by Vi Keeland
The little flutter in my belly confirmed it, even before the musician looked up. But when that face met the camera, my breath caught.
Professor West had been just as gorgeous as a teenager as he was now. Only back then, he’d had that whole bad-boy-musician thing going on. Now, if I didn’t know him and had to guess, I would have taken him for a jazz musician or maybe even classical of some kind. Somehow, sexy bad boy had grown into a sexy maturity.
When the song ended, Caine lifted his head and gave the crowd a crooked smile. His shoulder-length hair was wet from the workout, and he tossed a stick in the air, catching it with the other. Then he used his free hand to reach back over his head and tug off his sweaty shirt. The girls went crazy at his eight-pack abs. Rock star, Beatles-type crazy.
Wow.
That smile.
That body.
Just wow.
There were apparently many layers of Caine West, and I’d barely scratched the surface.
By the time I got home that night, it was after two in the morning. My feet were killing me, and all I wanted to do was soak in a tub and get some sleep. For a change, I didn’t have to be at school or work until the afternoon. The tub was warm, and I let the water from the faucet sluice over my feet as I settled back to relax.
Although my brain had ideas other than relaxing. The minute I shut my eyes, a vision of a young Caine West up on stage infiltrated my thoughts. I’d forwarded myself the videos and watched them more times than I cared to admit between serving drinks tonight.
Giving in, I reached up for my phone and allowed myself one more replay. Finally in private instead of being caught by a smirking Ava as I tried to discreetly look down at my phone, I searched the grainy face for Caine’s mannerisms. There were a few I recognized—the way his lip twitched and he shook his head when women started to scream his name while he played his solo. The way he walked around the stage like he owned it. Today his arena was a classroom, but the confidence he strutted with was the same. Yet it was his arms that really nailed it home. Each time he banged on the drum, the vein that ran from his bicep to his forearm bulged. I’d never thought a vein could be so sexy.
After I finished watching, the tub was nearing full so I used my toes to turn off the water. I knew I wouldn’t be able to relax enough to fall asleep tonight if I didn’t satisfy my curiosity, so I Googled Caine’s old stage name.
Able Arsen.
I was shocked when thousands of hits came back. Scrolling through like a fiend, I found picture after picture of Caine. He wasn’t the front man for the band, but apparently the media adored him—and who could blame them? I noticed the same girl in quite a few photos. She had long, dark hair and was thin—almost too thin. The hollow of her cheeks made her beautiful, high cheekbones jut out just a little too much. In most of the photos, she wore sunglasses and seemed to shun the attention of the camera. There were various pictures of her with the band, some with Caine’s arm around her in an almost protective way. She was definitely younger than him—seventeen or eighteen, at best—and I couldn’t quite tell if she was his girlfriend or perhaps a little sister.
When I sorted the photos and articles into date order, with the oldest ones first, I realized the pictures seemed to have stopped abruptly nine years ago. Three or four pages down in the search results, there was an article about the death of the lead singer, Liam Marshal. Able Arsen had disappeared after that.
What happened to you, Able Arsen?
Better yet, how did you wind up Professor Caine West?
Caine
Fifteen years ago
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” Looking up at the cross in the tiny, dimly lit room, I inhaled, sucking deep until the red ember tip burned through to the end of the rolling paper, heating my thumb and forefinger.
“You can’t ask forgiveness for shit when you’re in the middle of sinning again. You’re supposed to be repentful, dickwad.”
“Show some respect with your language. We’re in a church, for Christ’s sake.”
Liam laughed from the other side of the dark booth. “Yeah, right. You just smoked a fatty in a confessional, and it’s my language that’s disrespectful.”
He had a point. And since my half-baked brain was transitioning nicely into full-on mellow mode, I ditched out the tiny remnant of my smoke on the floor and slipped it into my pocket while it was still warm.
“I’m outta here,” Liam said.
“We’re supposed to work until noon.”
