Chapter Two

“EXCUSE me, Mr. Barnes. Mr. Dalton is here to see you.”

Blake nodded to his secretary. “Thank you, Natalie. Please show him in.”

Blake watched the boys across from him reach for each other as Natalie went back to the main office. He braced himself mentally for whatever the next minutes would bring. He would defend them from their uncle just as he would from the school bullies if it came to that, but he could only do so much once they left his office.

The door slammed open, startling all three occupants of the room, and Thane Dalton stormed in. He hadn’t changed a bit, except maybe to get better. He still wore his black hair pulled back into a tail at his nape. The black leather jacket Blake remembered had been replaced with a nicer one, but the jeans and work boots could have been the same ones Thane wore in high school. He still took up way more space in the room than his physical size accounted for, sucking all the air out of it with his sheer presence. Blake took a breath and reminded himself he wasn’t a nerdy freshman anymore. “Mr. Dalton. Thank you for coming so quickly. I’m Mr. Barnes.”

“I know who you are. I want to know what you’re going to do to stop these fucking thugs from terrorizing my boys.”

“I’d be happy to discuss a mediation plan with you,” Blake began.

Thane’s glare should have left Blake a pile of ashes on the floor. “Mediation?” he ground out. “I don’t see anything to mediate. From the day they enrolled here, they’ve been picked on by the same gang of jocks. You will not tell them not to defend themselves.”

“Fayette County has a zero tolerance policy where fighting is concerned. It doesn’t matter who started it,” Blake said, feeling like the worst kind of hypocrite. “If they are being bullied, they need to report it to an adult rather than taking matters into their own hands.”

“Like who?” Thane demanded. “You? You really expect me to believe you’d take their side over your star athletes?”

“There are procedures in place—”

“Fuck procedure.” Blake didn’t flush at the sound of Thane saying fuck. He didn’t. He wouldn’t.

“Please, Mr. Dalton. If you would keep a civil tongue, it would help matters immensely.”

Thane snorted. “You’re all the same. All full of polite words and pretty manners and all afraid to do anything that might get you fired or sued. Well, fuck that, Mr. Barnes. Someone is threatening my boys, and it’s going to stop now.”

“And how do you propose to stop it?” Blake asked.

“How do you propose to stop it?”

“Bullies have a tendency to pick on those without an established peer group,” Blake explained. “They look for those who are alone with no one to defend them or to bear witness to what’s going on.” Thane opened his mouth to interrupt. “Please let me finish. I do have a point, if you will hear me out.”

Thane glared at him, but Blake refused to back down. He had a job to do, boys to protect, and a school to run. He refused to be intimidated by anyone. Even the man who’d been the subject of his first wet dream.

“As I was saying, new students, students who don’t have a lot of social skills, and students who don’t fit the mold are the most frequent victims of bullying. In this case, I believe it’s a matter of Phillip and Kit being new. They haven’t had long enough to make new friends and find a niche for themselves, so the hyenas have closed in. Unfortunately, once that starts, it makes it harder for the victims to find their peer group because it’s a bigger risk to befriend someone who’s already being picked on than it is to simply befriend someone new.”

“That’s all very interesting, but it’s not a solution,” Thane said with a scowl.

Blake ignored him and turned to Phillip and Kit. “Have you boys learned anything about building from your uncle?”

“A little,” Phillip said. “We go with him to jobsites on the weekends sometimes to earn a little spending money. Kit’s too young to work officially, but we hang out with him.”

“Then I have a proposal. The theater department is looking for volunteers for the stage crew. You’d be helping to build the sets, so some basic sawing, hammer and nails, maybe a screwdriver, a paintbrush, nothing terribly complicated, but theater kids are a tight-knit group. They’d give you those friends to hang out with, which would make it harder for the bullies to isolate you.”

“Theater?” Thane said. “That’s the best you can come up with?”

“If you have suggestions, I’m happy to listen to them,” Blake said. “But if all you’re going to do is criticize my suggestions, then let me explain the other options to you. This will go on record as being assigned as community service. Their other choices are three days of out-of-school suspension or two weeks of in-school suspension. Those look far worse on their record than community service, not to mention the instructional time they’ll lose and the fact that it will bring them to the attention of the real delinquents in the school, which I don’t think you want. I don’t make the rules, Mr. Dalton, but I am doing my best to work within them to help your boys.”

Thane didn’t look convinced, not that Blake blamed him. He’d heard enough stories about Thane’s adventures in high school to understand that he didn’t have a lot of respect for school administrators. Few people outside the profession understood the tightrope Blake walked on a daily basis and all the regulations imposed on him by a system outside his control. He’d gotten good at finding creative ways to bend the rules, but it only worked if the parents were on board too.

