Finding Our Forever(31)

Eli had almost stopped by her place a dozen times. He would have at least called her, but he could tell that something was different. She’d withdrawn. He wanted to believe she was just busy. Being a new teacher, any teacher, the first week of school was stressful. He needed to give her time to settle in, couldn’t expect to take priority over her work. From what he could tell, she was dedicated to her students and intent on getting to know them. Since he was the one who’d hired her, and he’d chosen her over a candidate most others had expected to get the job, he wanted her to excel. He’d heard from several of the boys that she was already well liked, which gave him hope. But when he saw her at their first football game last night, and she still didn’t reach out to him afterward, like he’d thought she might with the weekend before them, he knew it was more than her job that was keeping her away.

She’d decided she wouldn’t see him again. Why? What had made her change her mind? Had she decided a strictly physical relationship wasn’t worth it? Had she gotten back with her boyfriend? Or...what?

“Hey, where are you tonight, man?”

Eli blinked and drew his attention back to Dallas and Gavin, who’d dragged him to the bar. He didn’t come here often, was careful about how much he drank. Although drinking could wipe out the painful thoughts and memories that plagued him, it could also rob him of his functionality. And he was determined to show the boys he worked with how to overcome that temptation, not fall right into it.

“Sorry, what’d you say?” he asked Dallas, who’d broken into his thoughts.

Dallas finished his last swallow of beer. “You’re a million miles away. I was wondering what you were thinking.”

Eli lifted his own glass. “I’m thinking Freddy Nance deserves to play ahead of Jason Peachtree.”

“Do you have any idea what the heck he’s talking about?” Dallas looked to Gavin for an explanation.

“Cougar football,” Gavin replied. “Freddy and Jason are both hoping to make first-string quarterback at New Horizons.”

“Jason’s so gifted,” Eli said. “But Freddy’s willing to work twice as hard. That counts for more, in my book.”

Dallas shook his head. “I swear, big brother. You need to get off that campus a little more often. Look at the chicks here, man. Have some fun.”

Dallas’s childhood hadn’t been any better than Elijah’s. After a relatively normal life, he’d watched his father come unhinged and shoot his mother and his sister, and attempt to shoot him before he managed to run out of the house. When the police came, they found that his father had turned the gun on himself. While Eli used work to anesthetize him from his past, Dallas deadened the painful memories he carried with sex when he wasn’t climbing and adrenaline when he was. Eli was fairly certain, of the three of them, Aiyana worried about him the most. Eli did, too. Although Gavin had been abandoned at six years old in a park, he seemed to cope better with life.

Or maybe he just pretended to.

“I try to leave the women alone,” Eli said.

“Because...”

“Because I’ll wreck their life. I should come with a warning label.”

“It’s only sex, man. As long as it’s consensual and doesn’t get too crazy, sex never hurt anybody.”

“You forget,” Eli said drily. “This is a small town. There’s no way not to run into the same woman over and over.”

“You can’t do that sort of thing here,” Gavin grumbled in agreement.

“Then you both need to get off that ranch a little more often. Drive to LA.”

“If we slept with as many women as you do—” Gavin started, but Dallas cut him off.

“You’d have some fun for a change.”

Eli rolled his eyes. “Or wind up with a disease.”

“Not if you’re careful.”

“I don’t get the impression you’re as careful as you should be—about anything,” Eli joked, but if Dallas answered, he didn’t hear it. He felt his smile wilt the second he glanced up and saw Cora walk into the bar with Darci Spinoza.

She didn’t notice him, not at first. But it didn’t take long. Those wide, innocent eyes of hers, busy scanning the tables along the periphery of the dance floor as she looked for a place where they could sit down, stopped the second they encountered him—and recognition dawned.

To her credit, she and Darci walked over to say hello. Actually, Cora didn’t really have any choice—neither one of them did. He was their boss, after all. It would’ve been rude to ignore him.

Fortunately, Darci didn’t seem to know anything had ever happened between him and Cora. “Hey.” She grinned at Dallas. “Look who’s in town—trouble!”