“Screw that shit. Tell Father Frank I went home to spank one out if he looks for me.” The sliding wooden window we’d been talking through, the one that separated the two sides of the confessional and covered the confidentiality screen, slammed shut. The door followed right behind as Liam took off.
There was still a half hour until I could go sign out with Father Frank, so I settled in, leaning my back against the cushioned red fabric, hoping to catch a few z’s. The chair was pretty damn comfortable on the priest’s side, must have been because they got stuck listening to other people’s bullshit for hours every Saturday afternoon. I had no idea how these guys spent their entire lives in this place. Just being here for the last few Saturdays had been enough to freak me out.
Three weeks ago, my mother caught Liam and me ditching school again. It was our senior year, my mom was normally pretty cool, and parents expected a few cuts. That wasn’t what sent God-fearing Grace West off the deep end. It wasn’t even finding a half-naked and fully-stoned Emily Willis on her knees about to give me a blowjob in the yard that had freaked Mom out. Nope. What had gotten me involuntarily signed up for a month of cleaning St. Killian’s on Saturday mornings was my music. Both of my parents hated that I had no intention of going to college or becoming part of the upstanding, family-owned investment firm that bore the West name.
So, I was sentenced to community service for wanting to play my drums and sing. After Father Frank’s long talk with my mother, he also took every chance to remind Liam and me that playing music was no way for a man to make a living. Thank God, I only had one more week left here.
I’d just started to zone out with my eyes shut when the confessional door squeaked open. I had assumed it was Liam again.
“Sin again so soon, loser?” I said.
It sure as hell wasn’t Liam who responded. The voice was tiny and shook with nerves as she spoke. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
Shit.
A little girl was on the other side and had assumed I was a priest. From the sound of her voice, I figured she couldn’t have been older than ten or eleven. What the hell could she have to confess?
I probably should have opened the door and walked out before she started to let me in on her darkest secrets. No, not probably. I definitely should have walked out. But…maybe it was the good weed. Maybe it was the sound of her shaky little voice that had me curious. Maybe I was just fucked up in the head. But instead of literally opening the door, I opened a figurative one instead. One that I had no idea would change my life forever when I opened my mouth.
“Go on,” I told her. “Tell me your sins.”
Rachel
Caine had slipped in halfway through the class.
Suddenly I could understand why he found lateness distracting. For the last twenty minutes, I’d been distracted by the man sitting in the seat I’d sat in during the last class. Next to him, Mr. Ludwig, the beanie-wearing artist of nudes, looked as nervous as I felt. Although his nervousness probably had more to do with the fact that the professor had just quietly slipped the notebook he’d been drawing in again today from his desk, and it was now closed and sitting in Caine’s bag.
I tried not to look up to where they were sitting, yet I could feel Caine’s eyes watching me. How is it that I had two hundred pairs of eyes focused on me, and I only sensed two?
I cleared my throat. “Since we have a few minutes before the end of class, I’m going to hand out the headphones we spoke about earlier.” I went to th
e supply closet in the corner of the classroom and pulled out a box. Handing it to the first row, I asked the student in the corner to take one and pass the box down as I delivered a full box to each row. Caine got up and quietly grabbed a few boxes to help me distribute to the rows at the back of the lecture hall before taking his seat again. As I distributed, I reminded the class of the exercise that built on Professor’s West first assignment, and then I gave them one of my own.
“Along with the exercise we already discussed, I’d like you all to do a second listening assignment. We all have songs that remind us of good times in our early teens. Pick out the one that has the strongest memory for you. Tonight, when you’re alone at home, I want you to shut the blinds, turn off all of the lights, and get the room as dark as you can. Then lie flat on your back somewhere comfortable, preferably in your bed, and listen to the song that holds those memories for you using the Bose headphones. Listen to it twice. That’s it. Nice and simple. We’ll use what you hear in an upcoming class.”
After the class had emptied, Caine walked to the front. “Nice job.”
