The Teacher's Pet

Chapter Twenty

Kat Claire:
Never in my life has a night been this peaceful. Insomnia wasn't the boss of me tonight. Tonight, I was the boss of insomnia. I slept through the whole night, not even waking up to go to the bathroom.
And here I lay, in the arms of my fresh boyfriend. Just barely awake, I slept the whole night, but the tiredness isn't gone. Maybe James is the cure to my insomnia, and now I need to catch up on all the sleep I missed over the past couple of years.
Suddenly my phone chimes a million times.
"Shit!" I wake up in an instant, my tiredness completely gone. It's my mom calling.
"Hey mom." I say, rubbing a hand over my face. My voice is clearly very sleepy, she will know that I just woke up.
'Where the hell are you?'
"I'm just at Mary's, sorry I didn't tell you, I got there and was so tired, now I overslept, I really have to get ready for school mom." I try to speak as soft but clear as I can, just so I don't wake up James, who is quietly asleep. He looks incredibly peaceful in his sleep.
'You better return straight home after school young lady!'
"Yeah yeah, I will mom."
Before she can complain more about not letting her know where I am, I press the red call button on my phone, hanging up on my mom, stupid idea. She will definitely hate me for this when I get home.
James groans softly in his sleep, a sign that he is waking up, and it is the most adorable thing a guy could do.
"Good morning sunshine."
"What time is it?" His morning voice gives me even more butterflies than just being in his arms.
"9:36 AM."
"I suppose we get up then."
"Maybe we should, I have school, it started 2 hours ago, I already missed so many classes." His sweet morning face turns into something fragile.
"I'm afraid you'll have to stay here today Kat." My eyebrows frown, almost as if they got a mind of their own.
"Why? I'm fine at school, I can take care of myself."
"Kat please, Liam is in your class. I lost my job so I won't be there to watch over you."
I cross my arms and watch him with a pout. The pout seems to do nothing for him. "I wish I could tell or show you how dangerous Liam actually is, but I can't, so you will have to trust me on this and stay here, at least for today."
"Fine..." I say, eyes rolling back. "Only because you are asking, if you were someone else, it would've been a hell no."
A smile forms on his lips, the lips that he presses into mine the next second.
"What are we doing today?" I ask as he pulls away from me, leaving a sweet taste on my lips.
"I have some things I need to take care of today, don't worry I'll make sure to spend enough time with you, when I'm gone I'll leave you with some of the girls, some who you can trust."
"Take me with you." Even though I give him the sweetest smile I can, he doesn't budge.
"Maybe in future times, for now, be a good girl." His lips press against my forehead, if I wasn't blushing before, I sure am now.

