He tried to match voices with the best songs they could carry at that stage in their training, without playing favorites. As an exercise, he had written his top picks for finalist on his team.
"You're not required to be present on another group's practice, but you are welcome if you want to stay. Marvin Stark and Yasmine Spencer. You'll be first."
He wanted to give the less experienced singers more time to practice, even if that meant only a few extra days. But his sense of fairness only went up to a point. The only real competition Marvin Stark had on his team was Michelle Farmer, and he was not going to put them against one another until the absolutely last possible moment. Going on what they had shown in the auditions, either Michelle or Marvin were going to represent his team in the final round.
Everyone sat down, while Marvin and Yasmine came next to the piano. Had he not sensed the fragrance earlier, Andrew would have believed that it was the girl's perfume. The little blue haired boy was more resourceful than he had given him credit to if he could get laid the very first night.
The last song of the practice was for the least trained voices on his team. Bryce Meisner and Luke Cunningham had massive raw talent, but they were self-taught. The hardcore rock song he gave them suited their voices, and it was going to show which of them improved the most. He was determined to choose between them on the basis of how much they improved, and how much they could make the song their own.
When they broke for lunch, Marvin was the first out the door. He smiled, wondering who was the blue haired boy so eager to see. He waited for the room to clear before leaving himself. Bryce was waiting for him in the hallway when he closed the music room door behind him.
"Not hungry?" he asked.
"A little," Bryce said with a lopsided grin.
There was a touch of shyness in this massive young man. Bryce seemed to have good social skills, but he was clearly uncomfortable with his lack of formal training among all the others.
"Did you want to ask me something?" he said gently.
"No," Bryce said. "I was wondering if you'd like to join us for lunch."
"Us?"
"Marvin and me," Bryce explained. "If you don't want to sit with the other captains."
"Sure," he said. He didn't know Lauren or Ford well, but if he could avoid being around Carter, he would gladly have lunch with his team.
When they entered the mess hall, Andrew spotted Marvin's blue hair instantly. His heart missed a beat when he saw Vy at the same table. She looked even more beautiful than he had dreamt her the night before. Marvin was apparently scolding her rather ineffectively, because her hands were up in a gesture of surrender but she was laughing.
"Oh, no, not again," Bryce said with a sigh.
"It's not funny, Vy," Marvin was saying when they approached. "I can't get rid of the damn smell!"
Bryce plopped down next to Marvin, where a tray overflowing with food was already waiting for him.
"Come on, man, it's not that bad," Vy said.
"Are you serious?" Marvin said spluttering. "King sniffed me!"
She bit her lips, trying not to laugh, but the laughter froze on her lips when she looked up and saw him. He regretted accepting Bryce's offer now that he saw that the only free seat was on the bench next to her.
"I'll get some food," he said and went to get a tray.
He wondered if he could get out of it somehow, but Lauren and Ryann were nowhere to be seen, and Carter was talking to his assistant. Mark was a nice guy, but he didn't offset his dislike of Carter. Besides, how bad could it be, to sit next to her? That was the perfect opportunity to prove himself that he'd blown out of proportion a mild attraction.
He sat down on the far side of the small bench.
"So," she said, rounding on him. "Did my perfume bother you?"
"What?" he asked, confused.
Marvin hid his face in his hands. Vy stuck out her arm, offering her wrist to nose. He recognized the scent.
"We had... a little incident last night," she said, withdrawing her arm. "To make a long story short, I sprayed Marvin in the face with my perfume, and that's why he 'stunk up' your music room."
She emphasized "stunk up" with air quotes.
"What kind of incident?" he asked. "And, no, it didn't bother me. Nor did I think it 'stunk up' the room," he added, using the finger quotes gesture.
"See? He's not upset," she said looking at Marvin. "Not to mention it's not my fault you're a lame-ass look-out," she added. "Oh, don't sulk. Here, have my carrot cake." She pushed her plate with a perfect slice toward Marvin.
"Cake doesn't solve everything," Marvin said before sticking his fork in it. "I take it back," he said after tasting it. "This does."
"We were hungry last night," Bryce explained, "and we raided the kitchen. Vy heard the noise and she showed up armed with perfume."
"You heard a noise, and you went toward it?" he asked Vy.
"Of course," she said. "I was curious."
"Vy has no fear," Bryce said.
Vy
Her rapid heartbeat called Bryce a liar. She was petrified. She was doublechecking every gesture she made, painfully aware of Andrew King's body a few inches from hers. He hadn't touched the food on his plate and she wondered if he was a vampire after all. That Dark Dream video had left a deep mark in her.
She took a sip of coffee, and scowled. They should not be allowed to call that an espresso.
"What's wrong?" King asked, and Vy realized she had snorted derisively.
She looked down at the tiny coffee cup. "My dad makes the best espresso."
"You miss home already?" Bryce asked.
As always when she was uncomfortable, she tried to make a joke. "How could I? I used to practice in the garage and now I have a music room almost as big as our living room."
"Almost?" Marvin exclaimed. "Music room 1 is as big as rooms 2, 3 and 4 put together."
Even Andrew King was looking curiously at her.