“Thank you. I didn’t think you’d be sitting in. It kind of threw me when you walked in late.” I smirked. “I don’t like lateness. I find it disrupts my class.”
Caine raised a brow. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
I packed my laptop into my bag. “Mr. Ludwig didn’t look happy to see you.”
“Mr. Ludwig is lucky he’s still sitting in my class at all.”
Caine helped me collect the leftover headphones from each row, and then we consolidated the stragglers to make one box of headphones and nested the empty boxes inside each other.
“So, what’s your song?” he asked.
My brows drew down. “Hmmm?”
“The assignment you gave. What’s the song that reminds you of your childhood?” What immediately came to mind was an old Lynyrd Skynyrd song, “Devil in a Bottle,” but that was a little more honesty than I could handle.
“I don’t know. Probably anything from Maroon 5.” Since I was a crappy liar, I avoided his eyes. But when I glanced up at him, I caught him doing that squinting thing. “What?” I asked.
“You’re full of shit.”
“What are you talking about?” I attempted to play dumb. Unfortunately, I felt my cheeks heat under his stare.
“There’s a song you thought of right away. And it wasn’t a damn Maroon 5 song.” He scratched at his chin. “I bet there’s more than one, too.”
Rather than continue to lie, I decided to turn the table. “What’s your song, Professor Know-It-All?”
He held my eyes. “‘Going, Going, Gone’.”
“Bob Dylan?”
“That’s the one.”
Hmm… Off the top of my head, I couldn’t think of the words, but I knew it was a heavy and heartfelt song. I’d definitely be listening to that later on tonight with my borrowed Bose headphones. No better way to hone my critical-listening skills than trying to figure out the mystery of Caine West. Since he’d shared, I felt compelled to give him something. “‘Hurt’.”
He nodded. “The original Johnny Cash or Nine Inch Nails?”
I smiled. “Johnny. Always. He was my mom’s favorite.”
There was a tension between us as we looked at each other. Every time we were together I’d felt it. Each time it was a little different than the last, but the tension was always there—a crackle in the air. Today’s wasn’t so much sexual in nature as it was a feeling of understanding and acceptance. We’d both have depressing titles in our lives as narrated by song. Which reminded me…
“I heard another rumor about you.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Well, actually, it was a rumor, but I know it to be true now. So I’m not sure it’s a rumor anymore.”
“You’ve figured out the rumors about me being an arrogant asshole are true, huh?” Caine teased. “That wasn’t a hard one.”
“Actually, this one was more along the lines of you being a closet rock star signed to a label.”
I knew the second the words came out of my mouth that I’d made a mistake. Caine’s face, which had been warm and playful, morphed into cold and serious. I’d crossed a line and overstepped somewhere he didn’t want me. He was more than a little pissed off.
“Keep out of my personal life, Rachel.”
I opened my mouth to apologize, but he cut me off.
“You should get to your other job. It might be the only one you have soon.” With that, he grabbed his leather bag and was up the stairs and out of the classroom before I could even shut my big mouth, which had been hanging open.
He punctuated his exit with a slam of the classroom door that left the walls shaking in his wake.
“You sure everything is okay?”
It was the third time Charlie had asked. The first time was when I dropped a full tray of drinks on the floor. Two of the glasses shattered, and I was so dazed cleaning it up that I sliced open my finger. The second time, I was lost in my head and over poured a beer from the tap. Now he was getting ready to leave, and his face was etched with concern.
“I’m fine, Charlie. Just a little tired,” I lied. “I stayed up working on my thesis, and I have a bit of a headache. But I’m fine. I’m sorry about earlier.”
“I could give two shits about the glasses as long as you’re okay.” He looked me in the eyes. “You’re sure? I can stay and you could take off.”
I smiled. “I’m good. But thank you.”
