by Sienna Blake
I’d been walking through the campus, trying to find Rickie’s office so he could show me around. There were so many fucking kids around, it made me want to lock myself in my apartment and curl around my guitar.
I’d have to teach these people soon. Impart knowledge. Wisdom.
What a joke.
Nobody except Rickie knew I was floundering.
Not even he knew the extent of my writer’s block. He thought I had a bunch of raw material that I was having trouble perfecting. So wrong. I had nothing. Fucking nothing.
Ever since “Give Up All the Stars” came out, I’d not been able to write anything.
Whatever vein of creativity I had tapped when that single came pouring out of me, it was all blocked now.
What if that’s all that was in me?
One song.
One fucking song.
My father—rotten drunk that he was—was able to churn out at least fifty in his career. Fifty. I could only manage one.
I let out a sigh and stared up at the building in front of me, looking for a sign.
The college thought it was cute to name all their fucking buildings after famous Irish musicians. Just my fucking luck, this was the O’Donaghue building. My father’s building. Bitterness pricked at my insides. Just my luck, I ended up here.
One of these days one of these buildings would be mine.
This definitely wasn’t the building I wanted. I must have taken a wrong turn down one of these convoluted paths.
I turned and felt someone smaller than me bump into me, someone smelling like vanilla and lilies. I barely felt a thing, but she tumbled back, her strawberry-blonde hair falling about her face.
It’d been so many years and still the sight of her made my heart stop.
Made my breath catch in my lungs.
Ailis Kavanagh.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
Didn’t expect to see her again. Not here. Not now.
I should have guessed it would happen, I suppose. This city is a small place. Heck, the whole fucking island had less than half the population of London, where I’d been living before.
I wondered how she was.
Whether she was still pursuing music.
Guess the answer was yes if she was a student at DCM. Pride flashed through me before I could stop it.
She’d grown up. And hell, how she had grown.
She’d always been beautiful. Now…she was a fucking vision.
Her baby fat had melted away revealing defined cheekbones, creamy milk skin and a woman’s body, her skirt and tights clinging to round hips and long legs.
And her hair…it’d lost that harsh redness of youth, now with blonde and honey highlights among the full rose-gold waves, hair that women paid a fortune to obtain but never looked quite like hers did, au naturel.
I almost reached out to finger the ends of the strands. But I stopped myself.
Remembered myself.
Ailis made me weak. She made me distracted. I couldn’t afford to be distracted. Or weak. Never weak.
Not again.
She was an unwanted reminder of why life was unfair.
Anger cut a bitter path through my blood, followed by something feeling too much like desire. I flexed my hands into fists by my side.
The best thing I could do was to avoid her.
I heard myself insult her before I stormed off, pissed off that she’d come back into my life now. Now of all times, when my career was hanging in the balance. When my very worth was in question.
When my very future lay unknown before me.
10
____________
Ailis
Then – Dublin, Ireland
I ran through the hospital, dodging the patients in wheelchairs and nurses walking at a snail’s pace. Why was everyone so slow today? How could everyone be so calm? Didn’t they know that it was a beautiful day? Full of magic and promise? A day for running and jumping and skipping!
“You are my little miracle, Ailis.”
My ma’s voice echoed in my head.
I had to find Danny. I had to tell him…
I burst into Casey O’Donaghue’s room, my heart about to beat out of my chest, Danny’s name on my lips.
I spotted him curled over at his mother’s side and ran to him. He lifted his head slowly, swaying as if it were as heavy as lead.
I was struck by how he’d changed, seemingly overnight. His eyes were red-rimmed. His cheeks gaunt.
Something was wrong.
I looked past him, noticing how still his mother was, how pale her lips were, how the veins were showing through her closed eyes.
Then I noticed the heart monitor’s steady beep was missing, the silence swelling like a crescendo in my ears.
Oh God.
No.
I think the word slipped from my mouth. I wasn’t sure. Everything became foggy. Muted. My good news forgotten in the wake of Danny’s expression, so numb, so dead. The life drained from him.
“I thought…” I swallowed around the lump of coal in my throat, “I thought she was going to be fine.”
“Yeah, well, she’s not.” I barely recognised the voice of the young man I loved, the voice I’d memorised, that I’d etched into my soul.
How could I make it better? All those times Danny made me feel safe, warm. All those times he held my world together in his arms while I fell apart. I wanted to do this for him.
I reached for him. “Danny…”
He snatched his arm away from my touch. “Go away, Ailis.”
Then I realised his numbness was all false. Like how charred flesh hides the raw, marrow-ripping pain underneath.
A sickness took root in my stomach, so poisonous I almost doubled over, as his pain became mine.
“It’s going to be okay,” I told him, I told myself.
If he’d just let me hold him…
“Okay? Okay?” Danny yelled, his voice reverberating, the spiderweb cracks reaching out past his limits and into mine. He glared at me as if this was all my fault. “No, it’s not going to fucking be okay. It’s never going to be okay again.”
