The Other Side of Blue: A Best Friend's Sister College Romance

by Anna Bloom

  Where the hell was Jack? He said he’d be back… unless of course he’d changed his mind.

  My fingers shook as I took my violin out of its case.

  “I thought we’d start the morning easy with some Elgar.” Shaun nodded in appreciation as he took a sip of his coffee, or maybe at the prospect of Elgar.

  “Sure, that’s great.” I took a sip of my coffee and picked up my bow. It felt heavy in my hands and I had a really, really bad feeling that today wasn’t going to go the way I wanted at all.

  My dreams of Jack standing in front of me, telling me he was free for us to be together cracked in half along with the hacked sawing of my bow across strings.

  Before the afternoon lecture, I stood outside Greene’s office and knocked on the door. He’d sent for me during the eleven o’ clock recess and I’d been battling waves of sickness ever since.

  “Come in.”

  My feet pulled against the carpet as I slouched in.

  “Ah, Lyra. Come in and take a seat.”

  A brown envelope sat on his desk, with one word written across the surface: Lyra.

  Oh God. They were going to send me home, right at the time I didn’t want to go.

  I couldn’t go back now. Jack couldn’t go with me, for whatever reason he had.

  “How are you?”

  “Fine, fine.” I swallowed around the enormous lump in my throat.

  “I saw Shaun earlier. He was very concerned after your practice this morning.”

  “Sorry, I’m just really tired.”

  Greene’s eyes sparked, but he nodded calmly at me.

  “Lyra, are your taking this degree seriously at all? I’ve had Jensen Collins on the phone. Embarrassing first thing on a Monday morning I can assure you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I could let you get away with English Lit, as unusual as your request was; the fact your desire to learn is genuine I can appreciate. But if you are tired or distracted because of extra-curricular activities, it leaves me in a very tricky position.”

  “Extra, what?” My head span as all the blood in my body drained to my feet.

  “As the Collins Award recipient, you are simply one of the most privileged students of the arts in the entire country, the world I would go so far as to say.”

  I nodded and shifted my hands under my thighs so he couldn’t see them shaking.

  “I gave you the benefit of the doubt the first few weeks. I could see that maybe even as an extraordinarily talented musician, you may not have been away from home often. Not everyone had the opportunity to tour with orchestras and get the world experience.

  Tour with orchestras? Was that a thing?

  “We didn’t even have the money to buy me a better violin, let alone for me to tour the country.”

  Greene’s face softened. “I know, and I get it. That’s why I’m so pleased you’re the one to get the scholarship this year.”

  “But…” I prompted.

  “The Collins Foundation will ask you to leave if you are seen to be in anyway undermining your scholarship.”

  He knows about Jack. He knows about Jack.

  I held my breath as Greene slid the envelope toward me and I tipped out the contents, breathing an almost mechanical sigh of relief.

  It was just a newspaper cutting. Oh thank God.

  I sat in silence as I tried to make sense of it all. The grainy image showed me singing at Blue’s, so it could only have been taken late last night. How did that get into the local paper with the headline ‘University Talent Rocks Church’?

  My stomach dropped as I peered closer at the image. My back pressed along Jack’s. You couldn’t see his face, but you could see I used him like a pillow as I leaned my head back and closed my eyes to sing.

  Oh.

  Well maybe no one would know it was him.

  “I think you can see my issue with this?”

  “No singing?” I winced.

  “No any of it. I’m sure it’s all highly innocent.” He waved his hand in a dismissive manner. “Jack is a lively young man, and his partner is an outstanding young woman. I know Jack would be devastated to think him playing with you in public like this—when you aren’t playing the violin, the instrument you have been sponsored for—ended in you going home.”

  No. Not home. Not somewhere he couldn’t go.

  I swallowed hard. “You’re right, it was silly of me. I just got the job so I could send some money home to my grams; she’s ill you see.”

  “I’m sure, I’m sure. But, Lyra, there are so many other students who’d want the honor you have.”

