CHAPTER 5

You ever have a dream that's so real you can't tell it apart from the truth?

That's the kind I've been having.

Dark, seductive shapes.

Whispered promises of things I told myself I never wanted.

I never used to dream, but lately I can't stop, and every time I dream it's the same.

Tonight in the headmaster's office after school it's no dream. It's a nightmare.

"Mr. Carlton, there's been an incident." The headmaster's imperious tone has an apologetic edge, like he'd rather be getting a colonoscopy than delivering the news.

Most people don't like pissing off Eddie Carlton. I get it.

"What kind of incident?" My mentor's voice is whisky on the rocks. The guy could view you out without losing that smoky depth.

I wish I could shove out of this too-low leather chair and stalk the hell out this "look how rich we are" office. Instead, I force my gaze to the blotter in on the headmaster's desk.

"Mr. Adams assaulted another member of the senior class. Mr. Albright is a member of the lacrosse team." The headmaster drones as if that matters.

"What he do to you?" Eddie demands.

I don't answer, but my knuckles grip the arm of the chair.

Since moving to Dallas, I've gotten a read on everyone at school.

Chris Albright? The blond douche talks a big game, and we moved in the same parties the times I bothered to attend them, but he always seemed harmless.

Until this weekend.

"You tell him about Chris, I'll tell him I woke up in your bed."

I rub my good hand over my jaw. They're still waiting on an answer.

"Nothing."

The headmaster sighs. "Mr. Carlton, we accommodated your... charge for his final semester. It's highly unorthodox to admit new students mid-year, particularly for seniors. We can't let this kind of behavior slide. It's for Mr. Adams benefit, but also for the other students and their parents."

"Then suspend him if you need to."

The headmaster's brows rise. "Fine. Thursday's a PA day, but you're suspended from school for the rest of the week."

That's less than Ideal. I'm not a stellar student, which means I'll need some extra studying time so I don't fall behind more than I have before exams.

I'm going to graduate high school if it kills me. Everyone else in my family did, and if they can, I sure as hell can.

The parking lot is almost empty at this hour, and Eddie doesn't say a word until he's at his car and I'm at my bike.

"You're not here to fuck around. You're here to work."

I hate that he's the one to remind me. "I know."

Most musicians would kill for the chance to work with Eddie Carton. Every time he picks up his guitar, or lays down a phrase, or picks up the headphones to listen with a critic's ear, I'm reminded.

Music's my path forward. It's how I'm gonna be independent, distance myself from my upbringing and my dad's reach.

After eighteen years of shitty luck, when I'd practically tossed in my chips and given up for good, life dealt me a straight flush: the biggest rock songwriter and performer of the last two decades not only invited me into his studio, he invited me into his home.

Eddie is more than a boss or a mentor. He's the father I could've had.

Except I couldn't have. He made sure of that.

I shake off the dark thoughts and flex my hand.

His gaze narrows. "You're a musician. You know better than to fuck up your hands." Eddie prods at my palm, and pain spikes up my arm. "Now you're home from school, and you can't even play. Was it worth it?"

I remember the look on Chris' face when I slammed my knuckles into his entitled jaw.

"It was my best work all week." I shift over my bike and reach for my helmet, but Eddie hasn't moved.

"Timothy, I care about your future, but I don't want this shit happening anywhere near my kid." I could laugh at the irony. "If anything else happens under my roof, you're out. We clear?"

I nod.

The world isn't a just place. Some people, like Eddie try to make it fair. They're only soothing their guilty consciences.

What about the ones who want to make the world better?

They're deluded. Admirable, beautiful, and deluded.

I take the long way home so Eddie's Bentley is parked when I pull into the garage and cut my engine.

I walk around the house and through the gardens.

Rose petals cover the ground in one spot, and I stop, thinking of what put them there Saturday night.

I pick up the rose that's broken off its bush and lying on the path. The petals are intact, the purple rich and royal and defiant in the twilight.

My hand squeezes into a fist, and I clench my jaw at the pain before setting the rose carefully on the flagstone wall bordering the garden and continuing on my way.

The hum from the pool drifts into my brain, and it takes me a second to notice the splashing as I emerge onto the open patio.

Through the pool's electric-blue water, her body is just visible. Her hair billows behind her like a cloud, her dark-blue bathing suit as me remembering the red one that made her legs look miles long Saturday night.

I pull out my phone and type out a text to the sophomore I met at UT Dallas back in January.

TIMOTHY: Come over tonight.

I moved through the pool house in the dark, dropping my phone on the bed. In the bathroom, I strip off my clothes and step into the shower. The spray washes away a day of frustration and anger.

Chris' lucky. He might not think so icing his face tonight, but he has no Idea what I'd have done if he'd hurt her.

When I moved to Dallas, I hadn't planned on being the rich kid's fascination, but it made everything easier catching up in school, blending in.

It's easy to stay on top when people don't know what you care about.

When they know how to hurt you...

You're weak.

