Chapter 2 - A Knife-throwing Kind of Love

Jesse remembered perfectly the first day he met Shelby Corcoran. It had been the day that Jesse had trusted that his lifelong dream of being a star was still very much alive, something that he had begun to doubt at that point in his life. Back at the time, his family has just settled into Toledo due to his grandfather passing and leaving to his father the control of the family owned-business, which as far as Jesse knew – and he didn't know much to this day – manufactured glass. Glass— it was pretty cut and dry, simple to the point of unfairness towards the true nature of the St. James's, but at the same time it elevated them. Socially, that was.

They had just moved there from California, where Jesse's father, Theodore, had clung to his fairly successful career as an entertainment lawyer until the very inevitable last second. Needless to say that being forced to move to Toledo, Ohio hadn't made Jesse very happy either. It hadn't been easy on anybody on his family, really. His father was a clearly burdened man, pressed not only with a company he didn't care about but with three kids trusted upon him by Jesse's mother relocation to the Cincinnati FBI office (Cleveland was closer, and she had eventually ended up there, but at first they didn't have a place for her). Heather spent most of the week away, hurdled to a condo on the other side of the state entirely, and Theodore had had to pretty much raise him and his siblings on his own.

The out-of-control, staggered offspring rapidly overwhelmed the man though; and being a difficult man, with little patience for failure and little time to cope with his wife's glaring absence, Theodore had had no problem in dealing with his older siblings by the punitive course. Jesse supposed he should have been thankful that he had always been his favorite, always having shared with him the love for the art of motion pictures, always too willing to sit with him throughout a night of John Wayne movies, and always accomplished and dedicated in his eyes, because at least he hadn't ended up at Culver, a military boarding school, with his troublemaker brother and his hysterical bulimic sister that only his dad couldn't understand just wanted his freaking attention.

Just a year before moving, Jesse had gone to Disney World with his parents, where he had been faced with the sharp performance of a singing and dancing group (he had no idea what show choir even was at that point). It was a number inspired by Moulin Rouge, and it featured a really creative medley between Lady Marmalade, Hey Ya and Crazy in Love.

He had been drawn to it with just about the same intensity as every other normal kid in the park was drawn to the rides. For Jesse St. James, of course, Disney paled in comparison to Vocal Adrenaline. He snagged some performer on scene, like a giddy fan girl, and hounded him enough to find out that, coincidently enough, they were from Ohio.

The same state in which Jesse would find himself tragically trapped just briefly after. As soon as he had remembered the name of the group, Jesse had researched everything about Vocal Adrenaline. He had grown up getting to know celebrities and hanging around studios while his dad chalked up contracts, and he had known since he was five that he wanted to be an actor. His room always had been covered with posters of Marlon Brando and James Dean, and he had always used his hair like theirs and his favorite wardrobe piece had been a leather jacket since he had been old enough to choose his clothes.

So, it was only expected that as soon as he had briefed himself on all Google could offer him on Vocal Adrenaline, he had sought out Shelby Corcoran, the woman behind the exuberant and intriguingly fun school club that seemed to be entertaining audiences all over the country, despite their origin at the corner of some dingy city by name of Lima, in a over-the-top school that served mainly a community comprised of the latest generations to inherit the seemingly never-ending Lima oil money.

It was like a Westchester-type of community compressed inside a city that was otherwise very much Ohio, very much small, and common, land of simple all-American folks and all of that. He had found the school, and then Shelby's office that was, at the time, a lot more crowded with trophies (she had eventually moved everything into the music room) and sober. He had broken in, of course.

She had been pretty startled when she had arrived, crushing an immense stack of music sheet against a plain button blouse that seemed very much like the ones his mother used, and looking out of breath and exhausted.

She had screeched a "Who the hell are you?" and squeezed her eyes at him menacingly, but considering who his mother was, she really would have to have done better.

"I wanna audition for Vocal Adrenaline."

She had looked at him like he was crazy, chuckled and gotten behind her messy desk. (Jesse had admit something: he hated Dakota Stanley forcefully, but Shelby's life had gotten 200% easier ever since the dwarf had come along, and afterwards when they had hired the art people (costumes, sceneries and props) and then a stage manager. She had become a lot more together, and had even found time to do things like redecorating her office and buying everybody rewards, and eating and sleeping, something he wasn't so sure she did back then.)

