Her Teacher's Temptation (11 page)

“Oh, really?”
Ollie inquired, keeping his voice as soft as mine. Neither of us wanted to deal
with a crying baby. “What did she say? It wasn’t too bad, was it?”

“Well, after
she’d snapped at me a bit, she admitted that I was right and said she didn’t
even want to do it again for a while.” A smile tugged at the corners of my
mouth. I still couldn’t quite believe it had been that simple. Part of me knew
it hadn’t, but I so desperately wanted everything to just be all right with
her. “I think I just overreacted a bit.”

“Hmm,” he made
a non-committal noise. “You should still keep an eye on her. If she was
defensive about it at first it might be that she just realised agreeing would
keep you off her back.”

“Yeah, that’s
kind of what I thought. You never know, though, I guess.”

“Well, you
definitely know her better than I do, so we’ll just wait and see.”

I was surprised
to find myself dozing off halfway through the film. I hadn’t slept very well
last night, but that was because I’d started reading a book then not been able
to stop. Ollie noticed my drooping eyes and smirked at me. “Tired?”

“Yes.”

I raised an
eyebrow when he retrieved a cushion and put it on his lap, giving me an amused
smirk. “I’ll wake you up if your mum calls.”

I bit my lip
before lying down and allowing my head to rest on the cushion, facing the
screen. This had to mean that he was breaking up with Jemma. Though it wasn’t
exactly cheating, it was certainly intimate and it wasn’t even fuelled by
alcohol or sexual desire this time. Considering how bad he’d felt after
Newcastle, he wouldn’t be allowing me to sleep on his lap if he planned on
staying with Jemma.

Ollie began
running his fingers through my hair and I found myself smiling. “You know, I
don’t think I ever want to get married,” I informed him. “I don’t see the
point.”

Though I
couldn’t see his face, I could imagine his curious gaze on the back of my head.
“How come?”

“It’s just a
waste of money for something that probably isn’t going to last. I always just
feel like it’s people trying to prove that they’re in love, or something,” I
rolled my eyes at it. Perhaps Ollie did want to get married someday, just not
now. “It’s not like there’s any real need to in society anymore.”

“I can see
where you’re coming from.” Ollie agreed. “I mean, if I was with someone I loved
who really wanted to get married for some reason, I probably would, but if it
wasn’t for my parents expecting me to, I wouldn’t be interested.” Then Ollie
chuckled. “What’s made you so against it anyway?”

I shrugged as
best as I could from my position lying down. “I’m not sure if it’s just because
marriage has literally never worked out for any of my family, or if it has
anything to do with how I’ve never had a proper relationship, or whatever this
stupid thing we have going on is.”

“You know I’d
be with you in an instant if it wasn’t for the student teacher thing, right?”
Ollie checked seriously, causing me to flush. “I don’t really care about the
age thing, even if everyone else thinks it’s creepy or wrong. I’d just have to
not tell my parents,” he added with a small chuckle.

I bit my tongue
on a comment that there was less than a year of school left. It wasn’t that
long. That would be making too many assumptions. Instead, I smirked slightly.
“That’s because it’s not that you think I’m mature, but you just act far
younger than your age,” I teased.

I think we were
both glad to move slightly away from the topic of whatever relationship could
never happen between us. “I really like your hair,” he commented randomly,
running both of his hands through my long, dyed strands and working his way through
any knots he encountered. Neither of us were paying any attention to the film
at this point.

“It used to be
really short. At the start of sixth form it was practically a bob. It grew
faster than I thought it would.”

“It would have
looked nice short,” he decided. “But I like it long a lot.”

It wasn’t until
I felt Ollie fishing around in the pocket of my jeans to find my ringing phone
that I realised I must have fallen asleep. He answered it before I’d woken up
enough to snatch it from him, though. “Hi, erm, yes, she’s just asleep right
now,” I heard him say, though I knew he was trying to be quiet since he thought
both my sister and I were asleep. “Oh no, it’s no problem, I can come and drop
them off. I have to go out to get something for tea anyway,” he explained.
“Okay, erm, bye.”

I chuckled and
buried my face further into Ollie’s stomach, which was where it had ended up in
my sleep. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you sound awkward before,” I teased,
my voice slightly smothered before I leaned back and grinned up at him.

He sighed.
“Well, I didn’t exactly know what to say to your mum,” he complained. “Parents
evening is going to kill me. I’m giving you a lift home anyway. I’m not sure
what you do about Lily though, aren’t you supposed to have like a seat for
her?”

“It’s only a
five minute drive from mine to yours.” I told him. “I’m sure it’ll be fine if I
have her on my knee. I should probably sit in the back though, just in case the
police drive by or something.”

