miss Frazier in school, yet when we were together outside of it, I was Lauren.

As much as I loved the child, loved her more than the love I had for any of my students, I was over the sneaking around and the quietness.

I was falling for Noah Wilkes and it hurt to cage that announcement to the world.

The secrecy also meant lazy kisses and quiet make-out sessions on his couch after she went to bed.

It meant that I wasready, more than ready, to have him to myself for an entire forty-eight hours and the clock on my classroom wall needed to kick into high gear.

Yeah, three-thirty couldn’t come soon enough.

Currently, kids were scattered around my room having an afternoon game time. The week had been filled with testing and the little minds were done with staying focused. A small cluster of boys sat around the iPad station, working on math facts via various educational apps. In another corner, four kids took turns pulling small wooden sticks out of a plastic tube and giggled every time marbles fell through to the base inKer-Plunk. Four children playedUNOin one corner, a duo played War nearby. Most of the kids were reading or working at the art station, but like always, it was Riley who grabbed and held my attention.

After Oliver’s party, she’d retreated into her quiet shell reminiscent of when school first started. Noah let it go on for awhile, and then the next week, when she hadn’t gone back to at least being her quiet, but talking self, he made an appointment with a therapist.

According to him, the appointment didn’t suck, but Riley didn’t speak a lot there, either. Fortunately a few days after she started therapy, she slowly returned to the girl I’d seen before.

Today was the first day I’d actively seen her approach a group of girls, board game in her hand and ask if they wanted to play with her.

Kirsten and Maddie had grinned up at her, took theSorry!game from her hands, and proceeded to scoot themselves around the circular rug so Riley could join them. They were now on game three, each girl winning one, and even though Riley’s back was to me, the Dutch braids I’d put in her hair last night still in decent shape, every time she turned her head, a blindingly happy smile was plastered to her face.

Unable to contain my happiness, I snapped a quick picture of her and texted it to Noah so he could see how happy she looked.

I went back to planning out my lessons for the following week, refusing to have anything to do over the weekend except enjoy the time alone with Noah when my phone pinged.

I grabbed it, assuming it was a response from Noah, but instead, a chill flickered through me as I saw my mom’s name on the screen.

Please call when you have a minute.

That was it. Succinct as Mom always was with very little hearts and flowers for her one and only daughter. We didn’t speak often, mostly because every conversation eventually turned to talk about Travis and ended with me wishing I never would have taken the call.

It always amazed me how blind they could be to him and his issues, so much so that it ruined our ability to have any decent relationship.

Still, I knew why she was texting. His birthday was coming up in a couple weeks. After that, the holidays. She wanted to know if I was coming back for any of them.

And like every year since I left high school and went to college, I was already planning my excuses.

I pressed the power button on my phone to blank my screen. I’d deal with her next week.

“Miss Frazier?” Benji, one of my more precocious boys, was at my desk, holding out a piece of paper.

“Hey, kiddo. Are you done coloring?”

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