I stumbled back, unsure of what to do, desperation clawing at me. He was shattering right before my eyes. How could I hold him together?
“I’m sorry,” I kept muttering.
Danny tore his eyes off mine and I was forgotten. He clutched onto his mother’s arm, tugging at her like a lost child, begging for her not to leave him. An inhuman cry ripped from his mouth. It pierced my heart, shattering it into a million pieces.
We both broke that day.
But he broke into more pieces than I could fit back together. Than anyone could fit back together. Like trying to cup sand in my hands and fuse it into glass.
Later that day his mother’s hospital bed lay clean and empty, ready for the next patient.
And Danny was gone.
11
____________
Danny
Now – Dublin, Ireland
Some women sounded like they were singing when they came. Their voices climbing to a feverous pitch until the peak of the crescendo.
Some sounded like they were praying. A litany of Jesus and oh, God chanted in a reverent hush.
This particular woman did not sing. Or pray.
When she came she sounded like a Pomeranian being skinned with a grater.
She let out one final ear-splitting shriek before partly collapsing to the thousand thread-count sheets on this king-sized mattress.
I grabbed her hips to stop her from completely collapsing and concentrated, gritting my jaw, slamming my hips against her harder and faster.
Finally, I came.
I pulled out, making sure the condom came with me, before tying it into a knot and chucking it into the wastebasket.
Taylor Moore, hottest pop starlet to come out of Britain since Cheryl Cole, grabbed a cigarette from her pack on the side table, lit it. She rolled onto her back and looked at me with hooded eyes as I walked around he
r penthouse hotel suite of The Merrion Hotel, pulling clothes off the floor and back on me. Grey briefs, black jeans, black shirt.
“Come out with me tonight to Lillie’s Bordello,” she said.
I snatched the cigarette off her and stabbed it out in the ashtray that was already overflowing, grimacing at the cloud of vile smoke around her. “That shit will kill you.”
Taylor sat up, her fake breasts barely bouncing as she shifted. “Everything kills you.”
I wanted to smack her. And not in a good way. “That shit will ruin your voice.”
She rolled her eyes. “You still haven’t said yes. Come out with me.”
“No fucking chance.”
She tsked. “Don’t be such a bore, Danny.”
Fully clothed now, I sat on a chair and laced my boots up. “You know I don’t trot around for the paps.”
Taylor rolled onto all fours and crawled towards the end of the bed before posing, her coconut tits hanging between her skinny arms, her perky ass in the air, the kind of pose that Playboy would kill to put as their centrefold.
She giving me a sultry look. “Which is all the more reason why they’re desperate to get a shot of you. It’ll be good publicity.”
“No.” I stood, ready to get the fuck out of here.
Taylor pouted.
I rolled my eyes.
I didn’t do media whoring. I wanted my talent to stand for itself. I wanted people to look at me and think of my music, not about whose arm I was hanging off.
I didn’t do girlfriends. Let alone public appearances with girls.
Taylor and I had an arrangement. Sex, no strings. It was all I was after. It was all that I wanted.
All I could give.
“Later.” I tossed my dark leather jacket over my shoulder and headed for the door.
“Call me,” Taylor yelled back.
12
____________
Ailis
Damn Danny O’Donaghue.
Damn him to hell.
After seeing him on campus earlier this week, I fretted about what I was going to wear to class.
Just in case I saw him again.
I even bought mascara that I didn’t need and now wore it religiously.
Just in case I ran into him again.
I wasn’t supposed to be spending my time worried about him. I came here to study hard, to get noticed, to kickstart my career in the music industry.
I didn’t want to see him again. I didn’t. I wasn’t scanning the crowds every time I walked through the college for a certain dark-haired, blue-eyed devil, I swear.
When I spotted him again on the way to class I shouldn’t have been surprised. But the sight of him was like icy water over my body, causing me to suck in a breath.
I swear to fucking God I was not following him. This time.
I swear, I was just walking to class. He just happened to be walking in front of me the whole way.
He paused in the hallway which had thinned out because—ah, fuck—I was late to class again, and I halted. I tossed between striding past him, in which case he’d see me, or staying right here two metres away from him, waiting for him to keep moving so I could get to my classroom, which was right near where he’d stopped.
As if he could feel my eyes on him, he turned. His piercing blue eyes, rimmed with the thickest, blackest lashes, peered right into my soul. His eyes darkened, his mood turning from broody to annoyance in half a second flat.
“Dearg,” he said.
Dar-rig. Red.
“Asshole,” I greeted him.
“You,” he said, a smirk growing on his face, “are following me.”
Oh fuck.
“W-what? N-no,” I stammered, my cheeks growing warm with guilt. Not from today, but from the other day when I really had been following him. “Why would I follow you?”
He took two strides towards me, cutting up the distance between us. I glanced around, looking for someone to help me. Somehow, we were the only two in this particular hallway.
