Chapter 3: Carter and Clara III

Chapter 3

The Briar conservatory hall was the only place on campus where I never felt as though I was drowning, because on Friday nights, for exactly two hours, I was allowed to pretend that I was someone who belonged inside it, someone whose life was not a blur of overdue notices and bleach fumes and coffee poured for ungrateful strangers. I stood under the warm stage lights in a rented black velvet dress that was two sizes too small and itched along my ribs, but the acoustics beneath the domed ceiling were so perfect that I barely noticed, and I was halfway through an Italian aria with my eyes closed, letting the music crowd out my bank balance and my tuition debt, when I reached a high note that rang off the ceiling and felt, for one brief second, almost powerful.

Then I opened my eyes and saw Carter Graham sitting in the center of the front row.

My voice wavered for a fraction of a breath before I dragged it back under control, and I kept singing out of sheer stubbornness while my mind raced through every possible reason for a hockey captain in a tailored black suit, the top two buttons of his white shirt undone as though he had stepped off the set of a billionaire romance, to be lounging among the elderly donors and music professors with his legs crossed at the ankles. He looked entirely out of place and not the least bit bothered by it, and when he caught me staring, that slow, infuriating smirk spread across his face, and he lifted my brass master key from his pocket by its plastic tag, let the $200 LOSS F*E warning flash under the stage lights, and slid it away again with a lazy two-fingered salute.

I spent the last ten minutes of my performance in pure fight-or-flight, sweating through the cheap velvet with my hands trembling so badly that I still do not know how I reached the final note without fainting, and the instant the applause began I fled the stage, my heels clicking frantically against the hardwood, and slammed the dressing room door behind me.

"Breathe," I told myself, bracing my hands on the makeup vanity and gulping half a bottle of water. "You are a grown woman, and you are not going to be afraid of a boy in a nice suit."

The door clicked open behind me.

"Lovely aria, Chloe," Carter said, strolling in as though he owned the building, which, considering that his family's name was probably engraved on a plaque in the lobby, he effectively did, and he turned the lock behind him with a deliberate click and leaned back against the door.

"It's Clara," I snapped, slamming the bottle down, "and I want my key back, Graham."

He drew the key from his pocket and held it up by its plastic tag, letting it swing between two fingers with the lazy confidence of a man who had never lost a negotiation. "You can have it back the moment you agree to be my tutor," he said, "because you were not at the library at eight, and you are a very difficult woman to find, Hayes, since I had to bribe a guy in the athletic department just to learn where you spend your Friday nights."

I did not bother to answer, because I was already moving, and before he had finished the sentence I closed the distance between us and snatched the key out of his fingers so quickly that his hand stayed hanging in the air, curled around nothing, while I slid it into the pocket of my velvet dress. "Thank you," I said, as sweetly as I could manage, "but I do not negotiate with thieves."

Carter looked at his empty hand and then up at me, and for the first time since he had walked in, the smirk faltered, as though the move he had planned for had never once failed him before. "That was supposed to work," he muttered.

"I told you at the diner that I was not playing your games," I said, folding my arms over my chest, though my heart was pounding, because being locked in a tiny room with someone that tall was doing strange and unwelcome things to my nervous system. "You steal my key, you hold my job hostage, and now you are stalking me at a classical concert."

"The waitress has claws," he said, with a low, rough laugh, and then the laugh faded, and he pushed away from the door and crossed the room in two slow steps, and I retreated until the edge of the vanity pressed into the small of my back. "I do not think you understand how this works, Clara, because I am not asking for a favor but offering you a business transaction, and I am prepared to be generous."

"I don't want your money."

"Everyone wants money." The playboy swagger had dropped away again, leaving a raw, almost desperate intensity beneath it. "I did some digging, and you are drowning, with two minimum-wage jobs, a few hundred dollars from singing at these donor events, and a tuition balance that has you one late payment away from being thrown out of Briar entirely."

The blood drained from my face, because I had told no one the real number, not even Allie. "How do you know that?"

"I can make all of it go away," he said, and he was close enough now that I could feel the heat radiating from his chest. "I will sponsor your music program, I will clear your balance by tomorrow morning, and all I need in return is for you to tutor me for the psych final, so my father does not drag me off the ice."

It was an enormous sum, the kind of life-changing figure that for him was likely pocket change and for me meant survival, and for one brief and pathetic second I actually considered saying yes. Then I looked at his face and saw the unmistakable certainty that anything in the world could be bought, even a girl who had never once asked him for anything, and the moment passed.

"No," I said, and I shoved past him toward the door. "Your money ruins everything it touches, and you think that you can simply buy a person because you are too lazy to open a textbook, so get out of my dressing room."

His jaw clenched, and he turned back to face me with his hand dragging roughly through his dark hair. "You are being stubborn and stupid, Hayes, and you will lose everything over a moral high ground that nobody is going to applaud."

"At least I earned everything I have," I fired back, pointing a shaking finger at the door.

"Fine." He let out a hard breath and wrenched the door open. "Let's see how long your pride keeps you warm when you are evicted."

The door slammed behind him so hard that the mirror rattled, and I stood there trembling with something that felt like triumph and tasted a great deal like fear, and then my phone began to buzz violently against the wood of the vanity, and the caller ID read Briar University Bursar's Office.

My stomach knotted before I touched the screen. "Hello?"

"Clara Hayes?" asked a tired, clipped voice. "This is Brenda from financial aid, calling regarding your outstanding balance of eight thousand five hundred dollars."

"I filed an extension yesterday," I managed, my mouth gone dry, "and the paperwork should already be on your desk."

"Your scholarship appeal was denied by the board an hour ago, and your grace period has been revoked," Brenda said, in the voice of a woman who made this call a dozen times a week. "You have until nine o'clock on Monday morning to pay the balance in full, or you will be administratively withdrawn."

The line went dead before I could say another word, and I lowered the phone and stared at the cracked screen while the room tilted around me, because two days was nothing and eight thousand five hundred dollars was impossible, and the only person who had just offered to make it vanish was the boy I had thrown out of this room a minute earlier.

I replayed his last words, let's see how long your pride keeps you warm when you are evicted, and a cold, uneasy thought settled in my chest: I had never mentioned my rent to him, and the board had turned me down within an hour of my turning him down, and I could not tell whether that was cruelty, or coincidence, or something I did not yet understand.