Tainted Love (Sweetest Taboo #2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

was going to enjoy every moment of it. There was no way I was going to let that nagging feeling bring my spirits down.
    Still, though, I couldn’t escape the feeling that there was something going on, something that she was hiding from me. I felt as though there was a part of her that she refused to share with me. I’d experienced that with Isabel before, when she was younger – that hesitation, the willingness to keep secrets from me when she was afraid she might get hurt, or hurt me in return. I couldn’t blame her, after what we’d been through together, but I desperately wanted her to trust me again. I needed Isabel to open up to me and share her thoughts and feelings with me.
    I pushed my food away, realizing that I couldn’t eat while she was outside on the phone. My appetite had vanished with her, though I refused the waiter when he asked if he could clear the dishes. When Izzy came back, I’d no doubt grow hungry again, providing everything was all right. It had always been like that – her presence dictating my thoughts and feelings. I’d never understood how she did it, but her power over me had started the first day I had set my eyes on her.
    One day after school, while scheduling the tryouts for the swim team, I had realized that I didn’t have everything I needed for tryouts. I had gone to the gym to find one of the other coaches and figure out how to deal with the missing equipment. This particular coach had instructed other sports teams after school, and usually coached the girls’ soccer team, although he had coached boys’ teams as well. On this particular day, he was running a PE class – something that all the students had to take whether they liked it or not. I was standing next to him, talking about the coming tryouts, when I noticed a girl I had never seen before.  This wasn’t really that unique for me, since I didn’t know every student on campus. But I knew or had seen most of them at some point in time. I’d been a teacher at Royal Oaks for over ten years, and had come to know hundreds of students during that time. Some younger, some older…some in ninth grade and others in twelfth grade, boys, girls, gay, straight…I had known a majority of the kids who attended Royal Oaks and often times, still maintained friendships with students that had graduated. I went out of my way to meet new students every year, and tried to build relationships with them. I enjoyed their distinct and individual personalities, and had made some friends that kept in touch through college and into their adult years. This had been frowned on by some of the other teachers; people who thought that we as teachers should maintain our distance from the students, remember the boundaries, they would say, do not become involved in their lives. I’d never shared that philosophy, though. We were entrusted with these young, unmolded minds, and it was our job to make sure that they grew and developed, turning into the responsible adults they would one day become. How were we supposed to do that if we didn’t make the effort to know them outside of class, through sports or extracurricular activities? Besides, I made friends with the parents as well, as often as not – parents who knew their children so well, and were able to offer me insight into their personalities.
    True, I only taught photography and occasionally mathematics, but I took it seriously, and I did everything I could to be successful as a teacher and as a mentor.
    So it was surprising, actually noticing a student that I’d never seen before. And what a girl she was! Coach Johnson continued speaking next to me, but he’d lost my attention. My eyes were glued to that girl, that young woman, who was captivating me with her natural – and makeup free – beauty. But it wasn’t just her looks that caught my attention, for there had been plenty of other pretty girls on campus throughout the years. I’d known plenty of attractive girls – both in school