Chapter 10 Orion
Orion
I’m your lab partner and that’s all. That’s all I’ll ever be.
No doctor had ever told me it was part of my ADHD, but I visualized images out of words. Recognized patterns. When words failed me, pictures bloomed in my mind.
When Harper drew that line in the sand, I visualized my jacket lying abandoned next to it, something warm and good burning out, a pattern of hookups with girls I cared nothing about and who cared nothing for me but my status, continuing on until I went back to the UK at the end of the year.
But there was also Harper in the moonlight, her dark hair falling over her shoulders and her scrutinizing gaze, trying to decipher if I could be trusted, if I were someone worthy of her trust, while she didn’t try to do or be anything but herself.
I’d barely had a taste of who she was, but I’d liked everything so far. Everything.
But you cocked it up, and that’s all you’ll ever get.
Yet while my ego was not of inconsequential size, my actions on Saturday night couldn’t be the only reason why Harper looked so broken in chem. But I wasn’t about to challenge her in class when she was clearly at the brink. She had her pride.
But someone had hurt Harper.
Again.
A small storm had begun to brew in me, rising up from below. A fury for Harper piled on a lifetime of my own. All buried. Pushed down because that’s all I knew to do.
When Ezra Wolfe started in on me in Advanced Piano, the storm began to rise.
A tempest was still alive in me—decades’ worth—ready to burst free.
I shot to my feet, knocking over the bench, my breath coming hard.
Wolfe stared me down, but I didn’t blink.
Didn’t move—afraid to move—because every muscle was coiled and ready to spring, to tackle the fucker to the ground if I had to.
And then he laughed and dismissed the class.
As the students filed out, I fought for breath. For calm, pushing it all back down. Harper shot me a concerned glance as she went out, and it nearly all came back, a ferocious need to protect her…
Ezra Wolfe chuckled, bringing me back around. He and I stared each other down, the baby grand between us.
“Well, well, well,” he drawled. “There he is. Or at least, a hint. You want to tell me where that’s been hiding?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said tightly.
“Start with the basics,” Wolfe said. “How is it you play so perfectly without sheet music? Rote memorization?”
“Sometimes,” I said, fighting for calm. “I can hear a piece and play it by ear.”
“The other day you said you can read music but that it’s complicated. Explain.”
“I see patterns in the notes, but things like tempo and dynamic notations are hard to decipher.”
“Hard to decipher?”
“Yeah. Confusing. I have—”
He flapped a hand. “Actually, notes and notations, by ear or not… None of that interests me. What I want to know is, where did that come from? The fire just now. Or more importantly, where has it been and how do we keep it?”
“I don’t know,” I said, a small, strange ache in my chest. Like longing. “I don’t usually…”
“Disobey?”
I nodded. The piano bench was tipped over, so I set it on its feet. “It’s not how I was raised.”
“Ah, yes,” Wolfe said disdainfully, watching me put the bench back in its place. “The proper British stiff upper lip.”
I crossed my arms. “You don’t seem to have that problem.”
Wolfe’s eyes widened, and I thought I’d overstepped, but he laughed dryly.
“Indeed.” He ran a hand along the shiny black surface of the piano that matched the lacquer on his nails.
“I’ve swung quite far the other way, diving headlong into a deep well of vices.
Nearly drowned once or twice, and I still take the occasional swim…
” Wolfe looked pained for a moment, then dismissed the shadows.
“But we’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you.
I was lying when I said that you play without emotion or heart. ”
My head whipped up. “You were?”
He nodded. “I can hear it in your music, but faintly. A tap-tap-tapping of someone trapped in a cave-in and trying to get out. Your technical precision is astonishing, Orion. A talent like yours comes around perhaps once in a century. If only you could break out of that trap…” He shook his head.
“You would put me to shame a hundred times over.”
I scoffed, but that pang in my chest came again. The ache for the music I’d abandoned for so long. “That’s a wild exaggeration.”
