L. Wheeler

Every budding actor knows acting is a difficult gig. There will be grueling auditions and punishing rejections. If you’re lucky, there’ll be roles that pay the bills and even roles that won’t. Roles we don’t believe in. So when the semester’s production project is announced and I’m cast as one of the leads, I’m ecstatic. A lot of responsibility, a lot of work, but I’m up for it. Even when I find out what my role is and who my partner is. Amos, the brooding James Dean wannabe, is my on-screen boyfriend. Which is great, except for the fact he hates me.

In all of my years as a professor, never did I imagine I'd end up getting a lap dance from a student. But I did. What's worse? He's my new TA. And the icing on top of the cake? I can't stop thinking about it. Can't get him off my mind. I'm Dr. Silas Sinclair. Respectable educator and a man with his head on his shoulders. I don't break the rules. I don't cross boundaries. And I certainly don't stalk students.

Charles Preston Carmichael is the most infuriating man I've ever met. I want to sock the golden boy of college hockey right in the mouth. He enjoys telling me everything I'm messing up—publicly. And since he's my roommate for the next year, I can't avoid him. Yet there's something about him that makes me watch him. Something dark. A secret I want to uncover. When he returns from a weekend away, broken and haunted, I can't keep my distance anymore. He needs someone, and I'll be damned if it's not me.

There I was, moving into the dorms at Franklin U and not into the shared party house I’d lived in my freshman year. Last year had been all about football and parties, not schoolwork. Which was why my grades tanked. Why I was one failed class away from being kicked off the team. Why I needed to live on campus and find myself a tutor. Funny that my new roommate just happened to be a tutor. Funny that he was oblivious to how hot he was. For a smart guy, he was pretty clueless.

He was the talented bad boy everyone wanted. I was the irrelevant geek everyone hated. He was the sun...drawing all of us in. I was a black hole...taking up space. He was destined to be a star. I was destined to remain an insignificant no one. Until he made me believe I was special...and then he destroyed me. I never thought I'd see Phoenix Walker again after he broke my heart, but fate had other plans. One tour. Eight weeks. Forty shows. Countless opportunities to make him pay. The world thought he was a god...but I know the truth.