Chapter 11

Cassidy tried really hard to ignore the big void inside that had yawned open when Tristan had told her in no uncertain terms that they were finished. Not that they’d ever really started anything. But there was no mistaking the finality of the way he’d left.

The security of a committed relationship was not something he could give her. And as her prediction had clearly outlined, she wanted security. No, she needed it. Someone with her issues had enough to deal with on a daily basis without introducing the roller coaster of an unstable relationship.

No more kissing Tristan.

Good. It confused her enormously because he was so good at it, she always felt special, as if he couldn’t possibly ever kiss another woman with the same signature blend of excitement, curiosity and passion. But in reality, he’d probably kissed hundreds of women exactly the same way and if she didn’t watch it, she’d likely walk in on Exhibit A—another woman in his arms being kissed within an inch of her life.

That was something she couldn’t handle. Especially after accidentally running into him with India Kingston slobbering all over him. They’d been in public, too. Imagine how chummy they’d have gotten behind closed doors, like in the shelter. Her skin crawled as she imagined Dr. Kingston and Tristan locked together in a torrid embrace with perfect clarity. Her mind had no trouble making those types of connections, spinning out the nightmare with remarkable speed, the way it always did when given free rein to just create.

The curse of a dysfunctional brain. It never did what she wanted it to. For three days, she’d constantly ordered it to forget Tristan Marchande and for three days, it had pretty much ignored her. She’d tried to combat it with work, shutting herself up in the office at the converted barn that needed to become a school before August. But his face floated through her mind’s eye, smiling, laughing, darkening with so much delicious intent that she could pinpoint the exact moment when he’d decided to kiss her.

Her wrist stung from snapping the rubber band around it so many times. It was supposed to help her focus. Today it felt more like a torture device.

She let her head whomp down on the keyboard of her computer, thoroughly unable to find the energy to care that she’d probably just typed we’jfrpw0e3jrf‘pwejioamv on the class schedule she’d been devising. When she was this distracted, she might as well forget any attempt to complete even one of the incredibly complicated admin tasks required to get her school up and running that wasn’t made any easier by designating it as private.

“Hello?”

The female voice wafted through the outer great room, and it only took a second for Cassidy to identity it. Ember. Cassidy pushed out from behind her desk and went to greet the woman she’d been friends with in high school while trying to reconcile why in the world she’d been disappointed the voice hadn’t belonged to Tristan.

If nothing else, she appreciated the distraction. There was nothing worse than being reminded how hard she had to work at things that should be simple.

Ember stood in the center of the common area, her son, Judd, by her side. Both of them looked quite ill at ease, and Cassidy’s heart went out to them despite having no idea why they were here.

She stooped down to speak to Judd at eye level. “Hi. Did you come by to see your new school?”

The school wasn’t ready yet, but it would be and come August, Judd would be one of her few students. Having him here made the whole thing real. The reason she’d created this school was to give kids a safe place to learn and the look on his face did not bode well for the blood, sweat and tears that had gone into it.

The seven-year-old glanced at his mother and nodded slowly. Ember hastily filled in the gap. “We wanted to get a jump on things because Judd’s not particularly looking forward to starting a new school. I homeschooled him over this last year and I guess he’s not too happy that I can’t continue doing that.”

“You homeschooled him? That’s great.” She smiled at Ember with new respect because being an educator at any level, especially of your own kid, wasn’t easy. “I appreciate that you’ve decided to put him in my school, then. It’s only going to be a success if I get students to attend.”

“Well, yeah. I can see how that would be true.”

Ember looked so uncomfortable that Cassidy couldn’t quite figure out how to navigate this suddenly awkward encounter. They’d been friends once and they were the same age, a rarity in a tiny place like Superstition Springs. Of course, Ember had fled for…somewhere at seventeen, pregnant and determined to never again grace the soil of home with her presence. At the time, she’d told Cassidy nothing about her plans despite their friendship. And maybe that was still between them to a degree.

“Judd, maybe you’d like to check out my secret hideout,” Cassidy suggested, putting a lot of cheer into the statement so he’d be clear how special of an invitation this was. In reality, it was a way to get him out of earshot while she cleared the air with Ember.

He brightened instantly. “Can I, Mom?”

“Only if you stop calling me Mom,” Ember said with a scowl. “I’m Mama. Mom makes me feel old.”

Judd rolled his eyes with a hefty little boy sigh that held the weight of the world.

“Mama, can I see the hideout,” he intoned without bothering to make it a question.

Ember just shook her head with apparent incredulity which didn’t give Cassidy a lot of clues about her next move. But as the sole person in authority here—imagine that—Cassidy needed to move things forward, so she smiled at Judd.

“Let me show you.” She took two steps, remembered to go back for her keys because being trapped in the storm shelter once was enough thank you, and escorted the boy to the underground bunker, chattering at him the whole way about how great the school would be and how much she looked forward to being his teacher.

