Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 98992 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 495(@200wpm)___ 396(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98992 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 495(@200wpm)___ 396(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
Oopsie.
“Because you were busy daydreaming about…Prince Kellan Kenningston? You secretly wanna be a princess?”
I secretly wanna go back in time to rewrite my entire fucking romantic past.
Perhaps doing so I would have a better romantic present.
“You can go ahead and send the family in, Clemmy.”
She quickly nods her understanding and dismisses herself to retrieve them.
Interviewing new potential parents is done to allow me to decide whether or not this institution is a good fit for me as much as it is for them. It’s a three-step process that starts with one or both of the parents coming in for an interview. There are usually a few questions, sometimes a couple of jokes, but also a lot of unspoken information taken into account. Body language when asked about their child. Body language towards one another – parents who exhibit hostile cues towards each other are an automatic no. The next step has the child come to hang out in the classroom, with his or her parents. This allows for a supervised immersion into the atmosphere. Teachers can report how they feel, what they think, and what they saw, further giving me feedback to make my decisions. Lastly, we do a second interview that has to be with both parents – unless court mandated otherwise – to discuss how we all feel by this point. To some it’s taxing. To some it’s not enough. For most, however, it’s perfect, and those are the families I want.
I need them to trust me to do my job, even when it’s the last thing I feel like doing.
Clemmy returns to my doorway with a polite smile and waves someone in. “Miss Morrison is ready to see you now, Mr. Collins.”
Collins?
And just like that a familiar face strolls into my office.
No.
This cannot be happening to me.
This has to be some sort of daymare my daydream redirected me into.
I’m gonna wakeup any second now and have Clemmy in the doorway offering to get me a tea or soda or maybe a Danish.
The dapper gentleman dressed in a designer suit extends his open palm towards me the instant he’s in front of my desk. “Noah Collins.”
Disbelief and relief that he doesn’t remember who I am battle for their rightful place in my system as I rise to my feet and professionally shake it. “Presley Morrison.”
“Presley Morrison…” his face crunches like he’s cycling through a personal memory file. “Your name sounds so…familiar.” He drops his back to his side. “Do you have an account at our investment firm?
“No, I don’t, Mr. Collins.”
“Your face looks like one…that…just…” his voice drifts off while my body drifts back down into my seat. “It’s right on the tip of my tongue.”
Could it not be?
Could I get away with pretending that we’ve never met?
Pretending that he has me confused with someone else?
His continued interrogation interrupts my attempt to keep the conversation on point, “Did you happen to attend Willow Park Private Academy?”
“I did.”
“I knew I knew you! You used to date my baby brother, Ryder!”
I swallow the extensive knot expanding in my throat. “I did.”
He begins to settle himself inro the seat across from me while nervously joking, “That’s not gonna stop us from getting into this place, is it? Because my wife would absolutely have no problem sacrificing him or even part of him to get us in here.”
The humor causes me to warmly smile. “No, Mr. Collins. It’s not a problem.”
“An asset?”
“Not that either.”
He offers me another charming, award-winning smile.
Ah…there’s the Noah Collins I remember.
The prized Collins’ son.
When Ry and I first started dating, he was already away at college, living the pre-picked for him life to the fullest. He barely made time to come home outside the Sunday dinners he was forced to twice a month, but he did try a little harder to be there for Ry if he needed his brother for something. We never had any issues as far as I knew. He was always nice to me. Made me feel welcomed even when their father occasionally looked at me like I wasn’t. At times, I used to think he was the only person in that family that understood just how deeply I loved his brother. How hard I cared about him. And I also used to believe that he appreciated that because it was always so apparent what an unwanted outlier the other Collins believed Ry to be.
However, that was a lifetime ago.
And this is now.
I doubt the man sitting in the office of the only other dream I ever chased as hard as his brother is the same one that I used to know, just as I am not the same naïve, blinded by love, dummy that he used to know.
I think.
“Will your wife be joining us?” I politely ask, pulling out the new parent paperwork packet from my office drawer.