Dark Notes

They bandy hostile looks and do as I say. A quick scroll through the logs confirms they both communicate with a contact named Avery. Neither phone has Ivory stored in the lists.

Because she doesn’t own a phone.

I return their devices and scrutinize their tense postures and indignant expressions, searching for a glimmer of untruth. I want to say Ivory’s name, bring her into the conversation somehow, just to study their reactions. But I can’t do that without making my own interests glaringly obvious.

However, I can write them up for fighting.

Twenty minutes later, I stand beside Beverly Rivard’s desk with my hands behind my back. I don’t say a word as the boys explain their dispute over Avery Perrault, how it’s all just a misunderstanding, and everyone’s virtues are still intact, blah, blah, fucking blah.

Prescott cants forward in the chair with his arm waving in my direction. “Then he tried to strangle me!”

The dean shifts her slivered eyes to me. “Mr. Marceaux, are you aware of the no touching policy?”

“Yes.” I tilt my head. “Are you aware your son is an asshole?”

“See what I mean?” Prescott throws his hands in the air and slumps in the seat. “He’s fucking nuts.”

Beverly walks around the desk, stops at the wall of windows, and stares out over the manicured lawns. “Mr. Rivard and Mr. Roth, you’ll be written up for language and fighting.” She turns, arms folded beneath her chest, and calmly takes in their outraged expressions. “Wait in the hall while I have a word with Mr. Marceaux.”

A turbulence of emotions storms through me, and leading the onslaught is a heavy, foreboding kind of urgency. If they’re lying about the girlfriend, I won’t find the truth in this office. Nor in this school. I need to perform my own investigation of their after-school activities.

When the door shuts behind them, Beverly drops her arms and stands taller, stiffer, her sharp gaze leaping toward mine. “If you ever lay a hand on my son again—”

“That is the protégé you want me to send to Leopold?” I thrust a finger at the door. “That little douchebag won’t last a month there.”

Her head quivers with the force of her shout. “Enough!”

She touches the collar of her blouse and closes her eyes, inhaling deeply.

I amble toward her and stop inches away. Towering over her, I wait for her to look at me.

My insides burn with anxious rage, but I keep my timbre rich, my voice mellow, and my eyes cool. “When he does something I disapprove of, I’ll handle it however the fuck I want. If you don’t like that, our deal is off.”

As I stride toward the door, she says, “I’ll fire you.”

“No, you won’t.” No need to tell her I’m considering quitting. “I’m his only way into Leopold.”

Something’s off today. I feel a weird sort of flux in the air the instant I step into Room 1A. Prescott and Sebastian sit on opposite sides of the classroom. Odd. Almost as odd as the hard and resentful way they’re staring at me. Mr. Marceaux stands behind his desk, also watching me in a hard way. But there’s something else in his expression.

Something I haven’t glimpsed in five weeks.

He looks at me like he’s visualizing spanking me. It’s a subtle smolder contained in his eyes, flickering as if it’s been building for a while, growing and strengthening behind his thick eyelashes, and now, perhaps it’s become too big, too hungry to suppress.

Maybe I’m imagining it, but the dark and heavy bass-type feeling thumping through my insides is most definitely real.

I study him closely as I find my seat, as he begins the lecture, and as he guides the class through the next hour of discussions. In those countless moments when he meets my eyes, there’s a resonance radiating back from his, like he’s experiencing something he’s aching to share with me.

He holds my gaze. “Every minute you’re not in school, you should be practicing your instrument.”

Now that it’s October, we have a number of events to prepare for, the biggest one being the Holiday Chamber Music Celebration. As he brushes over the performance calendar, I’m reminded that he hasn’t chosen the piano soloist. I know I’m the best, but I don’t know if he agrees. His assessment of my skills is so rude and degrading. Even so, his feedback spurs me to try harder, to be better, to please him.

He continues to watch me as he speaks. It’s always me who looks away first, his intensity too potent to take in for long and making me feel dizzy. But when I return to him—and I always do—I notice his fingers trembling or his tongue wetting his bottom lip, validations that I’m not the only one feeling this deeper presence, this vibe, between us.

What changed? How does a man go from spanking and kissing me to five weeks of rejection to vibe-fucking me?