“Your mum
sounded fine, by the way,” Ollie informed me as I climbed into the back of the
car, trying not to be too worried about having Lily on my knee. My mum mustn’t
have minded since she agreed to let Ollie give me a lift. “Not that I really
know what she sounds like normally, I guess.”

“I hope so,” I
replied with a frown. I wasn’t sure how my mum had gotten involved with this
guy in the first place, but he definitely didn’t seem like a nice guy. “I’ll
ask her about it when I get home. Oh God, please just drive off as soon as I’ve
gotten out. There’s no way I’m explaining why I went to my teacher’s house.” It
would really have been better if Ollie hadn’t picked me up from my house on the
Newcastle trip. Then it wouldn’t have been an issue.

Ollie smirked.
“Yeah, don’t worry, I’m wanting to avoid that conversation as well.”

As soon as we
pulled up outside my house, I gave Ollie a wide smile. “Thanks for letting me
stay,” I told him in a rush, warily looking at my door as I undid my seatbelt.
Lily was still half asleep so luckily she was just giving me a lazy smile and
not crying.

“Thanks for
keeping me company,” Ollie returned with a grin. “I’ll see you at school
tomorrow.”

“See you
tomorrow.” As soon as I was out of the car Ollie had driven off, and just in
time, too, since my mum opened the door at hearing Lily begin to cry.

She frowned at
the empty space and I shrugged, not bothering to explain why Ollie had driven
off so quickly. “Are you okay? What happened?” I checked with her as she
ushered me into the house and took my crying sister into her arms, silencing
her almost immediately.

“It was fine,”
my mum dismissed, though she didn’t sound overly convincing. “I think I
overreacted. Nick waited around for quite a while, he probably realised what
I’d done after a while, but I waited ages before calling you too, just in case
he was hanging around outside the house. I hope you weren’t burdening your
friend, but he sounded nice enough on the phone.”

“Oh, yeah, he
didn’t mind. We both fell asleep anyway, so I don’t think we bothered him,” I
laughed. “You’re sure nothing happened? Running away with Lily isn’t going to
become a regular thing, is it? Because that’s not going to solve the problem.” I
couldn’t just take Lily to Ollie’s every day. It wasn’t realistic.

“I know,” my
mum groaned, putting Lily in her walker and both of us frowning at the
irritating song it began playing. “But what else can I do? He hasn’t actually
done anything yet, so I can’t go to the police. And I don’t know if he actually
will do anything.”

I sighed. “I
guess we’ll just have to see, then,” I acknowledged with a grimace. “But right
now I’m starving,” I declared over the sound of my stomach’s loud rumbling.
“I’m going to make some food.” I should have just told Ollie to go and pick up
takeaway for us on the way home. I’d give anything for some fish and chips
right about now, or a greasy kebab.

Because for all
the time we spent together, we seemed to admit something more about our
feelings for each other and I couldn’t help but love it. It only spurred on the
unrealistic daydreams that were distracting me so much from my lessons at the
moment. It was only when I was actually in Ollie’s lesson and I was focused on
his sexy accent and surprisingly good teaching that I seemed to learn anything
at school any more.

Chapter Seventeen

My face paled
and I knew my mouth was hanging open unattractively as I walked into Ollie’s
classroom, my feet failing for a moment and causing Meg to give me a gentle
shove from behind.

One side of
Ollie’s face was covered in a purple bruise that was centred around a black
eye. I had to really bite my tongue to not rush up to him and demand what had
happened in a very un-studentlike way. Instead, I watched him carefully as he
refused to look up from the essays he was grading as more pupils walked in. My
mind was whirring as to what could have happened to him.

Luckily, I
didn’t have to wait long to find out, since some of the other students weren’t
afraid to ask. “What happened to your face, Mr. Wright?” Nina, a girl who
normally sat at the back of the classroom questioned in a sympathetic voice as
soon as she walked into the room. “It looks sore.”

He shrugged and
offered her a small smile, then tried to hide his flinch at the apparent pain
it caused. “I fell down the stairs,” he supplied before returning to his
marking.

I frowned. I
was fairly sure that Ollie didn’t use the stairs in his apartment block
considering how my floors up he lived. Maybe he’d just been mugged and thought
that was too embarrassing to admit, or something.

“It really does
look painful,” Meg commented to me in low tones. “Do you think he’s all right?
He looks kind of upset.”

“It’s probably
because it’s embarrassing to have to teach with a bruised face.” I’d definitely
be staying after class to find out what had really happened. “Oh, and do you
want to do movie night this Friday? It should be fun.”

