Next to Me Read online

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Sneak Peek

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  Chase

  Chase

  Carter

  Chase

  Carter

  Chase

  Carter

  Chase

  Carter

  Chase

  Carter

  Chase

  Carter

  Chase

  Carter

  Chase

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  Carter

  Chase

  Carter

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  Chase

  Carter

  Chase

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  Carter

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  Carter

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  Carter

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  Carter

  Carter

  Chase

  Carter

  Carter

  About the Author

  Love Romance?

  Don’t Miss Dreamspun Desires!

  Visit Dreamspinner Press

  Copyright

  Next to Me

  By Veronica Cochrane

  You and Me: Book One

  Can an awkward student and a closeted rock star make beautiful music together?

  Music composition student Chase Collins has always worn his heart on his sleeve. That’s why it was so quick to break in high school when Chase lost Carter West, his best friend and first love, to an ill-fated kiss.

  Imagine Chase’s surprise five years later when Carter, now a rising rock star, admits to the world that Chase inspired his band’s award-winning song—and that Carter was in love with him all along.

  Frontman Carter West has been closeted his whole life. Now that he’s out in the most public way possible, he can finally indulge in the romantic impulses he’s always had to keep stifled. Reconnecting with Chase gives him the opportunity to explore a whole new side of himself.

  But the next tour draws inevitably closer, and Chase is wary. Carter left Chase once before. Can two gifted musicians write themselves a love song that will last a lifetime?

  “But there was one secret I never told anyone, one I was absolutely terrified of from the time I was fourteen. A secret I wished would go away; a secret I wanted to shout so everyone would finally know.” Carter paused for effect. “I was completely, massively in love with him.”

  My heart stopped. Fully. The blood rushed to my ears, and I felt like I was having a stroke or living inside some messed-up fever dream where everything was spinning and the world was upside down.

  Him. One little word that said so much. Him.

  Acknowledgments

  I AM a firm believer, in every aspect of my life, that art is a team effort. The silent voices and cheerleaders behind the scenes are as integral as the creator, and I am incredibly grateful to all those who have made this story what it is.

  First and foremost, I would like to thank my husband. Thank you for encouraging me to keep “tip-tip-tapping” on my keyboard and pursuing my crazy idea to start writing again after so many years.

  Thank you to the entire team at Dreamspinner Press for your support through this process. Your guidance and professionalism has been such a blessing, and you have made this piece even better than I could have imagined.

  Finally, thank you to the reader for choosing to spend your time with characters that I love so much.

  Author’s Note

  CHASE and Carter’s story is one that has been at the back of my mind for many years. A narrative of artistic collaboration through friendship and then romance is one that is close to my heart. Their struggle with the realities of dating within the entertainment industry parallels many relationships, including my own love story. I wanted to portray this with as much honesty as possible.

  Finding a balance between multiple passions, work, and love isn’t always easy. But sometimes, as with Carter and Chase, it just takes a little creativity to find a solution. And when you do, boy is it worth it!

  I hope you enjoy the journey.

  With love,

  Veronica

  Chase

  Five Years Ago

  THE final bell had just rung, signaling the end of class for another day. All the students rushed from the classroom, pushing and shoving each other to get out first, as though the extra minute and a half of weekend would make all the difference. I hung back, slowly putting my books away, delaying this particular weekend as long as possible. I slumped up to my best friend Carter’s locker in time to see him cramming the last few items into his bag and closing it for good.

  “Hey,” I mumbled to him.

  “Hey,” he said in an equally dejected tone.

  “Want to come over to play Xbox?”

  “Sure. Gotta kick your ass one last time,” he said, though the joke didn’t quite triumph over the horribleness. “I can’t stay late, though. Gotta finish packing.”

  I made a sound somewhere in the realm of agreeing with him.

  Carter’s dad was in the military. They had been stationed here since he was little, but the luck permitting them to stay in one place for so long had run out. They were leaving tomorrow for Massachusetts.

  I didn’t want him to go. I was fairly certain that he didn’t want to move away either. Who wants to transfer with a month and a half left of junior year and have to start fresh for what little remained of high school?

  He was one of the few good friends I had. Being painfully shy and openly gay in high school explained that. The growth spurt I had counted on never materialized, so I was also shorter and scrawnier than most of my classmates. Not exactly a winning combination all around, but Carter never seemed bothered by what others thought of me. We had been friends since before elementary school, when he first landed in our town and his family moved into the house next to mine.

  We grudgingly made our way to my house, kicking stones along the way to fill the silence that descended between us. We got to my place, took off our shoes, and left our backpacks on the floor in the entryway.

  My older brother had left for college the year before, so we had a couple of blissful hours to ourselves until my parents got home from work. I threw a frozen pizza in the oven and pulled out a couple of Cokes for us while we waited for our snack to cook.