  I nodded. I no longer cared about honor, but I did care about Jack. “He’s not in trouble is he? I noticed he wasn’t with me in practice this morning. I thought he was going to take over from Mr. Parks again?”

  “Oh, that’s not you. Young Brittany has asked me for some one-on-one tutoring and as you and Mr. Parks got on so well last week, I figured this would work best. And,” he assessed me over the edge of his glasses, “I think you can agree we need to make sure things are appropriate. Jack did ask to take over your pastoral care again, but I declined.” He nodded to himself, like he tried to convince himself he’d made the best decision.

  My stomach clenched. The whole world designed to keep us apart. Even slutty Brittany.

  Greene weaved his fingers into a loop on his desk. “Although judging by how Jack reacted this morning, I’d say I’ve made the right decision. Some space is needed. You’re aren’t his protege, Miss Lennox, you are the Collins protege, and it’s probably best for you not to forget.”

  No chance of that. I smiled and rose from my seat.

  “I’ll see you in class, Sir.” I walked from the room with feet of lead. Hopefully Jack would be in lectures, because I had a feeling that might be the only way I could see him.

  Something smelled wrong. Like bad fish on a hot day, Grams would say.

  There was no feasible way for that picture of Jack and me to be in the local paper unless someone had made it happen.

  My gut told me I already knew the answer. Nothing about this was going to be easy.

  “So that date?” I held in my groan and plastered a smile on my face before turning to face Alex.

  “If I don’t say yes, are you going to harass me forever?” I chimed a laugh, when what I really wanted was to punch the fucker in the face.

  He leaned into my space, his lips brushing my ear. “You know we would be good.” I repressed a shudder, the hairs on my arms standing on end, telling me Jack must be near.

  I shifted back, knocking into a table. “Oh fuck.” I rubbed my thigh which immediately weighed down with that heavy dead feeling.

  “Miss Lennox?” Jack’s hand caught my elbow. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” I rubbed my leg some more, hiding my burning cheeks. I wasn’t fine. I was on fire at the mere touch of him. Please, please, please let it all be over with Miriam Collins.

  Please.

  “Well I suggest we all stop messing around and get into the lecture hall. This isn’t break time,” he snapped.

  Oh.

  There were some groans and everyone started trailing in behind him. I watched his ass, ‘cause you know. Even when he was angry, it was a damn fine ass.

  Brittany brushed past me, her shoulder knocking me slightly. “I see you made headlines, Collins kid.” Her floral perfume drilled into my brain an automatic migraine trigger. “Shame it wasn’t for playing the violin.”

  I scrunched my face and bit my tongue.

  “And a shame you could only get a job in a dive like that.”

  “Shut up, bitch. You don’t know anything about Blue’s bar and you sure as hell don’t know anything about me, so back the fuck off.”

  “Ladies?” Jack turned back to cut between us. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” Brittany said all saccharine and nausea. “I was about to tell Lyra about our amazing session this morning.” Brittany ran her tongue a
long the seam of her top lip.

  “Well I’m sure she has much better things to do than to hear about your struggle to maintain a quality vibrato this morning.”

  Brittany gasped and I pressed my lips together. “Trouble with your vibrato, Brittany? How tragic,” I said.

  Jack pushed past us and went to join Greene at the front of the hall where they talked about a stack of papers for a while. Eventually, he began to hand them out and I watched him work his way around to where I sat right by the door. He didn’t look at me once, not even when he handed me my sheet.

  He cleared his throat and turned to walk away, and I watched him go, wishing he’d just give me the tiniest of signs that I hadn’t imagined everything that went on between us last night.

  Anything at all.

  Jack left the auditorium quicker than if his pants were on fire.

  Fuck.

  I grabbed up my stuff, shoving it into the depths of my bag and then launched myself after him. He must have powerwalked because I had to run right across campus to catch him up. “Jack. Wait.”

  He turned, face as dark as thunder.

  “Mr. Cross, sorry, wait.”