She hadn’t quite worked out the teaching schedule with Tallhorse yet but with only two of them, odds were good she’d have plenty of interaction with Judd Nixon regardless of how the assignments played out.

Ember trailed them both, not contributing to the conversation but keeping close to Cassidy and eyeing the shelter with a critical once-over, likely to ensure it was childproof. Since Cassidy already knew it was SEAL proof, there couldn’t be too much that a seven-year-old might find to destroy or hurt himself with.

Once she had Judd ensconced on the couch that brought back memories Cassidy had been actively trying to avoid, she led Ember back to the schoolhouse where they could talk, patting the keys in her pocket the whole time, just to be safe. She might forget things but when an experience emblazoned itself on her soul, she tended to find ways to overcompensate.

“I’m glad you came by,” Cassidy told Ember sincerely as they walked back through the double sliding door that Tristan and Isaiah had installed on the west side of the barn during the long renovation project. “We haven’t really had a chance to talk since you came back to town.”

Ember smoothed her long, luscious hair that Cassidy had always been insanely jealous of. Her own hair could only be politely described as brown with some lighter highlights that sometimes popped out in the summer. Ember’s had this natural sheen that set off the red-gold color, which was so rare and unique that you might think it was fake except it had been that color her entire life.

“I’ve been busy settling in,” Ember explained without really explaining much since she’d been back in town a couple of months already. “It’s been a little bit difficult to acclimate to being here.”

The slight color to her tone might be derision but it might be something else, and Cassidy couldn’t begin to guess what was going on in her friend’s mind. “Well, I’m sure it’s doubly hard move to a new place with a child, even when it’s a town that you’re familiar with.”

Nodding noncommittally, Ember glanced around the schoolhouse. “This is really something. I haven’t made it out this far from town yet. I wasn’t sure what to expect when everyone said you’d renovated Tallhorse’s barn into a school.”

A quiet sense of pride snuck into Cassidy’s chest. “Aria and I helped but Tristan and Isaiah did most of the work. They did a great job.”

There didn’t seem to be much to say after that and an awkward silence dropped into place. Like most folks in town, Cassidy hadn’t pried into the circumstances of Ember’s return to Superstition Springs but of course she was curious what had prompted her friend to come back after vowing not to. But she didn’t ask. If Ember wanted people to know, she’d tell them, which didn’t seem to be in her plans since she hadn’t so far.

“We’re still friends, right?” Ember said out of the blue, which did nothing to decrease the level of awkwardness.

“Sure,” Cassidy responded immediately because it was definitely true on her side. “I mean, I guess. We didn’t keep in touch or anything but that’s okay since I know you were dealing with being pregnant and a single mom, so of course you wouldn’t have a lot of time to call or email or write, so now that you’re back, we can, you know, talk and whatever…”

That was the point where Tristan would have jumped in to rescue her because he’d have somehow realized she’d was struggling with what to say. Ember seemed pretty wrapped up in her own thoughts and not too keen to interrupt, if she’d even been listening at all. A lot of people tuned Cassidy out.

Funny how she’d gotten used to the way Tristan paid attention to her. Not so funny how much she missed it.

“I think Judd has a learning disability,” Ember blurted out and twisted a lock of hair around her fingers as she met Cassidy’s gaze, her expression radiating with the effort it had taken her to confess something she seemed really unsure about.

Cassidy’s pulse tripled as she stared at her friend. Everything else not pulse-related had frozen solid as she absorbed the implications. Had Ember brought this revelation to Cassidy because she suspected she’d come to the one person in town who might understand?

No. There was no way. She’d never told Ember how much she’d struggled in school. Only Tallhorse knew. And he wouldn’t have said anything to anyone, she had no doubt. He barely spoke as it was.

“I don’t know how to teach him,” Ember admitted with no small amount of misery threaded through her tone. “I tried, I really did. And the school in Austin by our apartment was horrible, so understaffed. The district wouldn’t let him go to another one because he scores okay on tests. They didn’t think there was anything wrong with him. I yanked him out of that school so fast their heads spun and spent every second I had trying to figure out how to help him.”

What had Ember done to support her little family as she homeschooled? Worked nights? But then who’d taken care of Judd? Whatever the answers were, Ember had a backbone of steel and will much stronger than Cassidy suspected anyone had given her credit for.

“Is that why you came back home?” Cassidy ventured cautiously since the question bordered on prying. Of course, maybe Ember needed a friendly shoulder. “You just couldn’t do it by yourself anymore?”

Ember gaze grew wet with unshed tears as she nodded gratefully. “I didn’t want to tell anyone. I feel like it’s my fault because I was stupid enough to fall for his father—well, never mind. That’s done. So anyway, I felt like I had to come by and at least try to explain this to you since it seems as if you’ll be his teacher.”