  “It’s gonna be fine, man. We can text every day. Mom says we can come visit in the summer. We’re both gonna be in the city in a couple years anyway. Maybe we can even rent a place together or something?”

  “Julliard has dorm rooms,” I said, being deliberately obtuse and difficult.

  How could I tell him that I couldn’t live without him, even temporarily? I needed him in my life every day. The way it’d always been.

  Carter wasn’t just my best friend. I’d been in love with him for as long as I could remember. But he was straight, and I had mostly accepted that. I mean, he had never really dated, but he was so focused on his music he didn’t have a lot of spare time. Either way I didn’t have any reason to suspect he was anything other than straight. Sometimes I would catch him staring at me when he didn’t think I was looking, or he would stand a little closer to me than any of the other guys or hug me a little tighter. But that was only because we had always been in sync. Every so often I could swear there was something there on his side too, though I chalked it up to my imagination playing tricks on me because I wanted it to be true so badly.

  Carter was tall and good-looking. He had chestnut-brown hair, and he had somehow missed the teenaged gangliness that wreaked havoc on so many of us. He was outgoin
g and popular. He had a band, and they actually had paying gigs already, which basically made him a rock star at our school.

  I was in the front row for every show he played. Sometimes there were more guys on the stage than in the crowd, but that never stopped him from getting up there and giving his all in front of whoever was sober enough to listen. He was good. And because I played music too, I could tell just how good he was.

  “Well, after that,” Carter continued. “Or whatever. Maybe we won’t live together, but at least we can see each other whenever we want. It’s not like I’ll never see you.”

  His reasoning was solid, and you couldn’t fault him for trying, but over a year away might as well have been forever as far as I could see it.

  Fortunately the oven timer went off before I was forced to respond. I made busywork of pulling the pizza out, grabbing napkins, and doling out slices for us. I slammed the pizza cutter down with a little more force than strictly necessary.

  “Chase?” He stepped closer to me and put his hand gently on my shoulder. My back hit the counter. “Let’s try to make the most of tonight, okay?” Carter went on. “I just want one more night with my best friend.”

  The way he was looking at me made me weak in the knees. It was the look he sometimes gave me that let my mind convince me he might feel the same way I did. His pleading eyes stared straight into mine. I had a hard time denying him anything. My brain was slow and foggy, and I couldn’t think with him so close to me. I felt myself being pulled toward him, an unconscious movement I had no ability to control. My eyes began to close; I couldn’t stop them.

  I had never kissed anyone before, and as far as I knew, he hadn’t either. This was all gut instinct taking over, without my thinking or overanalyzing. This was my one chance, and if I didn’t take it now, I might never get another shot.

  I brushed his lips faintly with mine, so lightly it barely even qualified as a kiss. For one perfect second, all was right with the world. And then he tensed and pushed me away aggressively.

  “What the fuck, Chase?” he said with uncharacteristic forcefulness.

  “I… I….”

  I couldn’t find the words. I started to break down. Tears formed slowly and began dripping down my heated cheeks before I could stop them. My body started to shake uncontrollably.

  “I thought maybe you….” My voice cracked on a sob.

  “Were what? Gay? I’ve always been cool with the gay thing, but I’m not a fucking cocksucker like you.”

  He walked angrily to the door, stomped into his shoes, and threw his backpack over his shoulder.

  “Wait, C, please stop!” I pleaded, my heart breaking into a thousand bits.

  He turned back to look at me as he opened the door. He shook his head. And then he was gone.

  I fell completely to pieces on the floor of the hallway.

  Chase

  Present

  SUNDAY nights in Ty’s living room had been a thing since the first month I’d known him. The people on the periphery were always changing. Partners came and went constantly, as was the way for a group of college kids in their early twenties, but the core group was the same. Sometimes it became a movie night, or we would play poker for money we didn’t have. More often than not, it was drinking, and bitching about school and whoever wasn’t in the room. It was such a regular event in our lives that it wasn’t even a question of making plans anymore; we just kind of all showed up around the same time every week.

  The venue had stayed consistent over the years. Ty was one of the lucky ones, or unlucky ones, depending on your perspective, who had parents in the city he could still live with. Ty’s parents owned this reasonably-sized duplex in Queens. He lived in a suite in the basement that was freezing in the winter and unbearable in the summer, but saving the cost of renting in Manhattan more than made up for the temperature and the commute.

  I’d met Ty a couple of years ago on what was supposed to be a date. Five minutes in, we knew it was never going to be a romantic thing, but it ended up turning into something I needed just as badly. Friends are difficult to find in the city, especially with the insane competition in Julliard, so I was more than happy to have Ty slot me into his group without any sort of hesitation. And it had been that way ever since. I wasn’t the most outgoing guy in the world. To have friends who got that and still wanted me around was something I appreciated more than they knew.