When Thane didn’t offer any alternatives, Blake turned back to Kit and Phillip. “What do you think? Do you want to try stage crew?”

“It’s better than ISS or being suspended,” Phillip said. “It’s not like it can make things worse.”

Thane looked like he was about to say something cutting, so Blake gave him his best “don’t you dare” stare. He knew Thane’s type. As much as he’d crushed on him that year in high school, he’d had a few years to learn what boys—and men—like him thought about theater. Band was okay, but theater was for the fags. If Kit and Phillip had any musical background, they’d already be in band instead of taking pottery. If he had to guess, that had been stuck in their schedule to fill a hole rather than because they had any interest in it. He could be wrong—it wouldn’t be the first time—but Phillip and Kit didn’t strike him as the pottery type.

To his surprise, Thane didn’t say whatever he’d been about to say. Blake hadn’t expected his stare to work.

Kit looked at his uncle for some kind of guidance. Blake braced himself to make his case again against Thane’s disapproval, but Thane met Kit’s gaze impassively. “It’s your time. It’s your decision.”

Kit looked up at Blake. “How long do we have to work on it for, if we decide we don’t like it?”

“The entire preparation for the play only lasts eight to ten weeks,” Blake said. “Most of the building crew stays around for the performances and helps manage props or lights or other things, but that’s not really a requirement. To answer your question, though, give it four weeks. If, at the end of that time, you don’t wish to continue, we’ll consider your community service complete.”

“We can do four weeks, right, Kit?” Phillip said.

“Right.”

Blake turned back to Thane. “Then we’re in agreement. Boys, let me get security to walk you back to class. Mr. Dalton, could I have five more minutes of your time?”

“I want to talk to Kit and Phillip before they go back to class,” Thane said.

“That’s fine. Boys, if you’ll wait outside with Ms. Wright, I’ll call security to escort you back to class after you’ve talked to your uncle.”

Kit and Phillip filed out and closed the door behind them.

“You’re welcome to sit,” Blake offered. “This won’t take long.”

Thane sat in one of the chairs his nephews had just vacated, but having him at eye level instead of looming did nothing to reduce the impact of his presence in the room. “I need you to reinforce at home that violence doesn’t help the situation and that Kit and Phillip need to report any actions against them rather than fighting back. I can help them if they report bullies. I can’t help them if they fight the bullies.”

“You really expect me to believe that will work?” Thane scoffed. “It hasn’t been that long since I was in high school. I don’t think things have changed all that much.”

“What’s changed are the rules, Mr. Dalton. When we were in school, fighting got you suspended for a few days, and that was it. Now, it can get you sent to the alternative school or expelled. Not quite the same order of magnitude.”

“And not fighting back can get you gang-raped,” Thane said bluntly.

Blake winced. “They didn’t tell me that part.” The thought had crossed his mind, but he’d hoped…. Well, it didn’t matter what he’d hoped. “Then I’ve changed my mind. I need you to convince them to tell me the whole truth, because that’s a whole different situation than bullying. Not that I condone bullying, you understand, but bullying is an internal school matter. Rape is a crime.”

“They didn’t tell me either, but they didn’t have to,” Thane said.

“No, I don’t imagine they did, but they do have to tell me if their aggressors made that threat. I can’t go on hearsay or supposition. One of them has to tell me exactly what threats were made and by whom. If they will do that, then I have options that aren’t currently open to me,” Blake explained.

“Options,” Thane repeated with a roll of his eyes. “Tell me why I shouldn’t just pull them out and enroll them somewhere else.”

“Because without an explanation for what happened this month, the district won’t allow the transfer unless you move,” Blake said. “You could look into private schools, but they’re going to take one look at the discipline record and make assumptions about your nephews that will probably result in them being isolated there as well. I understand your frustration—”

“You understand shit. I know your type. You grew up in some rich neighborhood, went to some fancy school, and haven’t ever had to deal with any real hardship. Kit and Phillip lost their father when they were small. Kit doesn’t remember him at all. Last month their mother died of cancer. And now they’re having to deal with a bunch of ignorant-ass jocks who think they run the school because they’re good on the football field or a basketball court or wherever. They’ve had enough.”

Blake’s heart broke for Kit and Phillip, hearing it all laid out that way, and it only increased his determination to find a solution that would protect them and help them get settled in their new lives at the same time.

“You’ve made it very clear what you think of me, regardless of how far off base you are in your assumptions, but that doesn’t change the fact that right now, you and I are the only people in their corner. You can curse the system all you want, but the fact of the matter is I do know how to play it, so it really comes down to one question: Are you going to help me play the system or are you going to fight me the whole time and put your nephews’ future at risk?”