"What's your name?" she had asked with more patience than he thought she would demonstrate.

"Jesse St. James."

"Okay, Jesse St. James. We appreciate enthusiasm for our group, but you have to attend this school to be a part of Vocal Adrenaline. What grade are you in?"

"Well, 7th, but…"

"Come back in two years."

She had started going through a stack of paper, but he hadn't given up. He had met a lot of actors, he had talked to them about rejection. He knew never to take 'no' for an answer. He rounded her table and sat on the tip of it, right next to her and started belting Somewhere Over the Rainbow. She had seemed annoyed, but slightly amused too, and had actually stopped shuffling through her papers in order to listen to him.

He still recalled perfectly how Shelby's eyes seemed to fill with different emotions listening to the song, and she didn't hold anything back. He had always loved attention, but even he felt naked before her. When he was done, she gave him a small smile.

"You have a very good voice, Jesse St. James. Good range, nice tone."

"I've been classically trained since I was three."

"Impressive. But what were you thinking about when you sang that?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?" she had frowned. A knowing, motherly kind of frown. "Why did you choose it?"

"It goes well with my voice."

"Don't do that. When you sing, try and find something in that song that you can connect with, that has meaning to you. Try to bring it to your reality and put all of your heart in it. That's what performance is all about."

Shelby talked with her hands, frantically, passionately. Her eyes glistened while she spoke with him, but she wasn't self-conscious at all. He might have fallen a little in love with her at that moment.

He had only been able to stagger a weak "Okay" because he couldn't stop gawking in admiration at that woman. That messy woman with a messy ponytail, a loose simple shirt and badly concealed dark circles under her eyes, that was still the most beautiful woman he had ever met.

"Do you dance?"

"Not really."

"Well, I can tell you, half of being a show choir performer is dancing. More, if you are not a soloist yet. The scores that we get in competition have a great weight placed on choreography, staging, synchronism, and dynamism, and it all comes down to my students' ability to learn their movements with surgical precision. How old are you— thirteen?"

"Twelve."

Shelby had picked a piece of paper and scribbled something on it, fast and then gave it to him.

"This is one of the best dance teachers I've ever met. He specializes in late bloomers, boys especially, most of them being actors that want to become triple threats and need hard, intense training. He tutors in Cincinnati, which I realize is really far, but if you are really serious…"

"I am!"

"Look, Vocal Adrenaline is a pretty demanding club. Long hours, hard work, no social life. I don't allow my students to take any other activities that aren't Vocal Adrenaline, and frown at dating drama. I kick students out for tantrums, and I don't tolerate whining about the efforts required to stay in it. I also have to warn you that your academics will suffer; Vocal Adrenaline performers take reduced credits so they can be in my music classes and other pertinent classes on the art program. If this is not what you want for your future, this and nothing else, and if you are not willing to give me your entire life, and more, then this is really not the place for you. Fortunately you have two solid years to think this through, Jesse St. James. So do."

Of course, thinking had not been what he had spent two years doing. Before he left her office that day, the decision was already made. He moved in with his mother in Cincinnati, and changed schools so he could take the dancing training, and then he had found a wonderful vocal coach too and everything was even more perfect. He spent most of his time practicing and all of his free time pretty much stalking Shelby Corcoran. Emailing her updates, recordings he did in his home and of performances at school, asking for her advice and just basically nagging her to death.

The thing about Shelby though, was that she was very generous, despite everything she had going on, and she had always responded his emails very benevolently. She always had tips about the recordings he sent her, always had a kind word to spare, an expression of concern if something seemed off, a link for a new Vocal Adrenaline video for him to check or even a suggestion of something cool on Broadway to inspire him. She had been the one to get him hooked on musical theater, of course. Thankfully, those two years had rushed by, and he at last landed at his dream (with a little string pulling from his dad to place him in a public school that not only wasn't in their district, it wasn't in their freaking city).

He still remembered walking those hallways for the first time as a student, and the only thing he had cared about had been, once again, locating Shelby Corcoran. Luckily, he had found her without having to commit any misdemeanors that time around; she had been standing in the middle of main hallway, talking to their principal, who he was sure had had just a big a crush on Shelby as he had.

He had waited it out for the conversation to end, not really wanting to be introduced to the man that had been at the time shooting stars through his eyes at Shelby, and then joined her as soon as she walked down the hallway.

