“Don’t be too long,” my stepfather said gruffly and then the line was clear again.

“Was that your dad?”

“My stepdad. Don’t ask. So, what’s up?”

“Not much. I was just sitting here playing my guitar and thinking about you.” He paused and his words melted me like butter in a hot pan. I sank down onto my bed, knowing if he asked me right then if I’d been thinking about him too, I would tell him yes, and it would be the truth. Thankfully, he didn’t ask. “So, what are you doing?”

“Painting.” I set my brush down, stretching out on my bed.

“Like… painting your room?”

I laughed. “No. Painting a picture.”

“Oh, that’s right, the sketches in your notebook. You’re very good.”

“Thanks.” I blushed at the compliment.

“Although your subject matter leaves a little to be desired,” he teased. I could hear the smile in his voice. Normally, when someone dissed Tyler Vincent, I was all over that like white on Vanilla Ice but for some reason, his teasing felt different. Or maybe I was just making an exception because he looked so damned much like my favorite rock star and my body couldn’t seem to tell the difference. The temperature in my room had risen since the phone rang and I discovered it was Dale.

I heard him strumming his guitar. “So what about you? Are you good?”

“I can’t even draw stick figures.”

I laughed. “No, are you a good musician?”

“Yes.”

I smiled. “You sound confident.”

“I am.”

“So we should all see your name in lights soon then?” I teased.

“Oh being good doesn’t have anything to do with being a star.”

I snorted. “Why do you say that?”

“Because you don’t need talent to be a rock star. Look at Tyler Vincent.”

“Hey now…!” I protested, but I was laughing, something I couldn’t have imagined doing just a day or so ago. I took my Tyler Vincent obsession very seriously! “Why would you dis a rock star, if you want to be one?”

He was quiet for a minute and I heard him strumming his guitar again, something familiar but I couldn’t quite place it. “Because if I don’t, I’ll have to graduate from the academy and go to Rutgers and get a real job and wear a suit and tie. Who wants that?”

“You have a point,” I agreed. The life of a rock star seemed far more exciting and glamorous than some corporate hack—even a millionaire corporate hack. I didn’t know any girl who went bananas over Bill Gates the way they did over Tyler Vincent. “So you think you’ll win the Battle of the Bands?”

“I don’t know.” He sounded a little less confident but his guitar didn’t lie. He was playing around, strumming chords, and just that made me feel all dreamy-eyed and star struck. “Right now, I’ve set my sights on making the semi-finals. One round at a time.”

“I’d like to hear you,” I confessed.

Everywhere I looked around my room was Tyler Vincent, yet I wasn’t thinking about him, for the first time in I didn’t even know how long. I closed my eyes and all I could see was Dale, head cocked, half-smile on his face, that bit of hair hanging over one eye as he played.

“Now? Over the phone?”

“Put the phone down so I can hear you.”

“All right, hang on.”

The sound of his voice receded as he asked, “Can you still hear me?”

“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.

He leaned sideways to say something to Holly, but his eyes never left mine and I couldn’t look away. Wendy grabbed my knee under the table, shaking it wildly, her eyes big as she watched him approach, but even that couldn’t distract me. His walk was casual, hands in his jeans pockets, but his eyes had that same look I’d seen when they found me that first day in chemistry, like an animal targeting its prey.

“Oh wow, Sara, he really likes you.” Wendy leaned in to whisper this fact and I was grateful for the reassurance, because I thought maybe I was seeing things, or I’d just gone a little crazy because of my Tyler Vincent obsession and his obvious resemblance. It was good to know I wasn’t the only one who saw the way his eyes lit up when they found me, how his energy and focus shifted from something casual to something that went far beyond interest. It was more like a hunger, and it made me hungry too.

“Hey you.” His voice brought back our weekend phone conversations, whispering together in the middle of the night. He looked at me like there was no one else there, as if every girl, every other person, had simply disappeared the moment he set eyes on me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Holly Larson pass our table, felt the jealousy and hatred directed at me, but it was nothing like the heat of Dale’s gaze. I felt instantly combustible. If I’d been a popcorn kernel, I would have exploded the minute he looked at me.

“You must be the infamous Dale Diamond,” Carrie announced, pulling a chair over from another table and sliding it between us. “Is that a real name? Have a seat.”

“Hi.” Dale turned the chair around, sitting astride it beside me, his knee brushing mine. “Yeah, Dale Diamond’s my real name. Easy to make fun of. I got called Double-D in junior high. I’m just glad my mother didn’t name me Neil.”

Aimee laughed. “My mother loves Neil Diamond.”

“So do a lot of older women, I hear.” He smiled at her. “Aimee, right?”

“Yeah, nice to meet you.” She looked far too pleased he’d guessed right.

“And you must be Carrie and Wendy.” He glanced between the two of them, speculative. “Carrie?” He pointed, guessing right again. “And Wendy?”

Wendy raised her pierced eyebrow, squirting ketchup from a packet all over her fries. “Do our reputations precede us?”