She could feel the tips of her ears burning. Bryce was working as a mechanic. Marvin had been brought up in a tiny apartment by his single mother who worked two jobs. She was a spoiled rich girl, and she was hoping that her new friends would get to know her enough before the first episodes aired. They always showed the contestants' background in the audition episodes.
"We have a big house," she said.
She'd been happy that no one had made a fuss about her last name. The Cesaras were an old family that had been part of the rich Illyrian aristocracy for hundreds of years, but she had other plans for her life. She was determined to put her mark on Illyrian society in her own way. Like King and TC had. On her own merit, not on her pedigree.
"Do you ever get used to it?" she asked King suddenly.
She wouldn't dare to ask TC. The man was born to put an audience under a spell. But King was different. She'd watched him many times singing with his eyes closed, as if he was somewhere else during some songs.
He turned his head to look into her eyes again. "Used to what?"
Her voice faltered. She had to break eye contact with him if she wanted to be able to speak. "Singing in front of people. Knowing that they pay attention only to you."
A smile tugged at his delicious lips. Delicious? What the hell kind of a way to think about King's mouth was that?
"Yes," he said. "But not any time soon for any of you, I'm afraid. Are you nervous about singing in public?"
In her effort to not stare into his eyes, she'd been focusing on his mouth so she had to run the sounds through her head several times to make sense of the words.
"A little," she said.
"No way!" Bryce exclaimed. "You're the least anxious person I know,"
She gave half a shrug. She'd only played small venues, with a few dozen people. Most of them were waiting for the main events anyway, not paying attention to them. She wondered for the millionth time if King had really been there at the Summer Festival or it had been her own imagination. Surely, he would have mentioned it if he
'd seen her on stage. Messing with his song.
"You have nothing to worry about," King said. "You have a very solid technique and a range that blew my mind."
She remembered his speech from the audition. It had sounded fake somehow. He'd said all the right things, and he seemed to have meant them, yet for some reason she felt him rejecting her. He didn't seem upset she hadn't chosen him. Maybe under all that black leather and cool demeanor, there was more ice and darkness.
"Did you ever sing with TC?" she asked. "I know you guys have known each other for yonks-"
"Yonks? Who says yonks?" Bryce interrupted.
"They've been in high school together, like a million years ago." She half turned toward King. "I know you never recorded anything together, but I thought maybe on some gig when you were young."
He cocked his head to one side, and the glint of a smile flickered in his obsidian eyes. She heard the intake of breath from the other side of the table. Marvin was cringing and she replayed what she had just said in her mind. She leaned over to Marvin and whispered loud enough for everyone at the table to hear.
"Did I just say to Andrew King 'when you were young'?"
Marvin nodded, biting his lips to stop from laughing.
"Yes, you did," he said, his voice strangled with the strain of not laughing. "I love you, Vy," Marvin said and he didn't hold back the laughter. "I'm sorry," he said looking at King.
Vy looked in King's direction, without meeting his eyes. She opened her mouth, then closed it. She did this a couple of times and even King started to laugh.
"It's ok," he said. "Don't worry. And I have to disappoint you, but no. We sang in the same places, sometimes on the same night, but we never sang together."
A ping from her cell warned Vy that her session with TC started in twenty minutes. She decided to use the sound as an excuse to get away. She needed to calm down the tingling that had taken over her body.
She dragged her feet to Music Room 1. The rooms were assigned to the Captains based on their results the year before. Music Room 1 had been TC's for the past three years in a row.
She cleared her mind of all the negative stuff about her Captain. She had witnessed him be mean to people, staff and contestants alike, but she couldn't afford to let that resentment stop her learning from him. He cared about music and about winning. That much had been clear throughout his years on Sing
Music room 1 was unlocked, and she was relieved to find it empty. TC seemed in the habit of being annoyingly early. No matter how annoying TC could be, she couldn't bring herself to regret her choice. Those few minutes in the lunch room proved that her hormones would have messed up working with King.
She shook herself. Thoughts of King had no business being in that room.
She wondered which role would TC play this time? The insensitive rock star who was mean to the staff? The insanely driven trainer who wanted his student to step on people to get to the top? Alice had loved his Macbeth, but she found him scary as hell. Seeing TC torn apart between lust for power and guilt for doing the ultimate crime - king slaying. She smiled. King slaying.
She sat down at the piano and the melody born from muscle memory was Dark Dream. No. Andrew King's goth fantasy would not calm her down. She stood up again, walked around the room, touching the walls with her fingertips, as if she wanted to make sure they were real.
The Waves songs were definitely more hummable. She thought about her previous, carefree summer holidays when all she had to do was to music school during the day and hang around in the garage with her band playing or arguing what songs to play.
She sat back down at the piano and smiled as she began singing the Waves's White T-shirt. She closed her eyes and started imagined TC's voice accompanying hers. His voice always infused the words with love, longing and a delicious sense of wonderment at being loved by the woman he loved.
When she opened her eyes, TC was sitting in a chair on the far side of the room.
"Why don't you sing like this more often?" he asked.
She shrugged. "Not all songs inspire me to sing this way."
