by Emme Rollins, Julia Kent, Anna Antonia, Helena Newbury, Aubrey Rose
“Positive.” I took the shoes out of the other box. “Can I borrow these?”
She wore a shoe half a size bigger than me, but it was close enough.
“For what?”
“Incentive.” I grinned, pulling my oversize t-shirt off and slipping on the Black Diamond one. It was three sizes too small, making it more of a half-shirt, coming down to just above my navel and hugging my breasts like a second skin. Balancing against the sink, I yanked off my socks and slipped Aimee’s new shoes on. They were higher than anything I was used to wearing—three inches at least—a soft, velvet heel with a black strap around the ankle and a silver buckle on the side. Sexy as hell.
I bent to do the buckles and then stood next to Aimee in the mirror, surveying the landscape, which was quite attractive.
Aimee gave a low whistle. “Your legs go on forever in those things.”
“Sure you don’t mind?” I turned to look at myself from behind, jeans huggingly tight, the shirt revealing a good expanse of my lower back.
Aimee shook her head. “Dale is going to die. He’s going to jump you right there in the middle of the mall.”
“That’s the idea.” I grinned, reaching for my purse and searching through it for my makeup bag. “Let’s make the boys drool.”
Aimee gave me the bag full of clothes so I could stash them in my car—she’d be going home with Matt—and we walked out of the bathroom two very different women than had gone in. Aimee left her long hair down on my suggestion, but I’d gathered mine up, pulling it back in a banana clip, a loose, intentionally messy look that left my neck exposed. Tempting. I hoped.
If I’d had any doubts before I saw Dale turn as we approached, they vanished the minute I caught the look on his face. He and Matt stood talking where the t-shirt table had been, but it was gone now, along with Dale’s father and the band. Matt saw us first, jaw dropping and eyes widening. A few wolf-whistles followed us.
I heard Aimee giggle, felt her nudge me, but Dale glanced in our direction and the moment he did, everything else disappeared.
I thought I’d memorized every possible Dale-look, but this one floored me. I actually stopped in my tracks, feeling the force of it from five feet away. It wasn’t the same voracious gaze I’d almost grown used to from him, the one that followed me through the halls at the academy, leaving me breathless and aching alone in my car when we said goodbye. This was far more dangerous than that.
This look said mine. No one had ever looked at me in such a way before, utterly possessive in not just gaze but action too. Dale took two strides toward me, pulling me into the circle of his arms and growling into my ear. No words, but a low, sustained growl rumbling through my whole body, his hands on my lower back again, this time touching skin, the shock of it thrilling me beyond words. I dropped Aimee’s shopping bag and my purse onto the floor, putting my arms around him, feeling his body tighten, like a bowstring pulled too taut, an arrow just waiting to be released.
“Hungry?” I whispered, my lips brushing his neck, not a kiss, just a caress. I felt his breath catch and his arms tighten, crushing me, not that I cared. I’d never felt so wanted.
He groaned, pulling back to meet my eyes. “Fucking starving.”
The way he looked at me, I knew he wasn’t talking about food.
Of course, neither was I.
CHAPTER NINE
“Hey, we’re going,” Aimee called. Matt held her hand as they walked by. “We’ll see you at the movie?”
It wasn’t a double-date, but we would end up at the same theater.
“See you,” I said weakly, forcing myself to look away from Dale’s dark gaze and waving as they headed toward the mall exit. Aimee grinned back at me and gave me a goofy thumbs up over her shoulder.
“BEE good, you two!” Dale called, letting me go, at least partially, sliding an arm around my waist so he could turn and wave to them.
Matt barked a laugh, waving back, and Aimee shot me a scathing look that said I was obviously in big trouble for telling Dale the bee story, all while sticking her tongue out and simultaneously flipping him off.
I laughed, reaching down to pick up my purse and the shopping bag full of clothes. Dale took my hand as we headed toward the food court, my heels clicking loudly on the mall tile floor, reminding me with every step what I was wearing. And it was getting noticed, just like I had planned—although it was Dale I wanted to notice, not the adolescent guys passing us doing double-takes and making remarks just out of earshot.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of our t-shirts look so attractive,” Dale snapped as we neared the food court.