He leaned in, his masculine scent of cologne and man drowning me.
“Because you still want me,” he said, an amused glint in his wickedly sinful eyes.
I spluttered, cheeks heating, that traitorous place between my legs burning. “How dare you, you… arrogant ass.”
I strode past him, keeping my chin up, ignoring the way my body shivered with fever as I brushed by him. I practically ran into my classroom, tumbling through the door and into the front of the lecture hall, my breath heaving as if I’d run a mile.
The lecture hall was set up like a mini-auditorium, tiered seats rising up from a semi-circular stage at the front. There were about fifteen or so students in here and all their eyes were turned to me, the only one at the front where the door was located. I scanned the crowd for a familiar face but saw none. The door swung open behind me and I turned to see Danny stride in after me.
Fuck.
“Look who’s following me now,” I cried, pointing an accusing finger at him.
I glanced around the room, looking for support. They were my witnesses. They saw. He came in after me.
“Sit down, Ms Kavanagh,” Danny growled as he walked past me, “before you embarrass yourself any further.”
Sit down?
How dare he. Ordering me about as if he were my…
Teacher.
I glanced at him, now taking his trademark black trench coat off at the front of the class and hanging it on a hook along the wall.
Oh my God.
He was my teacher.
Oh fuck.
Wait… I read through the course notes and it had been a Mr Murphy who was supposed to have been teaching this class.
Not Danny fucking O’Donaghue.
My first love.
My ex-best friend.
“We’re waiting, Ms Kavanagh.” Danny’s voice boomed out through the lecture room as he rolled up his sleeves, revealing muscled forearms.
Muffled laughter tittered through the room. My cheeks flamed and I felt like a teenager again.
There was nothing more for me to do. I slunk, head down, up the aisle to a seat at the very back. I dumped my bag beside me and sank into my chair, praying that the ground would crack in half so I would fall right in.
“I’m Danny O’Donaghue,” his voice boomed out across the hall. “Your Advanced Performance & Arrangement teacher.”
I heard the whispers rolling across the hall as students realised who this beautiful man was. I saw the girls in the class fluff their hair, fuss with their clothes and lean forward. Saw an army of eyelashes batting at him all at once. Saw the guys straighten, stars in their eyes.
The college was prestigious enough that many famous and influential musicians ended up teaching here, but to have one so young and so damn hot…
Something stabbed in my gut.
Was I jealous?
Stupid, Ailis.
“But you,” Danny’s eyes locked onto mine and a heated shudder went through me, “shall address me as ‘professor’. Is that clear?”
“Yes, professor.” A chorus of obedient voices rang out in the room.
I hadn’t spoken. How could I when he had me pinned to my seat, unable to breathe while Danny’s intense stare never left me.
He was my professor. My grades and my future were in his hands. My head spun with this unfair plot twist.
I was so very fucked.
Danny spent the rest of the class talking through the theory of stage presence, about engaging with the audience, about reeling them in. All the while he was doing just that. Everyone was hanging on to his every word, leaning forward, their eyes trained on him. Except me.
I stared at my empty notepad on my desk, my fingers fisted in my lap, pleading, praying, begging myself not to look up at him, the urge gnawing at me like a hunger.
I could feel him.
I could sense his eyes on me.
Clawing me. Burning me. Digging into my skin.
Every t
ime my self-control failed and I glanced up to wherever he was in the room—and I knew exactly where he was in the room—he was already glaring at me.
Despite the utter hatred on his face, my stomach flipped. My breath caught. My insides turned to molten liquid.
Finally, finally, the class ended, the bell cutting through his enthralling performance as wise professor and magician of my doom. I let out a breath of relief. It was over.
“If you play an instrument, bring it next class,” he called out, his deep booming voice cutting easily through the noise of students packing up. “We are not going to spend all semester sitting around. This is performance class.” He waved his arms out with a graceful yet masculine flourish. “You are going to perform for each other every single week.”
A bolt of fear went down my spine.
No.
I could not perform in front of him. To perform was to bare your soul. I couldn’t do that just to have him tear me down.
Not anymore.
13
____________
Danny
Then – Limerick, Ireland
“Dillan?” I said tentatively into the darkness of my father’s room.
I’d been living with him for three months and I refused to call him “father.” He never wanted to be part of my life before. Even now, we occupied two separate wings of this mansion like we were strangers. We were strangers. He just happened to donate the sperm that kickstarted my life.
“What the fuck do you want?” His voice slurred from the tangle of sheets on the super king-sized bed. I counted two…no three pairs of legs sticking out at various angles like some kind of life-size Pick-Up-Sticks game.
“It’s my first day of school.”
“So?”
I ground my teeth together. “You said you’d take me.”
I’d spent the summer learning how to drive, but I was still on my provisional licence and could technically only drive with another adult in the car. Although calling my “father” an adult was a damn stretch.
“Ahh, fock,” he muttered, “how old are ye, boy? Take the keys. Drive ye focking self.”
