“I know, we’re wicked early,” I agreed, watching Aimee wiggle out of her jeans, toeing off her Converse sneakers and standing there in her stocking feet as she shoved her jeans back into the bag. “Dale wasn’t happy.”

Aimee snorted, pulling two boxes out and putting them on the shelf. “Why didn’t he tell you he was playing?”

“I don’t know.”

“Which ones?” Aimee opened both boxes, showing me her choices like I hadn’t been there when she’d picked them out. I pretended to contemplate, but I knew which ones I liked better. So I told her to wear the other ones.

“Are you sure?” She slipped on the short black boots with the skinny, high heel, turning to look at her profile in the mirror. Her curly red hair was like a river of fire down the back of her black dress.

“Positive.” I took the shoes out of the other box. “Can I borrow these?”

She wore a shoe half a size bigger than me, but it was close enough.

“For what?”

“Incentive.” I grinned, pulling my oversize t-shirt off and slipping on the Black Diamond one. It was three sizes too small, making it more of a half-shirt, coming down to just above my navel and hugging my breasts like a second skin. Balancing against the sink, I yanked off my socks and slipped Aimee’s new shoes on. They were higher than anything I was used to wearing—three inches at least—a soft, velvet heel with a black strap around the ankle and a silver buckle on the side. Sexy as hell.

I bent to do the buckles and then stood next to Aimee in the mirror, surveying the landscape, which was quite attractive.

Aimee gave a low whistle. “Your legs go on forever in those things.”

“Sure you don’t mind?” I turned to look at myself from behind, jeans huggingly tight, the shirt revealing a good expanse of my lower back.

Aimee shook her head. “Dale is going to die. He’s going to jump you right there in the middle of the mall.”

“That’s the idea.” I grinned, reaching for my purse and searching through it for my makeup bag. “Let’s make the boys drool.”

Aimee gave me the bag full of clothes so I could stash them in my car—she’d be going home with Matt—and we walked out of the bathroom two very different women than had gone in. Aimee left her long hair down on my suggestion, but I’d gathered mine up, pulling it back in a banana clip, a loose, intentionally messy look that left my neck exposed. Tempting. I hoped.

If I’d had any doubts before I saw Dale turn as we approached, they vanished the minute I caught the look on his face. He and Matt stood talking where the t-shirt table had been, but it was gone now, along with Dale’s father and the band. Matt saw us first, jaw dropping and eyes widening. A few wolf-whistles followed us.

I heard Aimee giggle, felt her nudge me, but Dale glanced in our direction and the moment he did, everything else disappeared.

I thought I’d memorized every possible Dale-look, but this one floored me. I actually stopped in my tracks, feeling the force of it from five feet away. It wasn’t the same voracious gaze I’d almost grown used to from him, the one that followed me through the halls at the academy, leaving me breathless and aching alone in my car when we said goodbye. This was far more dangerous than that.

This look said mine. No one had ever looked at me like that before, utterly possessive in not just gaze but action too. Dale took two strides toward me, pulling me into the circle of his arms and growling into my ear. No words, but a low, sustained growl rumbling through my whole body, his hands on my lower back again, this time touching skin, the shock of it thrilling me beyond words. I dropped Aimee’s shopping bag and my purse onto the floor, putting my arms around him, feeling his body tighten, like a bowstring pulled too taut, an arrow just waiting to be released.

“Hungry?” I whispered, my lips brushing his neck, not a kiss, just a caress. I felt his breath catch and his arms tighten, crushing me, not that I cared. I’d never felt so wanted.

He groaned, pulling back to meet my eyes. “Fucking starving.”

The way he looked at me, I knew he wasn’t talking about food.

Of course, neither was I.

CHAPTER NINE

“Hey, we’re going,” Aimee called. Matt held her hand as they walked by. “We’ll see you at the movie?”

It wasn’t a double-date, but we would end up at the same theater.

“See you,” I said weakly, forcing myself to look away from Dale’s dark gaze and waving as they headed toward the mall exit. Aimee grinned back at me and gave me a goofy thumbs up over her shoulder.

“BEE good, you two!” Dale called, letting me go, at least partially, sliding an arm around my waist so he could turn and wave to them.

Matt barked a laugh, waving back, and Aimee shot me a scathing look that said I was obviously in big trouble for telling Dale the bee story, all while sticking her tongue out and simultaneously flipping him off.

I laughed, reaching down to pick up my purse and the shopping bag full of clothes. Dale took my hand as we headed toward the food court, my heels clicking loudly on the mall tile floor, reminding me with every step what I was wearing. And it was getting noticed, just like I had planned—although it was Dale I wanted to notice, not the adolescent guys passing us doing double-takes and making remarks just out of earshot.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of our t-shirts looks so attractive,” Dale snapped as we neared the food court.

“You like it?” I teased.

He tilted his head at me, smirking. “I think I’d like it better off you.”

We were at the food court now and I tossed my purse and the shopping bag into a chair at an empty table, making like I was about to strip off my t-shirt right there in the middle of the mall. Dale scowled, grabbing my hands and pulling me to him.