  His shoulders slumped.

  “Lyra, you need to stay away from me.”

  He had to be fucking kidding. Hadn’t we done this already: once, twice, fuck knew how many times?

  If he thought staying away from him was a possibility wouldn’t I be doing it already without my heart being a mangled mess?

  “Let me guess, you couldn’t break up with her?”

  He snorted. “Something like that.”

  I stepped closer. “I’m going to need more than something, Jack.”

  “Last night I promised to protect you and I will. Well, I will try.”

  The look in his face made me want to die, literally die on the spot. He looked tortured, like his soul was on fire, which it might have been, because it sure as hell felt like mine was.

  “Jack, please, five minutes… let’s just talk.”

  “And where do you want to talk, Lyra? I can’t talk to you here. I can’t talk to you at Blue’s. I definitely can’t take you home. There is literally nowhere for us to go.”

  “There’s got to be somewhere. This is a pretty big city. Couldn’t we go to Letitia’s for a coffee even?” Not quite what I was hoping for, but I’d take it just for five minutes explanation.

  Jack’s expression cleared, a storm passing. “I know where we can go.”

  “Then let’s go already.”

  I didn’t give him a chance to tell me to find my own way there. I pulled open the door to the Audi and slipped into the passenger seat, strapping on the safety belt with determination. I watched his shoulders slump through the window in defeat.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Jack.

  I knocked on the front door while Lyra glanced up and down the street.

  The door swung open and I breathed a sigh of relief as Evan scrubbed a hand through his bedhead. “Ah.” He peered behind Lyra. “Am I harboring refugees now?”

  “Don’t be a dick. Can we come in?”

  “Sure.” Evan stepped back to allow us in.

  Lyra glanced around the massive conversion Evan had picked up three years ago. I’d never got to the bottom of how he’d afforded it, and it wasn’t for me to ask. Why he even bothered when most the time he crashed at the bar defeated me.

  I stalked into the living area, shrugging off my jacket and throwing it down onto the sofa. Rolling my shoulders and neck, I tried to relieve the tension across the top half of my back, but it was like trying to rub the stone out of a boulder.

  “Jack?” Lyra’s hand pressed into the small of my back. “Talk to me please. This is killing me.”

  I turned, my body softening as I looked at her. “Blue’s bar is rigged. This whole time the Collins family have been keeping an eye on everything I do.”

  “What?” She stepped closer, winding her hands around my waist and resting her head between my shoulder blades. “Can they even do that?”

  I shrugged, moving her with me. “Not quite the deal I made though is it? Jensen Collins bought me the place to keep me here and to make me stay with Miriam as her punishment for defying him. I guess I should have known it would never truly be mine.”

  My gaze met Evan’s. “You didn’t know about this, did you?”

  “Don’t be a douche.”

  I dropped my stare and sighed so hard Lyra’s arms contracted an inch around my waist.

  “I got back last night, told Miriam I wanted out, that I didn’t care about their crap anymore, but she was one step ahead of me.” I paused. Anger sparking through me. “She knows all about you, Lyra. And I don’t mean just what’s happened here, but also who you are to me. She knows that you’re the reason I ran from home.”

  Lyra let out a small gasp. “But I’m not.”

  I froze. Fuck, I hadn’t meant to say that. Ever.

  “You know what I mean. After we met and the Collins’ games commenced, she sent someone to New Orleans to dig any dirt she could find. She knows I can’t go back there.”

  “So?”

  “So, she’ll make sure you do. You’ll go back, and I’ll stay stuck here, in hell.”

  Lyra turned me in her arms, not that I fought her. I circled my grasp around her, pressing my neck into the soft skin of her cheek. “I’ve fucked this up so badly, Lyra.”

  “Jack, you haven’t.”

  Evan started clapping and I shot a glance at him. “Right, have we finished the dramatics?” He rolled his hand in a circle. “And as cute as you two actually look together, standing there and hugging isn’t going to make anything better.” He turned for the kitchen. “Coffee?”