“Yeah,
absolutely,” Meg agreed with a grin, both of us putting Ollie’s injured face to
the back of our mind for a moment. “We can ask Hannah at lunch, she’ll probably
be glad to stop thinking about her apparent boyfriend problems too.”

The lesson went
awfully slowly. Ollie wasn’t in his usual teaching mood and left us to get
started on writing our coursework. I was too preoccupied with wanting to know
the truth behind his injuries to concentrate on Shakespeare, though, and found
myself watching him with a worried frown for most of my time.

Even Meg looked
slightly concerned, but that was probably just because the attractive view we
normally got had been spoiled slightly. Or because she knew how affected I was.
“I’m just going to stay and ask Mr. Wright something.”

“Obviously,”
Meg chuckled. “I’ll go and ask Hannah about Friday. See you in the dinner
hall!” She called as I stopped at my desk and she exited the room.

Ollie looked
like he really didn’t want to talk to me when I hovered around his desk after
everyone had left. A couple of girls came and said they hoped he’d get better
soon and he thanked them with tight smiles, but he didn’t bother to hide his
grim expression when we were alone.

I sat myself on
the edge of a desk tentatively and considered what I should say. “What actually
happened?” I finally inquired quietly.

He sighed.
“What makes you think I wasn’t telling the truth?”

“You don’t have
stairs.”

“Well, maybe it
was Jemma’s stairs?” He suggested.

“I don’t
believe it was from falling down the stairs,” I made clear when he finally
looked up at me to scowl.

He ran a hand
through his hair. “Can’t you just leave it?”

I sighed.
“But,” I bit my lip. Was it wrong for me to just say that I cared? I didn’t
like seeing Ollie hurt and the way he was avoiding talking about it now made me
think there was something I should know. “If you want,” I finally submitted.
Maybe it would be better to wait until he wasn’t so angry.

“Look, if I
tell you, please don’t feel bad, or anything,” he blurted, causing my face to
fall. Now I had a fairly good idea of exactly what had happened, and his next
sentence only reassured me further. “I’m only telling you so you know to be
careful.”

“It was Nick,
wasn’t it?” I checked, my gaze falling downcast as I pulled my knees to my
chest, not really caring that I was probably showing Ollie my pants due to
wearing the stupid school uniform.

“I told you not
to feel bad,” he complained. “It’s not a big deal, honestly. My face will heal
and go back to being just as handsome as ever. But, yeah, when I went home
yesterday him and his friend were waiting for me and they told me to never hide
his daughter from him again and then they kicked me about a bit. It’s fine,
Maddie.”

I couldn’t stop
the tears gathering in my eyes, though. Ollie had been injured because of me.
And from the way he said it, I had to presume it wasn’t just his face that was
bruised. Ollie’s hands appeared on either side of my face as they cupped my
cheeks. “It’s okay, Maddie,” he assured me, glancing towards the door to make
sure no one was around before embracing me in a quick hug. “I’m fine.”

“But you got
hurt because of me,” I returned, my voice catching. “And it’s not like they
just gave you a warning or something, they actually hurt you.”

He pulled back
and leaned on the wall opposite me, because someone was bound to walk past the
classroom eventually and I definitely wasn’t supposed to be hugging my teacher.
“It’s not a big deal,” Ollie attempted to convince me again. “It looks worse
than it is, and I’m not really that bothered as long as they didn’t hurt you.”

“What if they
do it again? If he’s willing to do that to you, then what happens if he
actually takes my sister?”

“I don’t know. You
should probably warn your mum that her fears weren’t exactly unjustified.”

“Okay,” I
agreed, continuing to wipe my eyes where the tears just didn’t seem to stop
coming. I refused to all out sob. “You don’t think they’ll say anything to you
again, do you?”

“Of course not,”
Ollie replied immediately, filled with far too much false confidence. “Stop
worrying and stop feeling bad. It’s not your fault.”

“Well, it
basically is. I’m the one who was stupid enough to come to your apartment when
I knew it was someone who was willing to kidnap my sister. I don’t know why it
didn’t even cross my mind that they’d be willing to beat someone up too. I
should have just gone to Costa or something like a normal person. Then nothing
would have gone wrong.”

“You couldn’t
have possibly known,” he told me, looking very much like he wanted to hug me
again. “But I have news that might cheer you up!” He announced with a large
grin, before flinching at the pain in his face, which caused my eyebrows to
knit even closer together.

“Go on,” I
prompted, genuinely curious about this.

“I broke up
with Jemma. I think it was worth getting beat up just to get rid of her.”

I couldn’t help
my smile. “That does make me feel a bit better.”

“Thanks for
helping me realise what an awful decision I was making,” Ollie acknowledged
with a weak smile. “I think I’ll just not mention this to my parents for a
while, or something.”