“You like it?” I teased.
He tilted his head at me, smirking. “I think I’d like it better off you.”
We were at the food court now and I tossed my purse and the shopping bag into a chair at an empty table, making like I was about to strip off my t-shirt right there in the middle of the mall. Dale scowled, grabbing my hands and pulling me to him.
“Hey. That’s mine.”
Mine. He actually said the word written all over his face. It went through me like an arrow. It could have pinned me right to him, straight through my heart, and I wouldn’t have cared.
“What do you want?” His eyes softened as he looked down at me, and for just a moment, I inwardly panicked.
I’d asked myself the same question. Constantly. I had two front row seats to see Tyler Vincent tucked away in my purse like the most delicious secret in the world, and I could have cared less. What was wrong with me? What did I want? I thought I knew. Before Dale Diamond came along, I could have told you in detail what I wanted. Now I had no idea.
“Sara, you’re starving. I can hear your stomach growling. Don’t you ever eat?”
That’s when I realized he was asking me what I wanted to eat.
“You’ve seen me eat.” I felt my face turning red, embarrassed he’d noticed, but of course he had.
His eyes narrowed slightly. “You’re not anorexic are you?”
I shook my head, deciding to sacrifice my best friend rather than tell him my own truth. “Not me. Aimee’s the one who’s anorexic. Well, she was. Anorexic and bulimic. That’s why she’s at the academy this year. She didn’t graduate because she spent most of our senior year in a treatment center.”
He nodded, thoughtful. “And you?”
“I’m not anorexic!” I scoffed. “I eat Skittles and pizza. And big piles of orange chicken from Manchu Wok.”
I pointed to the Manchu Wok in the corner of the food court, grinning.
He laughed. “Is that what you want?”
“Yep. Can I pay you back?” It was what I’d said all week long when he insisted I accompany him through the fast-food lunch line and I couldn’t resist a slice of pizza or a bag of fries.
“Stop saying you’re going to pay me back. I got it, okay?”
“Okay.”
“You stay here. I’ll be right back.” Dale started toward Manchu Wok, stopping and looking back at me, thoughtful, and then turned around, shrugging off his black denim jacket and draping it over my shoulders as I sat at the table. He gave a short, satisfied nod and turned on his heels again, going to buy us dinner.
I sat and smiled to myself like an idiot, watching him standing in line.
I hated not having money. I hated being poor. Kensington Gardens offered cheap housing to low-income families—like mine—but I wondered why Dale and his father had ended up in such a rundown place. John, Dale’s father, seemed like a nice man, smart—he must be, to have obtained a teaching position at Rutgers. Maybe he didn’t realize when he signed the lease what type of people lived at Kensington? Or maybe he’d chosen it because it was so close to the academy where Dale would be finishing his high school diploma? His salary at Rutgers couldn’t be that bad, I reasoned.
I wished I still had the job at Dairy Queen. I’d used all my money to pay for my car and had tucked the rest away into a secret bank account no one knew about, except Aimee,
for my impending trip to Maine. But my job at Dairy Queen had been seasonal, the summer before our senior year. I had worked on and off at the beginning of our senior year at the movie theater, taking tickets. That was a much better job than Dairy Queen, paid better too, and I’d put even more into savings, but then everything at home had imploded and I couldn’t work or go to school or do anything anymore.
Dale was ordering our food, and I noticed how girls noticed him. I couldn’t blame them really. He drew my eye instantly. I found myself looking at him, staring at him, unable to take my eyes off him. It was sick, but there seemed to be no cure for this disease. He wasn’t just a rock star on stage. It was like he was born to be one. People already looked at him that way, and at the age of twenty, it was disconcerting to find someone like Dale in the middle of my tiny town in New Jersey. You didn’t expect to find someone like him here. Maybe in New York, or California, where everyone was beautiful and perfect and aspired to be an actor or a musician. But here?