"Ms. Corcoran. Hi. I go here now."

"Hi, Jesse St. James. I kind of figured," she had chuckled, amused, asked him to hold her cup of coffee and opened her briefcase from where she retrieved some papers and handled them to him.

"Here, let me run you through it. Auditions for Vocal Adrenaline are in one week. Fill out this first form, and leave it on my desk, with a photo and a recording of your vocals. Now I have enough of those, but I'll let you choose whatever you think is best and leave it for me with your application. This is the list of pre-approved songs for the audition. Chose three; one should be a capella, and at least one has to be up tempo. Then you chose one of these songs and you pull together a dance variation. The list of basic movements required is right there, and it should not run longer than three minutes. There will be an improvisation element too, and an ensemble element, which you'll be presented with at the time. We screen by groups first, like Broadway. Too many applicants. The other papers are for the soloists audition; I'm sure you are gonna want to do that. It's only next month, but you can start preparing; it's pretty competitive. You choose four of the approved songs, one has to be performed a capella, and two have to be performed with dancing. Now, two pieces of advice. One, choose songs with really good runs, that display your range nicely. And two, try running and jumping while you sing scales; it'll get you accustomed to not letting your voice shake while doing harsh movements at that same time. That's really important. However I have to make it clear to you that being a soloist doesn't mean you'll get solos. Every year I choose three girls and three boys; this year luckily I'm choosing four because we have 32 spots in VA this year. It's the first time we had such a large group. Those eight people will be the ones I'll go to when I need to fill a solo. I can choose arbitrarily or hold an audition, it'll depend on time, and my mood… I don't know, it varies. All soloists however get one-on-one sessions with me weekly, so… that's something to look forward for. Or not. I hope it is."

"Definitively," he had stuttered after a few seconds, wondering what was about that woman that made his eloquence falter, even when she was babbling like a crazy person.

"Okay. Good luck, Jesse St. James."

She had offered him a head nod, and walked away, but he had called after her.

"The way you keep repeating 'Jesse St. James'…is it a joke?", he had asked sheepishly. Already he had badly needed her approval and he was sure that would never change.

"No. I love your name. I think it's the name of a star. Let's see if you'll do it justice, shall we?" she had smirked, but still that was something kind about it, and he could tell that her enjoyment was fairly harmless, even a little flattering. She had turned and walked away, her hips swaying inside a fitting pencil skirt in a way that made all male heads follow her down the path, her long raven hair pressed tightly into a ponytail that followed in the same hypnotic rhythm, and in that moment he had realized that Shelby Corcoran held a enthrallment over people, and of all things he had to learn from that woman, that was the very first priority. Of course, he would be lying if he denied that he had checked her out that day, but at least he had made sure to not let his crush get on his way to becoming her star, which was something he could not say for most straight guys in Vocal Adrenaline. They surely spent more time fantasizing about her than they did perfecting their vocals.

He had sailed through both auditions with a splash, of course. Dakota Stanley, at the time recently hired, hadn't found more than half a dozen of things to brutally criticize about his performance, and that was as good as it ever got with Dakota. Both members of the Booster Club Directive Board attending were fairly impressed by him too. But in the end, it had all come down to Shelby Corcoran, and in that end, it hasn't been just about proving his talents. It may have started with him wanting to show her he had honed his abilities and become exactly what she needed from a soloist, but by the time his audition was over Shelby and him had found something much more precious in each other.

Trust. He knew she was the one to trust his life to in order to achieve his dreams; he had no doubt that even the most trivial recommendation out of her mouth was gold and, her reputation aside, with her he was safe. And she knew that he would be the one faultlessly abiding by her every instruction, chasing her to the edge of a cliff if need be, and that in him she had a rock.

Though the early dynamics might have seemed like Shelby was the one allowed to play distant and not get caught personally into the relationship while he had invested his soul from the get-go, he knew that in time that had changed. His lack of boundaries was otherwise a problem, and Shelby was a very closed-off person, but he was so dedicated to her that he had eventually passed through her barriers. And he too had learned to see her as a little more than an idol, all mighty and untouchable. He had seen the care she had with every Vocal Adrenaline member and that could go unnoticed under the drill-sergeant act. And he had seen her mask fall enough times to learn that the woman was not purely made of talent, stamina and order. As a matter of fact she was quite the chaotic human being.