I can't afford weakness. Not when I'm so close to making something of myself.

I want to get through graduation and leverage my work with Eddie into session gigs in Los Angeles, New York. I'll have enough to provide myself, enough to leave my shitty home life behind and be free.

Spoken like someone who's afraid.

Because I don't want to want it. I'm never going to make the same mistake of my father did.

When people get a taste of that life, it fucks with their head, destroys them and everyone around them. When the prospect of six figures turns to seven turns to eight...it stops being about the music and starts being about something ugly.

The spray goes cold, and I step out and towel off.

Despite my current surroundings, I don't accept kindness easily. A favor is a debt in disguise.

The favor Eddie did me by bringing me here isn't a new debt.

It's a payment on an old one.

I'm drying my hair when I jerk open the bathroom door and step out.

The hall lights on. I realize it a second before the sharp intake of breath has me freezing.

Emily Carlton's in the doorway, her eyes round with shock. The dark bathing suit is painted on her slow curves. Her wet hair is the color of melted toffee, and she's dripping on my floor. "Holy shit! Emily!"

Her attention isn't on the puddle she's leaving beneath her. It's not even on my face.

It's squarely between my legs.

I wrap the towel around my hips, taking longer than I should. "Hi."

"Hi." But her gaze lingers below my waist. "I needed a towel. The cabana's...big."

"It's big." I echo.

"It's out! It's out of towels!" she practically shouts, reddening. I don't bother to hide my amusement.

"Did you want this one?" The way she's staring. I can't resist asking. My hands hover on the knot.

"No!" Her gaze snaps to mine as I swallow my first laugh all day.

She goes to the linen closet while I dig out a pair of sweatpants from the dresser.

"The lights were out." she blurts over her shoulder, the flush lingering on her face. "I didn't think you'd be here, and I didn't think you'd be naked."

"Two-for-two."

The first time I saw Emily Carlton three years ago, she was listening to music on her headphones on a bench outside school in Philly. Her eyes were closed, lips curved as if she were on another plane. Lost in dream.

I didn't know her name, but I wanted to know what it was like where she was because nothing in my world felt like that.

Over the next few weeks, I learned she loved music and books, both popular and the ones you need Cliff Notes for. I learned she was compassionate, the kind of person whose heart aches for animals in shelter commercials and who always stops to talk and joke with people living on the street even if she's in a rush.

I also learned she was Eddie Carlton's daughter.

To this day, it's the only thing about her I'd change if I could.

'I thought you'd be at Big Leap." Emily wraps a towel around her body, knots it at her chest.

I think of Eddie's former tour bus converted to a mobile studio, in the driveway. "I've been dismissed."

"Seriously? My Dad thinks you walk on water."

My attention lingers on her legs a beat too long before I look away. I tug on the sweatpants, leaving them low on my hips.

"No one walks on water except your stepmom Haley." Eddie's wife could burn the house down, and he'd just take her face in his hands and ask her who'd pissed her off so he could bring them down. It would be ridiculous if she wasn't so completely deserving of it.

I turn to see Emily working on a knot in the hair that hangs in wet chunks over her shoulder, ending at her breasts. She let out a little growl, and against my better judgement, I close the distance between us. "Stop. You're going to rip your hair."

Picking guitar? No problem. Girl hair? Not my zone of genius. But I'll try because my biggest pet peeves are celebrity couple names, people who can't park without taking up two spaces, and watching Emily Carlton hurt herself.

I expect her to fight me, but she huffs out a breath and drops her hands.

She was always cute, even back when she was a naive fourteen and I was a worldly sixteen.

That changed when I wasn't looking, because now she's just the awkward side of beautiful. Her amber eyes reveal every thought, her pink lips are full in every variation of smiling and frowning, and the slight shoulders that curve inward when she's lost in a book or listening to music on headphones make you want to hold her against your side.

Not that she'd stay there. The girl's a live wire.

"Did you start the poetry assignment?" Emily asks, dragging me back.

Her voice is lower than most of the girl's at school, with this little lift at the end that makes you do a second take. Like when a girl walks by in a long skirt and you don't notice the full-length slit up the side until she's passed you.

"My future is music, not essays. Suffering for your craft is legit, but I'm not gonna suffer for someone else's."

She turns that over. "I'm suffering but not getting anywhere. Miss Norma wants to give Carla the lead."

Emily's low admission surprises me.

'Why?"

"Carla gets in my head at rehearsal."

Emily turns toward me as much as she can given my hold on her. Her gaze lingers on my chest because it's at eye level, not because she's thinking about me naked.

"You'd never be in this position." she goes on. "Not because Carla wouldn't sabotage you, but because you're too good to let it affect you."

Pleasure unfurls in my gut without permission. Most girls who see me play get dreamy-eyed, but it has nothing to do with my abilities.

At least not with a guitar.

I force myself to focus on my task and not her flushed face. "Why do you want it so badly?"

Shit, this is impossible. I'm like Sisyphus if his boulder were instead a thousand strands of glorious tangled silk.