“Hey. That’s mine.”

Mine. He actually said the word written all over his face. It went through me like an arrow. It could have pinned me right to him, straight through my heart, and I wouldn’t have cared.

“What do you want?” His eye softened as he looked down at me, and for just a moment, I inwardly panicked.

I asked myself the same question. Constantly. I had two front row seats to see Tyler Vincent tucked away in my purse like the most delicious secret in the world, and I could have cared less. What was wrong with me? What did I want? I thought I knew. Before Dale Diamond came along, I could have told you in detail what I wanted. Now I had no idea.

“Sara, you’re starving. I can hear your stomach growling. Don’t you ever eat?”

That’s when I realized he was asking me what I wanted to eat.

“You’ve seen me eat.” I felt my face turning red, embarrassed he’d noticed, but of course he had.

His eyes narrowed slightly. “You’re not anorexic are you?”

I shook my head, deciding to sacrifice my best friend rather than tell him my own truth. “Not me. Aimee’s the one who’s anorexic. Well, she was. Anorexic and bulimic. That’s why she’s at the academy this year. She didn’t graduate because she spent most of our senior year in a treatment center.”

He nodded, thoughtful. “And you?”

“I’m not anorexic!” I scoffed. “I eat Skittles and pizza. And big piles of orange chicken from Panda Express.”

I pointed to the Panda Express in the corner of the food court, grinning.

He laughed. “Is that what you want?”

“Yep. Can I pay you back?” It was what I’d said all week long when he insisted I accompany him through the fast-food lunch line and I couldn’t resist a slice of pizza or a bag of fries.

“Stop saying you’re going to pay me back. I got it, okay?”

“Okay.”

“You stay here. I’ll be right back.” Dale started toward Panda Express, stopping and looking back at me, thoughtful, and then turned around, shrugging off his black denim jacket and draping it over my shoulders as I sat at the table. He gave a short, satisfied nod and turned on his heel again, going to buy us dinner.

I sat and smiled to myself like an idiot, watching him standing in line.

I hated not having money. I hated being poor. Kensington Gardens offered cheap housing to low-income families—like mine—but I wondered why Dale and his father had ended up in such a rundown place. John, Dale’s father, seemed like a nice man, smart—he must be, to have obtained a teaching position at Rutgers. Maybe he didn’t realize when he signed the lease what type of people lived at Kensington? Or maybe he’d chosen it because it was so close to the academy where Dale would be finishing his high school diploma? His salary at Rutgers couldn’t be that bad, I reasoned.

I wished I still had the job at Dairy Queen. I’d used all my money to pay for my car and had tucked the rest away into a secret bank account no one knew about, except Aimee, for my impending trip to Maine. But my job at Dairy Queen had been seasonal, the summer before our senior year. I had worked on and off at the beginning of our senior year at the movie theater, taking tickets. That was a much better job than Dairy Queen, paid better too, and I’d put even more into savings, but then everything at home had imploded and I couldn’t work or go to school or do anything anymore.

Dale was ordering our food, and I noticed how girls noticed him. I couldn’t blame them really. He drew my eye instantly. I found myself looking at him, staring at him, unable to take my eyes off him. It was sick, but there seemed to be no cure for this disease. He wasn’t just a rock star on stage. It was like he was born to be one. People already looked at him that way, and at the age of twenty, it was disconcerting to find someone like Dale in the middle of my tiny town in New Jersey. You didn’t expect to find someone like him here. Maybe in New York, or California, where everyone was beautiful and perfect and aspired to be an actor or a musician. But here?

Dale reached into his back pocket for his wallet, giving me another flash of that sexy, studded belt he always wore. I wondered at its significance. He wore it like a talisman, all the time. Maybe it was just part of the marketing plan, the t-shirts, like the one I wore with its eye-catching logo, the tie-in of the band name, Black Diamond, with his own last name. It was all very smart.

Whatever the reason, the belt was hot. Dale wearing the belt was hotter. I couldn’t help but think about him. Somehow he had replaced my night time fantasies of Tyler Vincent. I didn’t know when it had happened in the short time I’d known him, but Dale Diamond had obscured Tyler Vincent like a solar eclipse, leaving only a faded ring, like a faint stain from a mug on a coffee table. Was what I felt for Tyler Vincent really so shallow?

I was ashamed and even a little embarrassed by my loyalty shift from the only man who had filled my thoughts for the past five years to the guy paying for my dinner at Panda Express in the mall food court. One was larger than life, on screen and everywhere, all the time. The other was in my life, here, with me, and looked at me in a way I hardly could believe was real.

He was looking that way at me as he made his way back to our table, putting down the tray and giving me a once over as I leaned back in my chair, smiling at him. I saw him glance at the expanse of skin above the waistband of my jeans and below the far too-tight and too-small end of the Black Diamond t-shirt I was wearing. It felt good to know he both appreciated the way I looked, and at the same time, wanted to keep it to himself, as evidenced by the jacket he had put around my shoulders before he left.