Speak (Rayne-Moore University Duet #1)

Prologue

Raven.

Rayne-Moore University

“Raven! Wait up!”

I groan and roll my eyes at the sound of my stepbrother, Axel’s voice.

The bright stadium lights behind us illuminate the asphalt path back to the Rayne-Moore campus and I hear him yell out my name again.

I pause my steps and sigh. I was really hoping he hadn’t seen me.

Then again, my fault for never missing any of his games since Junior High.

“I’ll catch up with you later.” I tell my friends, Ashleigh, Taylor, and Sabrina.

“Or don’t.” Sabrina winks a pale green eye at me, simultaneously waggling her blonde eyebrows and then sticking out her tongue.

“ Blegh !” I fake gag. “You’re so bad.”

“I’m just saying.” She singsongs. “Under those glasses and uniform? I bet your brother has that whole Superman thing going on under that Clark Kent disguise.”

I cringe. I definitely don’t want to think about Axel that way whatsoever. “First of all, STEP- brother and also, you’re so gross.”

“Don’t knock it till you try it.” Taylor shrugs a delicate shoulder.

I scrunch my nose at her. “Fucking my stepbrother? No thanks.”

“Why not? It’s not like you’re actually blood related. You’re both over eighteen now, away from mommy and daddy at a prestigious school… you could get so lonely.” Sabrina pouts. I know she’s just egging me on but still. Yuck.

“Seriously, stop it, Bri. You’re grossing me out. We’ve lived together since we were ten . I know ALL of his bad habits.”

“And he knows yours and he still chooses to follow you around like a little puppy. It’s kind of adorable, actually. The way his eyes get so big when you talk, like he’s hanging on your every word.” Ashleigh interjects herself into the conversation. I like her the least out of all my friends.

Her boyfriend, Thaddeus Whitmore II, also known as Thadd, groped me at a Sigma Delta Chi party last year while he was tipsy and blamed me for him getting handsy.

Like it was my fault he’s a cheating piece of shit.

It was their fifth time to break up over his wannabe playboy ways but she kept going back to him, swearing they “were destined to be together, soul mates,” she’d said.

If having a soul mate meant continuously getting cheated on and humiliated consistently and made out to be a dumbass in front of the whole school, mind you, then count me the fuck out.

I like to think of my soul mate being a good book or my passport or a really great type of flavored, lightly roasted coffee…

fuck it, I’ll say it. Me . Maybe I’m my soul mate.

No one at this school even comes close to anything I can see being marriage material.

“No, what it is, is annoying .” I lie. I actually love my stepbrother. He’s nerdy, yeah, but he’s cool as hell. I’ll just never admit to his face. His rather handsome face that he’s grown into. I shake my head, not letting my friends words perverse me.

Mostly because Axel’s my best friend. I can’t lose him.

I hear his heavy footsteps as he catches up to me and my friends walk away with teasing bye’s and catch you laters. He brushes away his dirty blonde hair from his face, green eyes looking after my friends. “Hey, Raven, I almost thought you were going to leave me behind.”

I exhale. “You? I would never .”

He sighs dramatically, in Axel fashion. “Look, I know I said I wouldn’t annoy you if you came to Rayne-Moore with me but I’m… it ’s just been hard to adjust. I don’t know anyone – except you – and the guys on the football team aren’t exactly… nice . You know?”

Oh, I know. A huge reason why I’m still a virgin at nineteen.

I saved my virginity in high school because the guys were such…

ugh. There’s no words. Only to come to Rayne-Moore and find out the guys were even bigger UGH’s.

From the freshmen to the seniors, they’re all just so…

ick. Pompous assholes like Thadd with pretty smiles with perfect teeth that flashed pretty lies.

It's not like I saved my virginity because it’s a big deal, or that it’s super special.

I just didn’t want to lose it to someone that wasn’t worth it in a drunken tryst and give just anyone at Hawthorne Prep the satisfaction of being able to claim having slept with me.

I had fucking standards. I wanted to have a connection with someone I felt was worthy of me giving it to, even platonically.

So far, absolutely nobody comes to mind…

except, sometimes, the exact man walking beside me.

Axel wears his heart on his sleeve, which is something I love about him. Another huge reason why I can’t ever say no to him. The stadium lights behind him dim and then turn off completely. Only the lamp posts every fifteen feet light our way.

