Page 224 of The Silent Note

His blue eyes are hot as flames on my skin and I glance away from him.

“I’m not going back to Redwood.”

The silence that descends on the room would make a pin-drop sound like a gong.

“What?” Zane explodes to his feet.

“I’m handing in my resignation tomorrow morning.”

“Grey.” Zane storms around the counter to stand in front of me. “You don’t have to quit.”

“He’s right.” Dutch tips his chin up. “We’re The Kings. Redwood is still ours until we say otherwise.”

Sol flips the knife in the air and catches it by the hilt. “Anyone who has a problem with that can burn.”

“Let’s all calm down. I don’t want anyone or anything to burn.” I give Sol a pointed look.

He shrugs as if to say ‘your loss’.

I take Zane’s hand and give it a squeeze. “The world knows about what happened to Sloane, so my work at Redwood is done. If I continue to teach at Redwood, the rest of my days will be uncomfortable at minimum and wildly unpleasant at best.”

“I’ll make them ten times more uncomfortable than they make you,” Zane says.

Even Finn chimes in. “It’s really not a big deal. In twelve years when Zane is thirty and you two are still together, no one will care.”

“Twelve years is a long time to wait for people to stop caring.” I shrug. “I do love teaching, but not enough to disrupt the entire school.”

Dutch opens his mouth to protest.

I lift a hand. “As much as you all control Redwood, you can’t control an angry parent. I’m sure there will be lots of moms and dads who won’t want me to teach their kids and who’ll want to pull their children out of Redwood if I keep teaching there.”

“All I hear are reasons that involve other people.” Zane stares me down, his mouth clenched. “Is that whatyouwant?”

“Right now, yeah.” I nod calmly.

He squeezes his eyes shut. “Okay. Fine.”

I smile. “Thanks. I appreciate you just listening and not over-reacting…”

Zane pulls out his phone and texts something.

My cell pings with an incoming message.

I see a parade of numbers on screen.

“What’s this?” I ask.

“My bank number and password.”

“Zane…”

“You don’t have to work unless you want to. You feel like going back to college to study? Starting a business? Writing a book? You can do it. I’ll give you all my bank info. And my black card. Mom has a modest trust fund set up for us. You can have that too.”

I groan. “So much for not overreacting.”

“Dutch, do we have any other gigs? I need to make money.” Zane whirls around and faces his brother.

“You heard what the doctor said, Zane,” Dutch says with a scowl.

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