Surprise—Cassidy was the last person who needed to be told that brain malfunctions were hereditary. It was the entire reason she’d thrown up the billboard with the word pregnancy scrawled across it and forced Tristan to read it.

“What makes you think he has a disability?” she asked cautiously, a little afraid to hear the answer. But this was a necessary conversation if she hoped to create an environment like Tallhorse had done for her, but without all the need for secrecy.

“He’s so smart,” Ember said in a way that didn’t make it sound like a compliment. “But he won’t do the work. He had so many missing assignments at public school that they were talking about holding him back a year. He’s always getting up to get a glass of water or to go to the bathroom. Tapping something. I don’t know what all. But he refuses to just sit there and do the worksheets put in front of him.”

“Try a rubber band,” Cassidy suggested automatically and then swallowed as Ember zeroed in on her with a puzzled expression. “To help him focus. He’s probably having trouble concentrating. The water and going to the bathroom are just ways to compensate for that.”

“Really? How do you know?”

Cassidy shook her head so hard that her hair flew into her mouth. She spit it out, scrambling for an explanation. “I um, don’t, not really, though I can guess and you know, that’s my job as an educator…to figure out how to best teach each child, so you know what? I’ll try it with him myself instead of asking you to.”

Just in case that didn’t help, she’d be right there to come up with different strategies, the same way Tallhorse had done with her. In fact, she should get some more ideas lined up.

“That would be great.” Ember hesitated. “But you should know that’s not the extent of his issues. That’s just the thing that drives me the most nuts. A close second would be what his teacher at school called his tendency to be impulsive. Will he dart across the street or try to pet an alligator at the zoo? Who knows? No one can anticipate what he’ll do next.”

Like the way she’d kissed Tristan? Impulsive. The word rolled around in her head, searching for a place to land where she could assign it meaning. And failed. Impulsive sounded like a nice way to say she did crazy things like rearranging rock formations on the way to her house or taking all of the dishes out of the cabinets to redo their order before she could eat lunch.

Cassidy sank down onto one of the bench seats ringing the great room and muttered, “That sounds…difficult.”

But meanwhile, her brain pinwheeled through Ember’s descriptions, and couldn’t help but see the parallels. Maybe she and Judd were the same. How odd would that be? And how great. Her first student and to hear his mom tell it, he had exactly the sort of problems with standardized education that she’d hoped to address with this school.

“Yeah. I’m exhausted trying to keep up with him.” Ember flashed her a brief smile. “I should probably shut up before you decide this sounds like too much work.”

“No! I’m excited to figure out how to reach him,” Cassidy corrected hastily, and it helped that it was the truth. “I just need to spend some time researching the best methods. So it’s good that you came to me early.”

It was fate. Who better to help this little boy than Cassidy?

Enthusiastic all at once about the prospect, she jumped up and hugged Ember, who hesitated only a moment, then hugged her back, albeit less enthusiastically. “Well, okay. Good. I should check on Judd. Just to be sure he didn’t go exploring or something. And we’ve taken up enough of your time. Let me know if you need to talk to me more about this.”

Cassidy nodded, thoroughly unable to sit still or form a cohesive sentence from the rapid-fire thoughts zinging around in her head. As soon as Ember and Judd left, she spent some time on the internet searching for advice on how to teach a second grader with a disability. The more she read, the more her head swam with the words she’d absorbed. Over and over the same phrase leaped out at her. Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder.

ADHD. All signs pointed to that being Judd’s diagnosis. And hers.

She’d never done this kind of research into her symptoms because she’d always been afraid of what she’d find. Only to help Judd would she dive into this necessary evil. Except article after article scrolled onto her screen about dealing with ADHD as an adult and there was literally no way she could keep from clicking on the one called “How I Started Thinking of my Disability as a Blessing.”

The author talked about how great it was to have so much energy when her friends seemed to flag by midday. How her colleagues at work complimented her on the creative way she solved problems, using out of the box strategies that no one else had ever thought of. But it wasn’t until the woman talked about how hard she had to work to keep from lashing out at people who made her feel substandard that Cassidy started to cry.

That’s exactly what she always did to Tristan. And the poor man took it with such grace too. Even when she accused him of flirting with another woman to cover the fact that she constantly worried about measuring up. It was her issue, not his. In fact, she might have even put her prediction between them to ensure she never had to deal with the fallout if he found out she had something wrong with her.

The real irony lay in the fact she was pretty sure he’d already figured out there was something wrong with her. And instead of laughing at her, he’d started paying attention to her speech patterns.

To thank him, she’d pushed him away. Sure, he’d been the one to say he’d stay away from her, but only as a defensive move because she’d been such a spaz about a perfectly innocent conversation with Dr. Kingston.

Maybe she’d sold him short. Maybe she’d sold herself short. What’s the worst thing that could happen if she told Tristan the unvarnished truth about everything?

Or in the vein of the article she’d just read, what if there was a blessing in her ADHD that she’d been missing this whole time?