"Because on that stage, you're everything." Her voice is full and wistful, lifting the hairs on my arms. "A magician. A therapist. An artist. You have the privilege of an audience's attention. They trust you to make them feel, make them believe. Name one place other than the stage where you become a god by falling on your knees."

The knot's almost free, but my fingers stop moving.

This. This is why I shouldn't be a breath away from Emily Carlton. Because no one moves through the world like her. She's not afraid of its beauty and its darkness. She sees more, feels more, than anyone I've ever met. Spending time with her makes me believe I've witnessed something precious.

Precious things are dangerous.

"But I can't do that unless I can get over this bullshit with Carla."

I finish untangling her hair and lay it across her shoulder, the ends brushing the top of her towel.

"Then be so good they can't look away."

"Thanks for the advice...and the hair styling." Her chuckles has me drawing a rough breath before she pins me in place with those amber eyes, the softness of her lips. The scratch on her cheek is fading, and I want to trace it bu rein in the impulse.

I turn away, crossing to the dresser for a T-shirt because I've just realized there are way too few clothed body parts in this room.

"Chris' face was turning the color of rotten bananas in rehearsal." she says as I'm pulling the shirt over my head.

I freeze.

Shit!

"I don't know---"

"You're so busted."

I tug the hem down as I turn back to her. "I'm suspended until the weekend. Saturday through a mind numbing lecture from headmaster."

She folds her arms over her chest, which my gaze drop to the little indentation between her breasts too close to where the towel's knotted. "But you didn't tell my Dad. Why?"

I shake my head.

Emily crosses to me with deliberate steps, and I'm too surprised to stop her before she reaches for my hand.

Unlike Eddie, she doesn't make it worse, just inspects the reddened knuckles before sighing. "So, when Chris hurts me, it deserves punishment, but when you hurt me, it's fine."

Her words lift the hairs on my neck and our gazes lock. Adrenaline surges through me.

She wants to do this now.

Fucking good. I've been waiting for it for four months.

I step closer until her towel brushes my chest. "If this is about me not answering your messages after you moved to Dallas, I had a ton of shit going on."

She lifts her chin, unwilling to be intimidated. "Is that when your dad started locking you out?"

Pain has my gut twisting. "Still don't wanna talk about---"

"Fine." Her eyes flash. "Then let's talk about what happened when you came here and everyone at Oakwood fell in love with you."

Everyone? I want to ask, but she's already going on.

"I could handle the weird popularity thing. But at Carla's party, the way we talked and laughed and..." She shakes her head, the expression on her face shifting from anger to longing in a way that has my abs tightening. "I started to think we could be us again, even if you had other friends. Even if we hadn't talked in months."

"That's why I made you Rice Krispies squares the next morning like we used to. I came here to talk, but you weren't alone."

My heart stops because I'm starting to see where this is going.

Emily goes on, though I wish she wouldn't. "There was a UT lanyard on the hook by the door, a girl's boots on the mat."

"You were jealous?" My voice is hoarse with incredulity because of all the thoughts tha'd occured to me, that wasn't one of them.

"No." She shoves angrily at my chest, but I don't budge. "But I overhead you tell her I was nothing. Nobody."

Fuck.

"I've been called nobody before," she goes on, her voice oddly hollow. "but I never expected it from you."

That hollowness must be contagious because it takes up residence in my gut, spreading with every breath.

I knew something had upset her, but she blocked me the next day with her phone. The day after with her heart.

She'd decided our friendship was over, and I let her do it.

It was what I wanted, wasn't it?

The first thing Eddie told me when he offered me this opportunity was to stay away from his daughter, Emily.

Now, I want to take it all back.

I want to tell her she's more something than every other Oakwood students.

I want to protect the heart she wears on he sleeves like a fashion accessory.

"What do you want from me?" There's desperation in my words. Anything she asks me for right now, I'll give to her.

Her next breath fill her lungs, my ears. "I want to forget you, Timothy."

Six words.

Each one tears a layer off my heart.

It's her pain, but somehow I'm the one feeling scraped and bloody.

My phone buzzes on the bed, and my stomach drops before I read the text.

I squeeze my eyes shut as I tug on my hair hard enough my scalp hurts. "You gotta go."

"What?"

A knock comes at the door, and Emily opens it.

Tricia's surprised face appears, and every curse word I've heard and some I haven't stream through my head at once.

Emily's body stiffens, and I get why even before Tricia hangs her UT lanyard on the hook by the door.

But before I can speak, Emily's out the door and across the patio, the hair that was in my fingers moments ago clinging to her back in wet waves.

"What the...? Did you spring a leak?" Tricia frowns at the puddle of water on the floor.

It's going to be a fucked-up night.

I never used to dream, but since Emily Carlton spent the night in my bed since I tugged my favorite T-shirt over her red bathing suit and felt her curl into me as if I was the answer to her problems instead of the cause of them...

I can't stop dreaming of mermaids.