Despite me
being happy that I no longer had to endure seeing Jemma and Ollie at the
restaurant together, it didn’t really make me feel any better about the fact
I’d gotten Ollie beaten up or the fact I couldn’t be with him.

He sighed.
“Well, at least I cheered you up for a little bit. And you stopped crying,” he
noticed, approaching me again and wiping what I assumed was runny black from
under my eyes.  

I chuckled,
moving my own fingers to my eyes despite not being able to see.

“Hey, erm,”
Ollie scratched the back of his head slightly awkwardly and I raised an eyebrow
at him. “Do you want my number, in case anything with that dickhead happens? I
mean, I know you don’t have a car so I can pick you up or anything if something
happens.” It was kind of cute how Ollie would repeat words and slip away from the
extended vocabulary of an English teacher when he asked me something slightly
embarrassing.

I bit the
inside of my mouth on a cheeky response and chose to just accept it. “Sure,” I
agreed, allowing him to type his number into my phone, unable to stop myself
smiling when he handed it back. “I’m going to go and see Meg and Hannah, or
they’ll wonder what’s taking me so long.” It was more Hannah than Meg, since
she still had no idea about Ollie and who he really was, other than my insanely
attractive English teacher.

***

“Mum!” I called
as soon as I’d walked through the door, angrily striding into the house and
going in search of her. It didn’t take me long, though, because she was sat in
the living room and fixing me with a curious glance. “He beat up my friend,
mum,” I informed her, my hands shaking slightly. I’d managed to contain my rage
with the distractions of school, but on the bus home, I’d been allowed to sit
and mull over how unfair it was that Ollie had been attacked.

Her eyes
widened. “What? What happened?”

“He beat up my
friend,” I repeated. “Him and a friend waited for Ollie to go back home and
they attacked him.”

“Oh, honey, I’m
so sorry. I had no idea he’d do anything like that,” she exclaimed, getting to
her feet and approaching me warily. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Maybe you
should call the police,” I suggested in a flat tone. “He’s assaulted someone
and you think he’s going to kidnap your daughter. Isn’t that enough?”

She sighed and
averted her eyes. “I don’t know, sweetie. What did they say to your friend?”

Scowling, I
narrowed my eyes. “What do you mean? What could possibly be stopping you
wanting to just get rid of this guy? Unless-” my vision locked onto the small
purple mark that was barely visible on my mum’s wrist. It was absolutely a
finger bruise from where someone had been grabbing her. “He’s hit you?” I
demanded. “He hurt you too, didn’t he?”

My mum wasn’t
even facing me now and had chosen to stare out of the window instead. “It’s not
a big deal, Maddie,” she told me in a stern voice. “Just leave it.”

I threw my
hands up in anger. “You can’t let him get away with this!” I exclaimed. “Surely
this is double the reason to go to the police. This is abuse, mum. You can’t
just ignore it. It’s not just going to go away.”

She rounded on
me. “Do you think I don’t know that? But what do you expect me to do? Go to the
police and then have him just get really angry and do something worse than
slapping me about a bit? Because I’d rather just deal with it being small, like
it is now.”

“The bruise
covering Ollie’s face right now isn’t very small,” I retaliated. “And not the
police, then, but someone else. There are helplines for this kind of thing, you
know,” I reminded her, trying to calm my temper. Of course it wasn’t as simple
as I was making out. I wasn’t the one who knew anything about him, or the one
who was being abused by him. “I just want to help,” I finally breathed, sighing
heavily.

“I know,
honey,” she admitted, coming over and wrapping her arms around me in a tight
hug. “It’s just more complicated than being able to tell the police and that
sorting everything out. I’ll look into it, though. He won’t do anything stupid
in the short term, I know that now. If he took Lily he’d be shooting himself in
the foot because they’d catch him eventually. I’ll ring a hotline, or
something, or look on the internet about how to approach this.”

“I’m sorry for
snapping,” I apologised meekly, returning her embrace. “It’ll turn out okay.
I’m sorry I didn’t realise earlier.”

"This
isn't your fault at all. Don't even think that at all."

"Okay,"
I conceded, my entire body beginning to sag with fatigue. "And they won’t
hurt Ollie again as long as I don’t take Lily there.”

“That’s good. I
really had no idea that they’d do that, otherwise I never would have told you
to go.”

“I know, mum,”
I murmured, my anger almost completely dissipated and replaced with a deep set
worry. As much as I knew my mum was right and that she needed to do this
sensibly, part of me still wanted to just grab the phone and ring the police,
where I knew that there’d at least be some quick results.

I didn’t like
seeing my mum get hurt and I didn’t like feeling so helpless. Now I just had to
hope that this would all sort itself out sooner rather than later.