Dale reached into his back pocket for his wallet, giving me another flash of that sexy, studded belt he always wore. I wondered at its significance. He wore it like a talisman, all the time. Maybe it was just part of the marketing plan, the t-shirts, like the one I wore with its eye-catching logo, the tie-in of the band name, Black Diamond, with his own last name. It was all very smart.
Whatever the reason, the belt was hot. Dale wearing the belt was hotter. I couldn’t help but think about him. Somehow he had replaced my nighttime fantasies of Tyler Vincent. I didn’t know when it had happened in the short time I’d known him, but Dale Diamond had obscured Tyler Vincent like a solar eclipse, leaving only a faded ring, like a faint stain from a mug on a coffee table. Was what I felt for Tyler Vincent really so shallow?
I was ashamed and even a little embarrassed by my loyalty shift from the only man who had filled my thoughts for the past five years to the guy paying for my dinner at Manchu Wok in the mall food court. One was larger than life, on screen and everywhere, all the time. The other was in my life, here, with me, and looked at me in a way I hardly could believe was real.
He was looking at me that way as he made his way back to our table, putting down the tray and giving me a once over as I leaned back in my chair, smiling at him. I saw him glance at the expanse of skin above the waistband of my jeans and below the far too-tight and too-small end of the Black Diamond t-shirt I was wearing. It felt good to know he both appreciated the way I looked, and at the same time, wanted to keep it to himself, as evidenced by the jacket he had put around my shoulders before he left.
“I got you a Coke.” Dale sat, not across from me, but next to me, unpacking the food, sliding a Styrofoam tray of orange chicken and noodles in front of me. My stomach growled its thanks, and I grabbed a plastic fork, digging in happily. I hadn’t eaten like this in a long time. Not that any of it, the pizza and the fries and the Coke and Manchu Wok, were good for me, or anyone for that matter. It’s just that we never ate out. There was just no money for it. Not even McDonald’s. Food like this was exotic and painfully delicious to my palate, all the salt and sugar and fat concentrated in every bite. This stuff was like a party in my mouth when I was used to granola bars and peanut butter and jelly and dry cereal because the milk had run out and we didn’t have the money to buy more.
Most importantly, my body seemed to know it was Dale who was feeding me and rejoiced with every bite, like it was turning this junk food into fuel for the fire I already had burning in my belly for him.
“So Aimee’s at the academy because she was in treatment last year?” Dale picked up our conversation where we’d left off, spooning fried rice into his mouth at a dizzying pace.
“Yeah.” I frowned, remembering. “Our friendship almost ended over it. I was the one who told her mom. Aimee forgave me… eventually.”
Dale nodded, chewing thoughtfully. “You did the right thing. She’s obviously better now.”
“Better, yes.” I shrugged. “Not completely, maybe not ever. She still has her issues with food and dieting and stuff. But she’s not eighty pounds anymore.”
He gave a low whistle. “That’s emaciated.”
“She was pretty sick,” I agreed. I didn’t like to think about it. She’d fooled everyone for so long, wearing big clothes to hide it. If I hadn’t walked in on her in the bathroom one morning after a sleepover—she’d locked the door, but it hadn’t closed all the way and had just pushed open—she might have ended up in the cemetery instead of a treatment center.
“So how did you end up at the academy?”
I couldn’t tell him even though I wanted to. He wasn’t asking because it was perfunctory. This wasn’t just making casual conversation. He was genuinely interested in me. He just wanted to know. But I still couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t reveal something so dark, so sinister. Not to this bright, dazzling, amazing guy sitting next to me. What would he think of me then? It would ruin everything.
Some part of me said, “Go ahead. Tell him.” That part of me wanted to sabotage the fragile bud beginning to bloom between us. If I told him now, he’d never talk to me again. Then I would be free once more to pursue my crazy but persistent obsession with Tyler Vincent. I could move to Maine and go to college there without any guilt or remorse. Telling him would force him to reject me. I knew it’s what I should do. It’s what my head told me was the smartest, most logical thing in the world I could do.
