“Wait, wait, wait!” Marcus shouted, keeping his head down and holding up his left hand while he continued writing with his right.

The rest of the students flipped their papers over, protecting their work from wandering eyes, and then Marcus sat back, putting his pencil down and finally turning his paper over as well.

“Stand,” I instructed.

The students stood up, some rubbing their eyes and others yawning.

“Stretch.” I locked my hands above my head and pushed up on my tiptoes, leading by example.

The rest of the class did their own stretches, getting their blood moving after sitting with their constructed response questions. I made them stand every fifteen minutes to keep them alert.

“Jump,” I commanded, and we all started hopping or jogging in place.

I stopped, strolling up the aisle. “Now sit.”

They took their seats, the desks shifting under their weight.

“Attack,” I finished, issuing the last instruction and hearing their snickers and snorts as they continued with their tests.

“You have ten minutes left,” I warned them, and locked my hands behind my back, strolling up and down the aisles.

They’d had a selection of ten different constructed response questions and had to pick three to answer. Judging from the amount of writing going on, I was going to have a very long weekend of reading.

Normally, we completed a lot of assignments online or with a Word document, which they e-mailed to me when they were done. With tests, though, I liked to keep it old-school. There was too much at stake to run the risk of losing a document in cyberspace.

Christian held his paper up, pencil in hand, and appeared to be rereading his work. This was the last class I would have with him, since he’d been transferred into AP History starting next week.

Principal Shaw told me he had e-mailed his father to let him know, but I hadn’t heard anything from Tyler.

Christian’s mother was thrilled, and Christian himself seemed to just roll with it. He’d gotten the assurance from me and Principal Shaw that if he didn’t like it, he could come back to my class.

Part of me hoped he’d hate it. I wanted him back.

It didn’t escape me that with Christian out of my class, seeing his father wouldn’t be as much of a problem publicly – but that was never really our problem. Not really.

Tyler took what he wanted but cut loose what he didn’t need. His upcoming campaign, his son, and his company were his priorities, as they should be, and he’d made a choice. While there may have been space enough for me in his life, he was too afraid to fail at anything else to make the room.

I had offered myself up, naked, in his office, and he’d let me go. We had come too close to the point where it was going to hurt too much to ever let go of each other. And then last week, I’d let him go. He’d been in my classroom, and I’d walked away from him.

Checking the clock, I turned and faced the class. “Is there anyone not done?”

Isabel Savers raised her hand, and I looked to the boy in front of her.

“Loren, can you take Isabel to Ms. Meyer’s room?” I requested. “She can finish there. Thank you.”

Once they walked out, I collected the test papers, and the students opened their laptops to continue gathering research for the simulations they were planning. It was a new teaching technique I’d discovered, where students re-create – live – what it was like to experience everyday life on, say, the Mayflower or in a wigwam. I was excited to see what they’d come up with.

“Ms. Bradbury?” Christian approached my desk as I started grading the papers. “Since we have the rest of class for private study, can I watch my father’s interview? It’s streaming online.”

“Um…” I shot up my eyebrows, for a split second thinking of telling him no because I wasn’t sure I wanted to see Tyler.

But that was selfish. The fact that Christian was at all interested was fantastic.

I nodded quickly. “Sure,” I told him.

But then I stopped. “Actually…”

I turned on the projector, my laptop screen appearing up on the front board.

“What site is it?”

“You don’t have to put it on for everyone to see,” he interjected, and I could tell he was embarrassed.

I switched off the projector, not wanting to make him uncomfortable.

“Okay, but I’d like to see it,” I added.

“KPNN,” he called over his shoulder as he walked to his desk.

I brought up the site and turned down the volume, grabbing my green pen, a rubric for grading, and the first student paper, listening as I read.

Tyler’s face flashed on the screen, and I had to force my expression to stay as hard as stone. He looked so large and commanding, and I was afraid the shot of lust coursing through my body, making it hard to breathe, would be written all over my face.

He wore a black three-piece suit with an emerald-green tie, and I wished the camera would back up so I could see all of him. His jet-black hair had been cut since I’d last seen him and was styled up and off to the side, shiny, with every hair in place.

He sat at the conference table in his office, and I knew the expression on his face. The one that said he had better things to do.

Tyler hadn’t officially announced his candidacy yet, but the whole city knew it was coming. I was interested in seeing how he handled the interview, knowing his aversion to prying eyes in his private life and his inability to indulge people and play nice.