  This week we had all pitched in for some Chinese food from the little hole-in-the-wall down the road, and we were half watching the Grammy Awards, half watching our friend Graham graphically overshare about his hookup with some girl at a bar the night before. I was sitting on the floor with my back against the hideous green-and-yellow floral wingback chair Hannah was in, concentrating on getting the noodles out of the paper take-out container I was holding rather than on G’s overdetailed charade.

  Chopsticks never seemed to come naturally to me, and fighting with my dinner seemed like as good a distraction as any. I had tried to get my friends to change the channel at least three times, but subtle suggestions clearly weren’t working, and pointing it out again would have undoubtedly raised red flags. I was trying hard not to pay attention to the screen, but the universe seemed to get a special kick out of conspiring against me.

  “Oh, turn it up!” Cara said, finally cutting Graham off, to everyone’s relief. “Ethan Taylor’s on!”

  Graham slumped back into his seat, muttering to himself, while Ty grabbed the remote and increased the volume on country music’s heartthrob introducing the award for the Best New Song. I focused on my noodles, hoping nobody would notice me, trying to use the power of my mind to make what the critics were all predicting not come to be.

  “And the award goes to… Inevitable Thorns for ‘Next to Me’!”

  Of course it was. The band was young, and their star had been rising solidly over the past year or two. They had strong instrumentality and moderately passable lyrics. They also had Carter West as their lead singer. The sexiest man in existence, with the most incredible singing voice I’ve ever heard. Thorns were bound to go far.

  Fortunately for me, everyone in the room seemed to lose interest as soon as Ethan Taylor was no longer in the spotlight, and they immediately began discussing Ethan’s upcoming concert tour dates and whether we should scrape together the money to try to get tickets. They largely missed my former best friend bounding down the aisle with his band to collect their prize.

  My noodles were churning inside my stomach, making me nauseous. I had a mild stalking/feigned-disinterest relationship with the Thorns in general and the publicly known version of Carter specifically. While I had purposely avoided seeing them live, they seemed to perform at larger and larger venues each time I heard about them. Their recent album generated a huge amount of publicity, and my understanding was that they had been on a national tour for the last several months, playing decent-sized concert halls and small stadiums. Again, feigned disinterest.

  I kept half my attention on the TV, which I tried to appear to ignore. Had any of my friends even glanced my way, they would have seen my tense posture and known something was up, but the debate in Ty’s living room was getting lively, and Jonathan threw a dumpling at Cara in mock protest about something. Nobody was even paying attention to the show anymore.

  On the monitor, Inevitable Thorns had finally made their way onstage after all the handshakes and hugs on the way from their seats. This was their first Grammy, a momentous occasion for any band. I tried to feel happy for them. They collected the award from Ethan Taylor and stood in a semicircle around the microphone. The man I had spent the last five years religiously avoiding, who had at one time meant more to me than anyone else ever could, was in the center, getting ready to speak. The crowd went wild again when Carter raised the trophy above his head, drawing the attention of my friends back to what was happening on the TV.

  “Winning this award, for this song especially, means more to me than I can ever say,” Carter started, hi
s voice full of emotion.

  I knew that look too well. The years might have aged him, built his confidence alongside his talent, and certainly hadn’t hurt his looks, but it was the same expression he wore when he got busted for tying Matty Smith’s shoelaces together under his desk in the fourth grade and had to sit inside all recess. All the underlying emotion I had always been able to read so easily but that he kept hidden from the world. Whether it was our fourth-grade teacher or the millions of people undoubtedly watching him like we were now, he was clearly feeling something more profound than he was going to let anyone see.

  “I grew up in a tiny little town, a nothing town called Stablecreek, Pennsylvania,” he continued shakily and then paused to collect himself while a few of the audience members whooped and hollered, not picking up on the seriousness of his sentiment.

  Graham and Jonathan both turned to me from their chairs in unison. Uh-oh. Graham opened his big, stupid mouth.

  “Hey, isn’t that where you’re from, Chase? Do you know Carter West? Fucking holding out on us….”

  Ty gave me a funny look. He was the only one of the group I had told this story to, though I had never disclosed a name. Ty was smart. I could see he was piecing it together. I shot him a pleading look, begging him not to say anything.

  “Shh, I want to hear this,” Ty said, frowning at Graham, and everyone slowly focused their attention back on the TV. I gave a silent sigh of relief and mouthed “Thank you” to Ty. I knew I was in for an interrogation later, but having Ty question me on his own would be a thousand times easier than having to explain everything to the full group. Especially when the guy who crushed my heart got everything he had ever dreamed of thousands of miles away and all I could do was watch him anonymously on a television screen.

  “I had a best friend when I was young. A friend who lived right next door—next to me,” Carter continued from the stage, purposely using the name of the song so everyone knew where this was going. “Our parents were close. Sometimes it was like we were all one family. Through every scraped knee or bad grade or teenage act of rebellion, he and I were together.”