“You tell me first,” I said through a mouthful of noodles, grabbing my Coke and taking a long sip.
“I dropped out in my senior year. Three years ago.” Dale sipped his Coke too, looking at me over the rim. He had a way of seeing into me that was disconcerting. I felt naked in front of him.
“Let me guess? You wanted to make it in the music business?”
“My parents were having problems.” He sat back in his chair, picking at his food. “My mom left. Me and my dad moved to Seattle. That’s when I really started getting serious about music.”
“And your dad was okay with you quitting school?”
He snorted. “No. But I didn’t give him a say. I moved out.”
“So how did you end up here?”
“I told you. He got a job at Rutgers.” He seemed far away now, distant. I didn’t like it.
“But you weren’t living with him?”
Dale shrugged. “He asked me to come with him. Said he’d pay for everything, let me live with him, and I could pursue my music as long as I was working on getting my diploma.”
I nodded. “So the academy is your compromise.”
“Well, I knew about the Battle of the Bands before we moved.” He flashed me a brief smile. God, that dimple. “MTV did them last year in New York, and I had it on good authority they were going to do them again this year. I figured I’d have time to put a band together and give it a shot.”
“Well now that I’ve seen you, I think you’ve got a pretty good one,” I said honestly. That was an understatement. I couldn’t imagine anyone beating them.
“You think so?”
I nudged him with my knee under the table. “I think you know it.”
“I still like to hear it.” He turned to look at me, his eyes searching. “Especially from you.”
I smiled, reaching over and taking his hand, giving him exactly what he’d asked for. He deserved it. “You’re very good. You’re an amazing singer. You’re an incredible performer. I’ve never seen a crowd go crazy like that for someone they’d never seen before. I mean, becoming a celebrity takes time. Exposure. I think you’re one of those people who draws other people in. Like a magnet. You’re going to have people following you around, no matter what you do. For the rest of your life.”
He was actually blushing. “Why do you say that?”
“Because that’s how you make me feel,” I confessed, biting my lip, almost wishing I hadn’t said it.
“Hm.” He made a little noise in his throat, turning my hand over in his, tracing the lines in my palm with his fingerti
p like he was following a road map. “How do I make you feel?”
“Like I would follow you anywhere,” I whispered.
He lifted my hand and pressed his lips to my palm, closing his eyes briefly, and I noticed how long and dark his lashes were before he looked at me with his intense, blue gaze, telling me more with one look than either of us could ever say in words.
“When I saw you in the audience today, I don’t even know how to tell you what it did to me.” He shook his head, twining his fingers with mine.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were performing?”
“Because I didn’t want that to happen.” He gave a short laugh. “I didn’t want to be distracted. I wasn’t supposed to let myself get distracted.”
“That’s it!” I snapped my fingers. Now all the dirty looks made sense. “Your band thinks I’m your Yoko Ono, don’t they?”
“You kind of are.” He met my eyes, the emotion in them so strong I felt it before he even said the words. “Sara, I don’t think you understand what you do to me.”
“What do you mean?” Now it was my turn to ask him.
“I couldn’t think,” he confessed. “Thank God the song was over, because the minute I saw you… I was done for.”
“Oh please.” I smiled, teasing him. “All those screaming girls. I’m surprised they weren’t throwing panties at you.”
“Sometimes they do.” He grinned. “But that never mattered to me.”
I blinked in surprise. “What does matter to you?”
“Now? You.” He squeezed my hand in his, that was all, but the sensation shot up my arm with a jolt that nearly knocked me off my chair.
“Dale, do you realize how crazy that sounds?” I whispered, glancing around like someone might overhear us. “We’ve only known each other for a week.”
“Sometimes the best things in life are crazy.”
I laughed. “I can’t argue with that.”
It was crazy.
It was all crazy.
Me and Tyler Vincent.
Me and Dale Diamond.
But somehow the latter had fully eclipsed the former in my mind—and my heart—at least in the moment. There wasn’t even a ring left around that sun.