--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--

After a usual morning shower, we make our way down to the pearly white kitchen. He prepares 2 slices of bread for each of us. I told him I could help, but he insisted. On the way there, we came past one guy, he greeted James, I just kept my head low to the floor making sure not to talk to anyone, just as he had told me. I don't know who to trust or who not to trust.
He holds out the plate with the food on it to me. "Thank you." I don't even remember the last time I had a proper meal, I have been feeling way too sick to even get anything down. Everything I eat, I throw right back up, because I was heart broken. And now I have the one thing I really want, I'll eat the whole world.
James leads me to the room next to the kitchen where people usually eat.
As usual, I enter with my face to the ground, showing that I mean no harm or dominance to anyone. I am just here with James.
"No one is here." He reassures me, so I can lift my head. We both take a seat at the table made completely out of marble, it matches the design of the kitchen. Beautiful, definitely a table I would want in my future home.
"Now that you're my girlfriend." He begins as he shoves a piece of bread in his mouth. "I think we have to talk more clearly about what this underground basement actually is for." There is a slight nerve visible in his voice, he's afraid of telling me what this is.
"I was just about to ask about it." I say with a large smile across my mouth, from ear to ear, trying to lighten the mood that is about to darken.
"It's not as fun as you think." He sucks in a deep breath of air. "It's a lot darker than you think actually, I don't think you're ready to hear it, but you'll have to hear it some day, and I'd rather you hear it from me than anyone else." James is... rambling, actually rambling. He is so nervous to tell me it, I have never seen him like this before.
In an attempt to reassure him that I won't be freaked out I lay my hand over his. Which he pulls back in an instant, he can't handle my touch in this serious moment.
"You're in a society where we kill, torture and slaughter people." He says with a serious cold voice, the voice everyone knows him in. The kind of him that everyone sees, not the soft James. His eyes reach mine, waiting for a reaction, waiting for me to scream or call him a murderer. But I do neither of those things.
Instead, I ask, "Why?"
"Why... Well good question, we don't just go around killing everyone we see." I let out a sigh of relief, that's what I was afraid of. "We kill guilty people, save women from sex trafficking, we rile up small gangs and over all, not very pleasurable or legal things." A pause. "We do so much more, it's too much to explain.
"Kat, these people here." He looks around. "Are willing to give anything for this society, even their own family. Their own children. We are willing to lose the lives of our loved ones or our own to save multiple strangers."
From all the crazy things I've heard in the past couple of weeks, this isn't by far the most weird thing. But it does give me a different view on things, on James.
"Liam's parents are part of this too, they don't know how dangerous their son is, but when they heard he died, they were sad. But they understood that this was part of the deal, part of the risk they're taking while being in this society." He looks at me waiting for a reaction, waiting for something. "Once you're in, or once you know about the society, there is no going back, that's why I didn't want to tell you so soon, but there is no other place you can be safe."
I don't make eye contact when I ask, "What will happen if you want to leave the society?" Somewhere I know the answer, but I want to hear him say it out loud.
"Death."
After a beat of silence I say, "So if I wish to leave and never know about this place, you'll have to kill me?" A longer silence follows, a silence full of answers.
"There is a 'do not kill' list, it's hard to get on, and there are only 5 people on there right now." He holds my hands tightly while trying to make eye contact, I don't look at him for a second. I don't want to see the emotions boiling behind those brown eyes.,
"You're on the list, which means, no one from the society can kill you. If they do or even attempt, they get executed, together with their entire family." He put me on the list, he took the time to get me on this list. James actually cares for me...
"Please, I can't tell what you're thinking right now."
"I'm processing James." Is all I can manage to say.
A silence hits, he shakes his legs nervously, while I go through every single thought stuck on the walls of my brain.
The hunger I had a while ago had disappeared, long gone. I can't manage to get a single bite of food down my throat.
"You have told me before that you killed people, when I heard that... I was afraid of you James, but now that you explain this society to me... I understand you. I understand the society, it's good that they exist, it's good that there are such strict rules." Relief washes over his face, it washes the fear away. The less tense James is one I fall in love with more and more.
"Thank you. For understanding."
"Thank you, for putting me on that list and protecting me." If he were any closer to me, I would have kissed him right there and then.
"Good morning love birds." A new presence in the room says, it sounds like a voice I've heard before. When I turn to face him, I am confronted with the presence that intimidated me so much yesterday.
"Hey you," He says smiling at me. That's definitely a morning person. I don't answer him, still feeling intimidating by the tall length of him.
"Morning Dante."
"I'm not interrupting, am I?"
"Totally not." James lies, he rolls his eyes when he looks at me.
"I saw that Levine! If you want some alone time with your girl, you know where the bedroom is." This comment gets me to laugh softly.
"Your laugh." Dante stops and looks at me, my eyes widen as I look at James, afraid that I've just said something terribly wrong. "It's delightful, so outshining." The slow tone in his voice sends shivers all the way down my spine.
"Thank you sir."
"Oh please, call me Dante, no need to be all formal, I'll be your father in law after all." He winks at me and lays his hand on my shoulder before sliding in the bench next to me. So Dante is indeed James' father.
"Step father in law," James says, "if something like that even exists."
"From now on it does."
The way Dante and James joke with each other sends a pit of fire throughout my stomach, or it's the amount of time that I haven't eaten. It almost makes me tear up, such a strong father son bond. Even if Dante is his step father.
"Kat, are you all right?" Dante lays his hand on my shoulder once again, while his other one digs right into his cereal.
"I'm," I pause staring at the concerned look on James' face. The sudden realization hits, he has enough to worry about already, he doesn't need my problems served to him on a plate too. If it were only Dante, I might consider talking about the bond I have with my father with him. "I'm good." I force a smile and eat the sandwich that has been laying on my plate for way too long, it became all dried up. But I don't care, I am so hungry, I would chew on a rock if I would have to.
"What are you two love birds planning to do on this sunny day." James laughs when I look around for a window. There are none, of course there are none, we are underground.
"We are just staying ins..."
James's hand lays over mine as he says, "We were planning to go to the field." I give him the most confusion look that I can. He seems to ignore it with a smile.
"Beautiful, you two enjoy, don't crumble the flowers too much." Flowers, he is taking me to a place where there are flowers. A million different pictures stream in my imagination. Hundreds of different fields with flowers in different seasons. Spring, winter, summer. My favorite is spring, the season where the flowers get the one chance a year to grow, to show themselves. Human's should have one of those seasons.