“Yes!” I spoke up, although I was afraid the stepbeast might hear. I waited for him to pick up the phone again, but he didn’t.
“Good.” Dale strummed idly, the sound of the guitar more prominent than his voice. “Hmm, let’s see. Well, this is what I was playing before I called you.”
It was familiar but I couldn’t place it at first, and then I did. It was Sting’s Every Breath You Take. Aimee called it the “stalker song,” and she teased me every time it came on the radio or we saw the video—the one with Sting and all the candles—on MTV, “Sara! Isn’t this your song for Tyler Vincent?”
And then Dale began to sing and everything else in the world went away. My dismal first week at the academy, the stepbeast, even Tyler Vincent, they all faded away, lost in the crowd, because Dale was in the spotlight and he was all I could focus on. Even if he resembled Tyler Vincent, he didn’t sound a thing like him. His voice was deeper, more rough around the edges, and this song, in his voice, was like listening to a husky lullaby.
I felt myself floating on his words, every sound another cloud that sent me drifting away, caught up in the music, his voice. I didn’t know how honored I would feel to be given such an intimate show. He was playing, and it was beautiful, but he wasn’t playing for just anyone. It wasn’t like listening to a record or a song on the radio, because he was playing just for me.
When the song ended, there was a brief silence. I couldn’t move or open my eyes or breathe. I was far away, and yet closer to anyone than I think I’d ever been when he picked up the phone and said my name.
“Wow.” It was all I could manage. “Wow.”
“See, that’s how I felt when I saw your sketch.”
I blushed. “Subject aside, of course.”
“I’m just jealous,” he admitted in a soft tone that stole all my breath.
“Of Tyler Vincent? Because he’s a rock star?”
He paused. “No, because you like him more than me.”
“Don’t be so sure about that,” I murmured, my heart soaring in my chest. I refused to open my eyes to look at Tyler Vincent papering my walls, staring back at me. All I could think about was Dale. No, worse… at the moment, he was all I wanted to think about. “So do you play electric guitar too?”
“Hell yeah.” I heard him grinning. “But my amp sucks. I use Terry’s old one when we practice and it sounds awful. I sold the amp last year to buy a car and I sold the car to buy my new electric guitar.”
“Oh the irony.”
“Tell me about it. So…” He was strumming again, every pass of his fingers over the strings resonating in my body like I was a tuning fork. “So what are your plans this evening?”
“Not a thing.” There was no Tyler Vincent, no painting to finish, no contest to enter, no stepbeast lurking outside my door.
There was nothing but Dale Diamond.
“Good, because I want to talk to you for a long time.”
And we did.
CHAPTER SIX
“So where’s this stud of yours, Sara?” Carrie scanned the lunch room as she sat down at the table with her usual tray and I snitched a fry while she was preoccupied. Wendy was at the front of the fast food line and she waved when she saw me looking her way.
“Still at the stud farm?” Aimee snickered. She had lemon Yoplait today.
“You guys, come on,” I protested, looking nervously around the cafeteria. I hadn’t seen him since Friday—he told me he had band practice all weekend, to make up for lost time during the week now that classes had started at the academy—but we’d talked for hours on the phone until the stepbeast made us get off. “He’s new here. Let’s not make him feel like a side of beef, all right?”
“Sure.” Carrie blinked innocently but she flashed me a mischievous grin. “No problem. So where is he?”
“Where’s who?” Wendy slid her identical tray next to Carrie’s. She had hot pink spandex biker shorts under her mini-skirt today, a compromise with Mr. West, who had called her down to the office for wearing fishnets. I was getting so sick of being treated like little kids. This wasn’t high school! “Oh my God, that’s him.”
I looked up, my heart already lurching in my chest, seeing him standing in the doorway, talking to Holly Larson of all people. She was doing everything she could to keep his attention, putting a hand on his arm, leaning in to say something more intimate. Dale turned away from her, his gaze scanning the lunch room, and I saw he was wearing a Sex Pistols t-shirt under a black denim jacket, acid-washed jeans and combat boots. And of course, that signature belt.
Aimee glared. “Looks like Holly’s got her claws in your man, Sara.”
“He’s not—” My voice gave out when Holly flipped her blonde hair over her shoulder—the hair flip!—and laughed loudly, loud enough for all of us to hear, even over the noise of the cafeteria.
“He’s yours if you want him,” Carrie observed, pointing, and I grabbed her finger, pulling it down and meeting Dale’s eyes. He was looking right at me, his eyes brightening, pleased and surprised, and it made me feel faint, a heat filling my whole body, as if the most intense spotlight in the world had just been trained on me.