"Dark Dream inspires you," he said.
His focused gaze made her feel like she was under a microscope. What did he want from her?
"Isn't the internet a wonderful thing?" she grumbled.
"Actually, the organizers of the Summer Festival record every performance," he said.
"Right," she said, feeling stupid for not thinking they did that. "They have a proven track record of spawning greatness."
He didn't get distracted by her words. "I saw your band's whole set. You do more with Dark Dream than King ever did."
He cocked his head to the side to look at her. As if he wasn't weird enough all the time, now he looked like a broken scarecrow.
"Why did you choose me instead of him?" he asked.
Would she ever get away from this question? She still got angry texts from Sebastian for that choice.
She loved their music in equal measure and she admired both of them. How could she tell him that looking at King made her mouth water and swarms of butterflies invaded her stomach?
"I don't know. It felt reasonable at the time."
He stalked over to her, his eyes never leaving hers. "Interesting. Most people who had to choose between me and Andrew King would not see me as the reasonable choice."
"Reasonable is not the same as safe," she said.
His blue green eyes looked like ice and fire at the same time. His gaze came as a cold shower on her still burning skin.
"It's good that you're aware of that," he said. "Because I'm not going to be kind to you. I am here to make you into something you don't even imagine you're capable of. I am most certainly not safe for you."
She swallowed dryly. She had figured that much.
"I'm ok with that," she said in an oddly scratchy voice. A truth she had never before put into words spewed out of her mouth. "I'm more like you than I could ever be like him."
TC looked at her for a long time before speaking again. "Right. I'm glad you can do White T-shirt so well, but I have other things in mind for you."
She drew in a deep breath. She had made her choice, and she would follow his lead as far as he was going to take her. The song he had chosen for her and Emily was far out of her comfort zone, but she didn't care. If TC wanted her to sing it, she was going to do it.
Carter took her place at the piano when Emily walked in. In three hours they had gone over every nuance of their song. She hadn't been as tired even after running a half marathon as a result of a dare.
Chapter 6
Andrew
Two weeks into the training he got used to the routine of the coming to the House early in the morning and spending most day there. Weekends didn't seem to exist any longer. They had so many contestants, they couldn't afford to take days off.
That late August afternoon, he didn't feel like eating, so when Bryce and Luke invited him to the outdoor pool behind the house, he agreed. He took off his jacket and lay down on a pool chair, closing his eyes. He crossed his arms behind his head and relaxed. The splashing of waves and the laughter reminded him of family vacations. He pushed away the memory going through the mental files on his student, replaying their performance, making mental notes on what to improve.
The sound of low heels broke through his thoughts. He opened his eyes in time to see Vy walk over to his side of the pool. Michelle and another girl made a show of slipping out of their robes, to expose their perfect bodies and tiny bathing suits. His eyes were drawn to Vy, with her long dark jeans, her white Led Zeppelin t-shirt and her glorious hair frizzing freely like a messy halo.
His eyes were glued to her bottom when she bent over to pick something on the side of the pool. He saw Michelle bumping into her while arranging her towel on the chair. Vy lost her balance and fell into the water with a splash. In a heartbeat, he was next to the pool but before he could jump in, Vy burst out of the water like a geyser. She coughed and sputtered and swam back
to the spot where she had fallen. She placed her palms on the edge and when he squatted next to her. Their faces were so close that for a moment he forgot what he wanted to do. All he could see were her green eyes, and the fire in them.
The silent gaze stretched into a long tense moment, sparking a different kind of fire inside him. Her breath caressed his skin. Her lips were wet and inviting. All he had to do was lean in another half an inch. He barely managed to resist the magnetic pull of her mouth.
"Let me help you," he said.
She took his hand and got out of the pool. His tight grip might leave bruises on her skim, but at that moment he wanted nothing more than to hold on to her and make sure she was safe.
"Thank you," she said.
He nodded, his eyes still boring into hers. The whistles from the other side of the pool broke the spell. He looked down at her wet and now very see-through t-shirt.
"Are you ok, Vy? Do you need a towel?"
Michelle's voice was the very embodiment of concern. Vy's temper flared and she forgot about his presence or the fact that they were still holding hands. She squeezed his hand hard when she turned to the tanned girl who sat on the pool chair as if she was on a photo shoot for Victoria's Secret.
"Oh, no. You don't have to throw the towel just yet."
She let go of his hand, and gave him a great view of her wet jeans and almost invisible t-shirt when she bent over to pick up a pair of sunglasses. She turned on her sensible heels and strode confidently into the house, leaving him with wet hands and an image of her lacey bra burned into his brain. The delicate bra and the shape of her breasts imprinted itself into that part of his mind where the songs came from. He had to find a way not to dwell on that image until he could transform it into poetry and music.
He went back to his seat, trying to make sense of the way his world had just swiveled on its axis. He went down to help her, she rose from the water and they met somewhere in the middle. He was drawn into her murky green eyes and got lost in them. For a few seconds, he forgot about his age, his status, his past. He was a teenager again, and in love.
Dark Dream (Love in Illyria Book 1) Page 4