Wolfe cocked a brow. “Have I presented myself as someone who lets compliments roll readily off his tongue?” He tapped his chin. “I must be giving a sweeter impression than I thought.”
“Not exactly,” I muttered.
“Aren’t you at all curious about your extraordinary gift, Orion?
” Wolfe asked. “I don’t understand how you play like you do—emotional unavailability notwithstanding—and not do everything in your power to cultivate your talent.
Make something of it. Hell, at the very least, show off and get paid for it? ”
“I don’t know,” I said. “My family doesn’t show off, Professor Wolfe. And it was never something I knew I could do as a career.”
Wolfe’s expression softened. “Did it ever occur to you to ask?”
The question hit me square in the chest. Because the answer was shockingly, stupidly, obviously no.
I’d never asked because we never talked about what we wanted in my family.
Hopes and dreams, aspirations and ambitions…
they all belonged to the depths. We were never forced into our roles; we just accepted them because anything else was…
Rocking the boat.
I gave my head a shake. “It doesn’t matter. I’m going into the family business.”
“Ah, yes. Chemicals. Compounds. Household cleaning products.” Wolfe enunciated each syllable with derision. “Riveting. When I spill one of my many weekly glasses of wine on my carpet, I reach for a Mercer product to get it out.” He rolled his eyes. “Such a meaningful contribution to humanity.”
I shrugged. “If you’re trying to get a rise out of me again, it won’t work. I’m not one of those tortured artists, Professor Wolfe, secretly trying to break free from rigid family expectations, or whatever clichéd bullshit you may think.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Hm.” He tapped his chin again. “I doubt that.”
I scoffed. “You think I’m lying?”
“No. I think you believe you’re telling the truth.”
A silence dropped heavy and hard between us. The professor met my gaze, unflinching, as if he were staring down into my soul.
I broke free. “Are we done here?”
“Almost. There is a spring music exhibition in April. I’m going to be choosing ten of the most promising students from my classes this semester to perform in it. Spoiler alert, as the Americans like to say—you will be one of them.”
“Professor—”
“I will assign you a piece, and I want you and I to work on that piece together.” He mimicked a hammering motion. “Tap, tap, tap.”
I started to protest. To rebel. But apparently, I’d logged my one defiance for the decade.
Or maybe this is something you actually want.
“I’ll think about it,” I said. “Anything else?”
“Have you heard of the O-1 visa?”
“No.”
“The O-1 visa is required for international students to remain abroad in order to attend certain universities such as, oh, I don’t know.
” He waved his hand. “Juilliard? They require a mentor,” he said, barreling over my protests.
“It just so happens—despite my many, many aforementioned vices—I’m qualified to be one such mentor. ”
“Professor Wolfe, I told you, at the end of this year, I’m going back to the UK. I’m attending Cambridge and then I’m going to work for my family’s company. End of story.”
“End of story. End of the story,” Wolfe mused. “Such a sad turn of phrase, don’t you think?”
And to my shock, he reached out and put a gentle hand on my shoulder, the first soft, tender gesture I’d seen from him—this same man, who, not minutes before, might have shattered my fingers.
“It doesn’t have to be.”
***
The door clicked shut behind me.
I felt drunk. Or as if I were on a ship being tossed at sea—the ground beneath my feet suddenly uneven, the path no longer straight and easy. My hands were shaking, and I shoved them into my pockets.
What the hell just happened?
I’d walked into class prepared to keep my head down, play the Chopin, endure Wolfe’s abuse, survive the day. But then the storm rose in me and I let it. I let it. Nothing had changed and everything had changed.
Tap, tap, tap. Someone trapped, trying to get out.
My chest ached. With a few sentences, Wolfe tore me open after a lifetime of silence.
I should’ve gone back to Atlas Hall, tackled my homework, and forgotten this entire scene. Pretend I didn’t nearly break school property—or Wolfe’s jaw—because something volcanic cracked open inside me. Pretend nothing had happened. That was the Mercer way.