Wednesday night was the slowest night of the week anyway. It was just Al and me tonight, an old retired cop friend of Charlie’s who worked the bar a few nights a week. I was glad Ava wasn’t working so I wouldn’t be grilled about my mood. All evening, my emotions had jumped back and forth between feeling bad that I’d pried into Caine’s life and feeling pissed that he’d been such an asshole when I mentioned his past.
There were only a few customers in the small, open dining area that adjoined the bar, which left me ample time to overanalyze what had transpired between me and Caine this afternoon. Clearly I’d ventured into territory where I wasn’t welcome, but it didn’t feel like it was because of our pseudo employee-employer relationship. He led the way poking into my personal life, so it wasn’t as if having a personal-ish relationship was out of bounds for him. This felt more like I’d touched a nerve than pushed the boundaries too far. He’d said, “Keep out of my personal life,” yet for reasons that didn’t make any sense, I was certain he meant Keep out of this area of my personal life.
But that wasn’t what was bugging me. Don’t get me wrong, I felt bad that I’d upset him. I would have felt bad for intruding on anyone’s life in an area where they didn’t want a flashlight shined. What was confusing was the degree to which it bothered me. I was attracted to Caine on a physical level, that I couldn’t deny—who wouldn’t be? But him being so curt and upset made me realize my attraction to him was more than physical. I was crushing on my damn professor. Since that first day after class, I’d been drawn to him on another level.
Just before nine, I came out of the ladies’ room and checked on my one remaining couple who lingered at their table having coffee. Out of my peripheral vision, I spotted someone who had seated himself at one of the pub tables and went over to make sure he knew the kitchen was already closed for the day. I was shocked to find it was Caine sitting alone at the table.
“Professor? What are you doing here?”
His eyes answered for him. There was trouble lurking in the background. “Can you sit for a few minutes?”
“Ummm…sure. Let me just drop off the bill at my last table, and I’ll let Al know they’ll bring it up to him when they’re ready.”
Caine nodded. “Thank you.”
When I returned, there was already a Diet Coke on my side of the table and a beer in front of Caine. Untying my apron, I sat down and waited for him to speak.
“I want to apologize for this afternoon,” he said.
“I should be the
one to apologize. I shouldn’t have been poking around in your personal life.”
“That’s true.” He smiled. “But I was wrong for the way I reacted.”
I shook my head. “If there’s anyone who should know there are things in people’s pasts they might not want brought up, it’s me.”
Caine nodded. He rubbed one finger around the top of his beer bottle. “I listened to some Johnny Cash tonight.”
“You did?”
He held my eyes. “I think we both have parts of our lives we’d rather not shake for fear of waking them up.”
That described perfectly the way I felt about my past. For the most part, I’d moved on and didn’t think about it on a daily basis. But it was always with me, and I worked hard to keep it locked away.
“Yes. I’m sorry. I really wasn’t thinking. I’m sure there’s a reason you don’t mention your history in your classes.”
Caine drank his beer, watching me over the rim. When he set it down, he asked, “How did you find out?”
I didn’t want to get anyone in trouble. “A friend of a friend.”
He nodded.
I thought it was best to come clean all the way. I took a deep breath before confessing. “And I might have Googled you. Well, not you. Adam’s other son.”
Caine shook his head, but there was a sad smile on his face. “I needed a haircut.”
“You were in style. I liked it. You had the whole sexy-bad-boy thing going on.”
“I’ll keep that in mind next time I go to the barber.”
“Can I just ask you one thing?”
“Will it help put this shit to bed?”
I smiled. “It will.”
“What’s your question?”
“The last article I read said you’d signed a record deal. But I couldn’t find an album. What happened?”
Caine was quiet for a while. His thumb rubbed at the label of his beer bottle when he spoke. “The lifestyle was tough. Partying, staying up all night, sleeping away half the day. It made me lose track of reality and my priorities.” He looked up at me. “After we signed with the label, we missed honoring the deadlines a few times. Album kept getting pushed back. Then I lost someone close to me.”