“It’s fine, Axel. C’mon, I have to stop by the music hall and get my cello.

You can carry it for me back to the Zeta House.

” I smile, meeting his emerald and sapphire eyes.

He angles his arm and I put my hand in the crease of his elbow.

He’s taller than me now, which makes me smile at the memory of meeting him when we were kids and I was taller than him…

until I stopped growing when I was fourteen, at a whopping five-foot-five.

And then Axel just kept growing, and growing, and now he’s almost an entire foot taller than me.

We graduated together and then toured this campus together after touring other Ivy league colleges.

Our parents made us come here, actually. I wanted to go to Berklee or Juilliard. I had the grades, graduated Valedictorian, and had a partial ride scholarship. Not that I needed it.

My stepfather was THE John Weston Monroe.

CEO of Monroe Tech Enterprises. And my mother was THE Sofia Paloma.

Supermodel. She was also THE daughter of Spanish Dove Hotels and Resorts Tycoon Enrique Paloma.

Mama had even made great money of her own in the 90s as a supermodel with her brown hair, light-gold skin, and big green seductive eyes.

I somewhat look like her, but I have light brown eyes instead of green, pale instead of sun-kissed skin and I’m just more pear-shape than hourglass with wider hips and a fatter ass and thicker thighs.

Something she doesn’t fail to remind me of during every Sunday family dinner.

I remember at one point Sofia was even in a few commercials and had small roles in a lot of movies.

She’d fly me out to see her on set and everyone would dote on me, making me feel like a princess.

Guess how the great John Weston Monroe met the Sofia Paloma?

Yup. On-set at one of my stepdad’s commercial sites for one of his new gadgets.

The big line that turned his world upside down and he just couldn’t keep away from her?

“Get yours today!”

Romantic as fuck, isn’t it?

So yeah, the Sofia Paloma left my dad, Francisco Alvarez, (a drunk, LA business lawyer barely holding it together) for the genius John Weston Monroe.

I was fine with it, honestly. Mom and dad fought all the time way before she ever met John.

The whole stay-together-for-the-kids thing?

Terrible advice. My parents tried to make it work but by the time my dad was realizing he could lose his family if he didn’t stop drinking…

we were on a flight from LA to Massachusetts, moving into a Mega Mansion-type fortress with nine-foot white picket fence others would categorize as a brick wall, being served divorce papers at his own law firm.

The tabloids had a field day with that one.

I got a whiney, sickly stepbrother with chameleon peridot-sapphires for eyes that changed with his moods, the colors of his shirts and even the weather.

I also got a stepdad I saw as much as I had my own father when we were still with him in LA - on weekends and holidays.

At least now, I had someone with me on lonely nights, to play with and prank.

Two years later, dad died in a drunk driving accident. One he caused. He was the only one hurt, thank God, having wrapped his car around a tree going eighty miles per hour. I try not to think about that too much these days, or at all if I can help it.

So yeah, Berklee had been my number one choice because I was desperate to go back to California alone . To palm trees, a summer breeze and seventy-five degrees.

Not that I hate RMU, or its campus, or even Massachusetts.

It’s pretty fucking nice here. The university was established in 1827, so it has that whole collegiate gothic-style vibe.

The kind that screams elite and Edgar Allen Poe probably drank and threw up here.

There are even rumors of a secret society that gather underneath the library and the woods behind the campus.

I love it. There’s even another rumor that the old, boarded-up bell tower is haunted.

That you can hear screams coming from inside.

The campus is on ten thousand acres of wooded land but only five hundred are used for the actual school, library, dorms, the gym, field house, the infirmary, music hall and football, rugby, and soccer fields.

It’s small in comparison to other schools but the music program is pretty top tier, and I love it. I’ve even made good friends so far.

Horny, slightly bitchy friends, but still good, nonetheless. Plus, I have Axel, no matter how much shit I give him for always following me around.

We pass the other students as we make our way to the music hall from the football field. I really thought my friends and I would have walked fast enough for him not to catch us, but then again… he kinda does run for a living as the wide receiver for the RMU Yellow Jackets.

“What are you thinking about?”

“California.” I'm not lying, technically.

“You miss it? The earthquakes and mudslides and… floods?”

“Sometimes.” I reply honestly.

“Think you’ll go back?”

“I really fucking hope so, Axel,” I snap without wanting to. It’s not his fault at all that I feel like I’ve overstayed my welcome here.