But now questions were out there, floating in the air like echoes, and I couldn’t unhear them.
Aren’t you at all curious about your extraordinary gift, Orion? Did it ever occur to you to ask?
I never had. Not once. But nobody had ever asked me either.
Cambridge. Mercer Chemicals. A life mapped out, and I’d accepted it the way you “accept” the air you breathe or the language you grow up speaking—without question or protest. Why would I?
You didn’t question the weather or the tides, either.
You didn’t raise your voice. And you didn’t rock the boat, but that boat was now a shipwreck after the storm I’d created…
I wasn’t the same guy who walked into that room, and I didn’t have the faintest idea what to do about it.
I thought about going to a piano room, but that felt too raw, so I ended up in the student lounge, pretending to study.
Across the room, Aria Kingston and Elowen Blake were whispering together.
I watched them watch other students walk by, sizing Benders up and down, then whispering some more, and a different kind of storm seized me.
I tossed my books in my bag and passed by, catching my name from Elowen, followed by Aria’s dismissive laughter.
“Please. He was bored. She’s nobody.”
My hands curled into fists before I even realized it. A hot, ugly rush of fury burned in my blood. Harper had heard some version of this. Of course she had.
She thinks I’m another spoiled prick who would use her, ditch her, and leave her with the fallout.
No wonder she drew that line and barricaded herself behind it.
“Aria,” I said with a nod, a tight smile on my lips. “Elowen, may I speak with you a moment, love?”
“Of course!”
“Sorry about Saturday night,” she said, moving to stand right up against me. “I can’t believe I got so wasted. But I promise that if you give me a second chance to be taken home, I’ll be much more available.”
I crossed my arms. “Did you say something to Harper?”
The smile fell off Elowen’s face like a mask. “Who?”
I cocked my head.
“Oh, the Bender from the bonfire? No, and why would I?” Her eyes narrowed in anger. “Why? Did she say something?”
“She didn’t say a word,” I said. I put on a dangerously lazy smile. “I was just curious, that’s all. She’s my chem partner and I don’t like drama. In fact, I hate it. Nothing makes me more…turned off.” My smile tightened. “So. Did you?”
“Oh, well…” Elowen looked uncertain. “I might’ve mentioned that you’re a big deal at this school.” Her smile turned flirty. “Because you are. That’s no lie, right?”
I’m a big deal and Harper is not.
The picture could not have been made clearer if I’d been there. My stomach clenched.
“No lie,” I agreed. “But I don’t need anyone speaking for me, do I?”
“Um, no. Definitely not,” Elowen said.
“Good. Then there’s no need for you to talk to Harper ever again. Is there?”
“Oh. No, I suppose not—”
“Great. Glad to have that sorted.” I turned my smile up to full wattage. “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask. Are you going to the Halloween festival?”
Now Elowen’s eyes widened with hope and no small amount of lust. I’d set the bait, and now she wriggled on my hook. I almost felt bad.
Almost.
“I am.” Her smile turned coy. “I mean, I’d love to go…”
I opened my mouth to speak and then acted as if something dire had occurred to me.
“Shit, I forgot I have to get to the Hall. We’ll talk more later, yeah?”
I gave her a light touch on the arm and walked away. I would never ask her to the festival or anywhere else, and leaving Elowen in purgatory wasn’t very gentlemanly, but I wasn’t about to intimidate her or threaten her with bodily harm, either.
Purgatory was punishment enough. Torture. I knew, because that’s where Harper had left me.
But her time at CHA so far had been hell, and they’d made her believe getting close to me would only make it worse.
If I pushed her now or tried to drag her back into whatever we almost had, I’d just be adding to her stress.
She didn’t need more tension; I refused to be just another rich bastard who made her life harder.
If what she wanted from me was space, then I’d give it to her. It was the least I could do. I had my own shit to sort anyway.
For instance, what I was supposed to do with the rest of my life.