  “Please.” I looked down at Lyra. Dark rings shadowed her eyes, her skin pale. “Lyra, I’m sorry.”

  “Oh my god, Jack. I don’t know what you’re apologizing for.”

  “Because I’ve made a mess.”

  “And I haven’t?” She shook her head. “Why can’t you just tell me why you can’t go home, then I’d understand more.”

  I pressed my lips into a line. “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it would destroy you.”

  She stared up at me. “Okaaay.”

  She was going to let it go that easy? “Really, that’s it?”

  She pressed her palm over my heart. “I know you have always looked out for me, Jack, always been there. I trust you.”

  Her words broke me into a million fractured parts of myself.

  “Okay, lovebirds.” Evan breezed in. “I’ve got to get to Blue’s shortly, but let’s make a plan, fuck these bastards up once and for all.”

  I laughed, and it felt so damn good.

  “What’s your master plan?”

  “Well, we have to get Lyra away from here, that much is simple.”

  I stiffened. “And where exactly do you propose she goes?”

  Evan sighed. “Jack, don’t get feisty. Sit the hell down and let’s talk it through.”

  Lyra tugged me over to the sofa, and I followed, mainly because she could lead me anywhere and I’d always follow.

  Five steps to Evan’s leather sofa was only the start of it.

  “Lyra, what’s holding you here?” Evan asked.

  “Uh.” She studied her nails, and I took a moment to lean forward to the coffee table and spoon some sugar into Lyra’s mug of coffee, adding extra milk so it was half-way drinkable.

  “Jack.”

  I dropped the spoon onto the table, but she didn’t look up.

  “The only reason I came here was because Jack made me make a stupid promise when we were kids that I would try. He wanted me to get out of Florida.” She paused and I waited. “And my grams, she was so determined that I wouldn’t stay stuck there, wouldn’t be like my mother.”

  I reached for her hand and squeezed.

  Evan nodded and then smiled. “So it’s not because you wanted the degree? Not because of
violin?”

  Lyra chuckled softly. “No. I can’t even play when Jack isn’t around.”

  “That’s not true.” I tangled my fingers in hers, giving a gentle tug, so she’d look at me. “You are so talented, Lyra. For you not to play would be a tragic waste.”

  “But I don’t have to play here, Jack.”

  “If you leave now, without the Collins say so, then you won’t play anywhere. Don’t you get it? No door will ever be open again, not in London, not in Vienna, Berlin. Fuck, I’d doubt you’d get a bloody job playing on a Mississippi jazz cruise.”

  “Good. I hate jazz.” She thrust her bottom lip out in a pout. Fuck, I loved her.

  I. Loved. Her.

  It hit me smack straight in the stomach. I shoved it away to revisit at a better moment.

  “I could never ask you to give up something you are that talented at, for me.”

  Lyra exploded from her seat, wrenching her hand away from mine. “Goddamn it. I don’t care about the fucking violin, Jack. I played it because Grams wanted me to, because I felt bad she’d spent dollars on a stupid secondhand violin and then that week only ate rice and beans because Mom had stolen from her again.

  “I played because you wanted me to, because you held that note up at your window and I knew you needed me to. It gave me a purpose and I would have done anything to help you those nights, because all I ever did was sit in my room and listen for you, wait for you.”

  All the memories come flooding back. The feel of my hands pressed into the glass as I held that bit of paper up. That little spark of recognition that she got better each time I heard her play. The remorse for the fact I no longer had a piano to play, and that I missed it but could never admit that to anyone.

  “But the violin loves you, Lyra. And for all you say, you do have a gift.”

  She snorted and waved her hand at me. “Don’t care.”

  “Okay, let’s bring it all back down into a circle of trust,” Evan drawled. Lyra sat back down and picked up her coffee, taking a sip and wincing. My lips twitched into a smile. “So you leave. Together. Lyra doesn’t care about the violin.”

  “And we leave with the shirts on our backs?”