“I don’t know what–“
“Melynda Taylor!” he hissed. He might as well have hit Liam for the way Liam rocked back on his heels, blinking. Noah shook his head. “Tell me you’re not fucking your student.”
His mouth had gone dry. Whatever Noah had seen or heard, it was enough to betray how inappropriate Liam’s feelings were.And if Noah had noticed, who else had?
“You’ve been obsessed with that girl for a year,” Noah said, avoiding Liam’s eyes, like he couldn’t even bring himself to look at his friend. “I thought you would have gotten over it by now, but it’s only getting worse. I don’t know what happened between you two that night –“
Liam clenched his jaw, his head swimming. “It wasn’t –“
Noah held up a hand, stopping him and looking Liam full on for the first time.
“I’m not stupid, Noah.”
“No, youweren’tstupid. The guy I saw in the hall just now is a fucking idiot.”
He closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe out the sick feeling growing in his gut. When Liam opened his eyes again, the pity splashed across Noah’s face nearly took his breath away.
“Are you fucking her?” Noah asked again softly.
“No.”
“But you want to.”
It wasn’t a question, so Liam didn’t bother to answer.
“You might as well be Burnett’s most eligible bachelor, man,” Noah continued. “You could have any woman you want. Why are you pining for astudent?”
Liam didn’t know what to say. How could he explain the way he felt about Min when he still couldn’t wrap his own head around it? How could he make Noah understand the way Min fascinated him, the way he wanted to protect her and conquer her at the same time? The way her eyes lit up when she talked about literature. The way she really felt the music. How she made him want things he wasn’t even sure he believed were possible, like fairy tale endings.
Noah stepped closer to Liam, dropping his voice. “Look, you wouldn’t be the first. Hell, Philip Michaels was just fired for the same thing. These girls throw themselves at you and they’re young and beautiful…”
Liam shook his head. He didn’t want to hear the end of that sentence. “It’s not like that,” he said firmly, though he couldn’t blame Noah for the assumption. He’d seen the way the girls on campus, both in the music department and outside of it, looked at him and his best friend when they walked across campus – like some early 90s music video groupies, willing to drop to their knees in the quad in broad daylight. But that wasn’t Min.
“Then what is it? The forbidden fruit thing? Help me understand so I can help you get over it.”
Liam shook his head helplessly. “I’m not pursuing her. Why does anything else matter?”
“Because anyone could see the way you two were just looking at each other!” Noah spun away from Liam, placing his hands on his hips and hanging his head as he took a deep breath. “If you don’t get your shit together,” Noah continued, “you’ll lose it all. You could own this department. You were recruited so you could own this department. My uncle is counting on it. But none of that will matter if you keep looking at a student like that every time she walks into a goddamn room.”
“And how do I look at her?”
“Like you’re the fucking big bad wolf and she’s your next meal!”
Liam slumped against the closed door, dropping his head back against the metal. “I can’t explain it, Noah. It’s like she’s got a grappling hook in my rib cage and I can’t stay away without physical pain. If she weren’t a student –“
“But she is. What is going on with you? I’ve never seen you like this over a woman.” Noah clapped his hands on Liam’s shoulders. Liam lifted his head to meet his friend’s gaze. “She’s just another girl,” he pleaded, as if he could make it true.
“She’s not.”
Noah dropped his hands and nodded, sucking on his lower lip the way he did when he was working on a particularly difficult part of a new composition. How many times had Liam seen that face over the years? It had never been directed at him before.
“Then you’d better figure out how to shut it down.”
Liam nodded. Noah was right. Of course, he was right. It didn’t matter how badly Liam wanted to explore whatever this thing was between him and Min, the grappling hook tether. It didn’t matter that the spark between them burned brighter every time they were around each other, or that he thought he might suffocate without it. It couldn’t matter or he would lose everything he’d ever worked for. But he wasn’t sure he could follow his friend’s advice.
Chapter Fifteen
Min always found rehearsal spaces comforting. Something about the potential energy, the magic about to happen. Rehearsal spaces were almost sacred, a chapel all their own. Who needed religion when you could find real togetherness in a rehearsal, when you could join a collective mining of emotion and create something beautiful with a group of people who became more family than friends? Perhaps it was fitting then that, just as the churches of her childhood had begun to slowly fill with doubts, so too had rehearsal spaces.
