callan
Sakura had skipped my class.
I sat in the teachers’ meeting room, listening to Vaughn go on and on and fucking on for the past three hours. All the department heads were required to attend this bullshit meeting, and I couldn’t get her out of my head.
This meeting had better be finished before the end of the day.
My phone lit up on the table, a notification from Bitch, my dear wife, on the screen. As Vaughn talked away about something, I unlocked my phone, ignored her message altogether, and opened my email.
I scrolled through all the unopened emails and spam, and then I stopped at my messages to her. An email chain of three messages last night, to and from Sakura Sato, her teasing me, telling me that she would be a brat from now on.
Minutes passed, and all I could do was stare at them, wait for her to message me, email me, do something. I had been waiting all day to talk to her after that little stunt she pulled last night, after having her as mine yesterday.
When the last bell rang throughout the room, I tightened my hand into a tight fist and glared at Vaughn, hoping he’d hurry the fuck up. I had people to catch before they had the chance to slip out the exit doors and leave Redwood Academy for the night.
Once Vaughn finally shut his mouth ten minutes later, I stood up from my seat, grabbed my notes, and walked to the exit, growling to myself. We had sat in a three-hour meeting, and he couldn’t even let us go before the day ended for everyone else.
I hated him.
For more than just that reason.
“Callan,” he called from inside the room.
Fuck.
Deciding that I had nothing better to do, especially because Sakura had to be long gone by now, I turned around on my heel and faced him. She had no reason to stay past the end of the day unless it was for another class. No other teacher would give her detention.
“Can we do this another time, Vaughn? I have a wife to get home to.”
Fucking lie, but who cares anymore?
“I wanted to talk to you about Sakura,” he said. “She’s in your class, right?”
What the fuck does he want with her?
“Yes,” I said, keeping myself in check.
But on the inside—on the fucking inside—I wanted to rip him apart for even speaking her name. He rarely spoke about students other than some of the girls on the cheerleading team. I didn’t know what he wanted with her.
“Why?” I urged.
“She’s top of the class,” Vaughn said. “A stellar student.”
I stared at him for a few moments, trying to figure out what kind of game he was playing. I didn’t know what it was, but I didn’t like the tone of his voice, the way he had said her name, or how he had called her a stellar student.
We all knew that already.
Did he find out about the detention? Did he know that my hands were all over her?
“She is,” I said, tapping the edge of my notebook against a table. “And?”
“I’m sure she excels elsewhere too,” he continued.
Holding my tongue, I nodded. “She has told me about the volunteer work she does.”
“Hmm … volunteer.”
After examining the scrawny, balding principal once more, I took my notebook again and walked to the door. The more he talked, the more fucking weird it got. Vaughn always had that creep vibe to him, but I didn’t know what he was getting at.
Nor did I want to stay to figure it out.
Skipping pleasantries with the other teachers who had stayed behind to talk in the office with some of the secretaries, I gritted my teeth and walked out of the office and toward my classroom to snatch my car keys.
Yet when I turned the corner, Sakura bounced up and down on her toes right in front of my door, distracted by her phone. I walked up to her from behind, glanced around to make sure nobody was watching, then seized her by the back of the neck.
When she sucked in a sharp breath, I shoved her into my classroom and locked the door behind us. I’d spank her ass red for sending me that email last night, for skipping my class this morning, for pressing those thighs together and smirking at me when I’d seen her in the office.
Sakura would pay.