Roni Loren - Nothing Between Us

“What’s going on?” Colby finally asked, done with thick silence.

Rowan tucked an errant blond hair back into the clip that was precariously holding it up and sighed. “It’s Travis.”

The name and her tone had his stomach tumbling. “What’s wrong?”

She pressed her hands to the top of her desk. “Around eleven last night, he took a handful of his mother’s sleeping pills and cut his wrists with his dad’s hunting knife.”

No. Colby’s chest seized at the information, shock and heartbreak colliding. “Is he, did he …”

Principal Anders took a breath and kept talking. “He’s still alive. His father woke up with indigestion later that night and went to get antacids out of the downstairs bathroom. He found Travis lying in the bathtub, unconscious and bleeding. Thankfully, the cuts hadn’t been deep enough to kill him quickly, so the ambulance got there in time. He’s had his stomach pumped and he’s lost a good bit of blood, but they think he’s going to be okay—physically at least.”

“Christ.” Colby breathed a deep, bone-shaking sigh of relief at that outcome and rubbed a hand over his face.

Rowan’s shoulders lifted and dipped with another long exhale, and that was when Colby felt the shift in the room. This wasn’t just a meeting to inform him about one of the students. He could see the businesswoman mask slide over her features. “Colby, I understand that you were the last of the staff to talk to Travis on Friday.”

He blinked, caught off guard for a second. “Yes, we had a short session before the last bell.”

“Can you tell me what happened in your meeting with Travis?” she asked as she straightened a few papers on her desk without looking at them.

Colby rubbed a hand along the back of his neck, still trying to get his heartbeat to settle after worrying he’d lost a student. On Colby’s left, Dr. Guthrie gave him a sidelong glance.

Colby ignored the stench of judgment he could sense wafting off the other man and focused on his boss. “Travis was supposed to have a session with Dr. Guthrie but since Ed was out that afternoon, I offered to talk with him instead. I knew Travis had been having trouble with a few of the other kids, and we discussed that. He was down and frustrated, but nothing that sent up any red flags.”

“Did he inform you that he’d gone off his meds?” Ed asked, his voice cool.

Fuck. “No. But I didn’t ask.”

“Why not?” Principal Anders asked.

Ed’s eyebrows quirked up, and he leaned forward in a way that said, Yes, Mr. Wilkes, please share with us how completely incompetent you are.

Colby resisted the urge to throat-punch the guy. The jerk had always seen himself as far superior and had been against Colby’s more down-to-earth approach with the kids from the start. “The session was informal since we only had a few minutes and I didn’t have his file. Plus, Travis and I haven’t talked in an official capacity before, and I needed to build some trust and rapport. If I had jumped right into questions about medication, he would’ve shut down.”

Ed sniffed and Principal Anders gave an unreadable nod. “Did you notice any danger signs, anything that gave you pause?”

Colby thought back to Friday. The kid had looked tired, a little beat down by the rough week, but nothing out of character from what he’d seen of the kid before. The only thing out of the ordinary had been that Grim Reaper costume. Looking back, maybe that had been a clue. But there’d been at least three Reapers roaming the halls that day. It wasn’t an uncommon costume. “Nothing that made me overly concerned. He told me about his altercation with Dalton earlier in the day. He talked about how he liked to create music on his computer. We discussed how things like music can be a nice escape from stress sometimes.”

“What did he say to that?” the principal asked.

“He agreed. He said”—Colby replayed the conversation in his mind, that hollow-stomach feeling returning—“he said he craved the escape.”

Ed grunted. “This is why I should never take an afternoon off. How did you not see the signs, Wilkes? Did you ask him if he had a plan for an escape?”

Colby’s hands curled around the arms of the chair, but he forced himself to keep his voice even. “It wasn’t said like that.”

Principal Anders frowned. “Colby, I’m sure you’re well aware that if a threat or plan for suicide is shared, we are legally bound to break confidentiality and report it.”

Colby counted to three in his head before responding. “Yes, of course. I’ve already done it twice this year when students have admitted thoughts of self-harm. That was not the case on Friday.”

“Travis told his parents this morning that he talked to you, that he told you he wanted it all to end,” she continued.

Colby frowned. “The bullying. He said he wanted the bullying to end.”

God, had he missed something? It’d been late on Friday. He’d had a busy week with a number of small successes with his students. But he’d also been tired and a little distracted, knowing he was hosting the Halloween party that night. And Travis had rushed off. Maybe he hadn’t listened closely enough. Maybe he had missed the signs. Maybe he should’ve run after him when he’d bolted.

Principal Anders smoothed the papers in front of her, her mouth pinched. “Colby, I’m sure you did what you could. You do a good job here, and I know the kids connect well with you. That’s why I’ve been trying to get you bumped up to full time. But the school district is going to get heat for this. Travis’s parents are well-to-do and were already annoyed that their son was in an alternative school after things didn’t work out at his private school. The cops said the words lawyer and negligence were already being thrown around at the hospital. You know how sensitive these things are for the school district.”

Colby could feel it, the anvil hovering above his head.

“So, until an investigation has been conducted, I’m going to have to put you on leave.”

Bam. Flattened. “Rowan, you can’t think that I’d—”

She lifted a hand, cutting him off. “If lawyers get involved, they’ll dig. They’ll pull all of your background, your work history.”

Cold moved through him.

“The incident with that student at your previous school”—she glanced down at her notes—“Adam Keats, is sure to come up. I know this is a different situation, but from the outside, it could look bad. Like a pattern.”

He shook his head, too gutted to respond. Even thinking about Keats again was too much to handle. But that wasn’t the only problem with someone poking into his background. Colby had a side job that would make every school board member’s head explode. He’d be fired faster than he could spell BDSM .

“Dr. Guthrie will take over your caseload for now,” Rowan continued, all business now. “We’ll bring in extra help if needed. But we have to show that we are taking immediate action and looking into the matter. And you should know, the school district may decide that our students should only be seen by a psychologist instead of splitting the caseload between you and Dr. Guthrie. You know that’s not my opinion. I think you add a different perspective and approach. And frankly, the kids here need all the resources they can get. But I might not have a say if Travis’s father really kicks up dust.”

Colby caught the barest hint of a smile in his periphery. That fucker Guthrie was probably preening with glee on the inside. He’d never wanted Colby here. He’d wanted a promotion and a raise, not a counselor added to the mix. So from the very beginning, Guthrie had made it clear what he thought of “a washed-up musician counseling young, vulnerable minds.” The ire had only grown when it’d become obvious that the kids gravitated more toward Colby’s no-nonsense approach than Dr. Guthrie’s cool, clinical tactics.