"I would like you to accept my resignation effective immediately." Was all she said, all that has been running though my head all day since the Governors meeting, how can she even think about leaving. Rachel can't leave the school needs her too much. I need her too much.

"Resignation." A word that can bring about the fall of Waterloo Road, bring about that chaos that has ruled the school once before, once again. She can't leave me to deal with that and with everything with Mel.

I never loved Mel, not really, she's an amazing woman, just not the woman who can make me truly happy never that way Rachel, does with one smile. One smile from that amazing woman and I'm a goner no returning for me, one look in her eyes and away to the moon for me. She's beautiful inside and out, despite what she feels. No scar can make me think less of her, in fact they show me that she is a fighter and I love her more for that. Unlike Mel she's willing to go after the thing she wants and not back down until she has it, Mel just waits for things to be delivered to her and is not willing to stand up to people she doesn't agree with Rachel will fight like a dog backed into a corner for things to go her way.

How can she even think that she is responsible for the death of Maxine? If anything Earl Kelly is the sole reason the whole school is mourning, not a strong headed woman who wanted to make a difference with a troubled teenager, just so happens that he didn't want to accept the help and defied her at every turn and chance he got. No one should ever doubt their self for something they had no control over, so what she made a mistake thinking that Waterloo Road could help Earl, but then again she is human and there was no way she could have predicted that he could turn out to be so unstable and violent.

Rachel can't leave. She can't leave me. Waterloo Road is nothing without her and so am I.

Mel came between us, it was only meant to be a one night thing, but when I found out about her being Rachel's sister, I just couldn't disappoint her by taking what I wanted and leaving under the cover of night. Then things just got even more out of hand, with her expecting more of me and I just let it all happen without ever stopping to question if it was something I wanted or if it was something to keep Mel happy so she wouldn't go crying to Rachel about me.

Rachel has turned Waterloo Road from a school over run by its pupils and into a place of learning and safety for all those who walk through the doors. She has managed to get some of the more troublesome students to bend to her will, such as Bolton Smiley and Paul Langley to follow her rules and not step out of line, fearing the punishments she deals out when necessary.

She is the one thing that keeps this school running. She's the one thing and only thing I wake up in the morning to see and when I turn over a see Mel and hear her snores, it breaks the sweet dream state that I had been lulled into by my overactive mind. Every time I see her it gets harder to know that I'm not allowed to be the one who touches her, goes home to at the end of a long day at work, not the one who I kiss and make love to, but a poor substitute for the real thing and that in itself is wrong using someone because you can never have the original.

I can see it now if the fire had never have happened, we would have been the ones planning a wedding together, we would be the ones living together and the ones with no reason to doubt how we live every day.

We had something, I know we did. Then the fire and nothing the spark is still there, she's just too scared to let me in, scared to get her heart broken again. I could never do that to her, never break her heart and never abandon her, never without one hell of an excuse and even then I would be back trying to sort things out 15 minutes later. Rachel means too much to me to just loose her over a silly argument over who had the remote last or why either of us are making a rash decision about something at work.

She deserves so much more than I could ever give her. She operates at a level above ever other person I have ever met. She could run the Country is she put her mind to it. She has an uncanny ability to make everyone around her sit down, shut up and listen to what she has to say, that is something so rare in a person. She has an air of confidence surrounding her and that radiates back onto the kids making them want to better themselves, especially at the end of last year when her past come to light and the kids understood that she was no different than them and that give them something to relate with and they saw what she has done with her life and that gives them hope for their future.

Rachel embodies strength and beauty. Independence and vulnerability. She makes use of what she has at her disposal, never backing down from a good fight and putting every ones welfare before her own. That is the sort of woman who can concur the world, after all she has concurred my heart and that is a feat in itself.

She is stunningly gorgeous and it's a shame she doesn't understand that if she lets someone past her mountain high brick wall defences down, that there is no way that they wouldn't love her without hesitation and anyone that takes physical looks into consideration as to determining her beauty is just bloody shallow.

In a way I understand her need to resign and in a way I have no idea as to why that would be the only solution to clear her conscious, of something she could never do. For her to even think about resigning, Maxine's death must have hit her really hard and drug up painful memories and then they must have been really painful as she is very string willed and doesn't let anything bother her that isn't worth something.

Rachel's intelligence comes from life experience and her own way of interpreting situations that the average person would have a rather large struggle to come to terms with and assess the damage and find an effective solution, but Rachel takes one look and her brain processes an immediate response. She can bring even the smartest of persons to their knees with either a very well placed comment or she gives them the look, where she lifts up her right eyebrow and dares you with her eyes to challenge her, that look has brought pupils, parents and colleagues to a halt. She commands respect when she enters a room, but it's not the respect gained by scare tack-tics, but through being there and living in the situation with normal people and trying to make it better for them in the long run.

No is the one word in the English dictionary that she doesn't understand the meaning of, but right now saying she's quitting, is giving in and in turn, that comes right back around to, No, the one word she so adamantly refuses to acknowledge and obey.

It's going to be different not working and seeing her every day. Talking about some of the most mundane things, that if someone were to walk in on one of those conversations they happen to believe that we were crazy. She gives Waterloo Road back its colour and with her gone it will go back to black and white, leaving it once again in the dark ages of the school being run amuck.

Sitting her now, trying to visualise her not walking through the halls spying in on my lessons is going to be the hardest thing to let go. With that big brain of hers you would think that by now she would have figured out that she has only just begun to heal Waterloo Road and me, that she is still needed and loved.

Letting go is the one thing I'm not looking forward to doing, but if it means she is happy them who am I to stop her from perusing her dreams and aspirations. Then again I am in love with her and that, in my mind anyway, gives me the right to make her stay and give her back her fighting attitude for who would Rachel Mason be if she wasn't fighting and living for those who need her to be strong and reliable.