Which he knew was the reason Vocal Adrenaline was the way that it was. Shelby needed structure. And he hadn't run a poll through his company, so he couldn't speak for them, but he sure as hell was very thankful for it. He had tried the hippie experience with New Directions and found it seriously lacking, not only in drive but in a base. The idea behind it was quite cute, but coming from a family that was spread all over the place and a muddled lifestyle, he needed stability, routine, order, and Vocal Adrenaline provided with that safe haven.

He felt it was easy to work like New Directions did, and he honestly wouldn't be surprised if one day they actually won a Nationals title. In the end, show choir could be more subjective than they liked to pretend it was, but there was a startling difference between belonging to either group. New Directions was a school group to a fault; it was amateur, inclusive and it was supposed to be educational. Vocal Adrenaline might not have a professional status, but that's what they were and that's how they were treated.

Shelby made sure of that. They were expected to behave impeccably; even their funkifying only took place because it had been sanctioned long ago (though what happened to Rachel certainly crossed a line Shelby hadn't expected them to cross). And it wasn't a bad 'job' to have. Chris, who probably was going to stay in high school forever, was a statement to that. Shelby had made a deal that once he got accepted into college she would gladly pull some strings to get him graduated, even though he had a hard time adding up four plus four, but since he kept being rejected even at community colleges no one seemed in a hurry to kick him out. He was the only one that could do the triple flip, and Jesse didn't know many twenty-two year-old high schoolers who drove Range Rovers, wore designer clothes, had an Omega watch and traveled all around the country with all expenses covered.

Vocal Adrenaline put on usually two dozen performances nationwide in the period of a year; they participated in the main competition and two other parallel competitions, one of those having a $300,000 top prize from Pepsi they had, thankfully, managed to grab three years in a row. They held at least six invitationals a year at school and performed pro bono in benefits, fundraising and lots of corporate events. It was a lot of work. It was great for a resume of a future performer, and it certainly came with many rewards, but it required a commitment that was almost inhuman and that he felt most people couldn't understand.

It made it easier that Shelby was their commander-in-chief. She had a tough act, but she was soft for them. He had seen her once pay for Chris's grandmother meds from her own pocket (though, he guessed that, if Shelby could make the booster club pay for a shopping spree in New York with the excuse that the airline had extraverted her bag, which had not been true at all, she probably had found a way of making them refund her). She always received students in her office to talk about anything, even if she had work coming out of her ears. She was always understanding of personal problems, and she made sure everybody got checked for health issues, fatigue and stress after each gig. She was on top of their diets, their work-out schedules, their grades, their behaviors in class, how present their parents were in school life, and while she was demanding and didn't tolerate slacking or stepping out of line, she too worried if they ate too little, or worked too much, or didn't study enough. She was a slave-driver, but for many in the club, she was the person in their lives that took care of them the most. For him, who had always been bluntly favored, she had been more.

Which was why it had been hard to see Shelby so cold, disconnected, hard. He knew she was mad, but he had seen her furious before and it certainly hadn't come with that sense of unattainability that possessed her since the incident with Rachel. She just wasn't there for him anymore. Sometimes, for any of them. She was just there, hollow, giving out instructions and criticism. He felt that if one of them had broken their necks she might have rolled her eyes with boredom, or even that might have proven too much of an effort. It felt awful. It felt almost as she had died, or simply walked out, because they didn't have their leader anymore. They had some coach, a great coach, naturally, but not their mentor and idol.

He couldn't have imagined she felt that he didn't care for her. It was absurd to even think of that. But her offended tears, her meltdown, that hurt look in her green eyes, it evidenced that she really did believe it, and he wasn't sure how they had gotten to that point. At least, before that night. That night had really fucked it all.

He hadn't meant to harm her in any way. To remember her face, bruised and bloody, contorted in pain and fright, made his stomach twist like there were serpents in it. He realized the idea he had decided to set in practice once he had searched his mother car for chewing gum and found her work piece instead had been quite the foolish one. But he was an actor, and his life and her life were all drama, so maybe a little bit of a show would have done the trick to break her aloofness.

He had only intended to make her think he would play Russian roulette with himself unless she talked to him. It seemed harmless, because he had made sure to unload the gun properly, the bullet in the barrel included. Safety with guns was something his mother had been very adamant to teach all of them since there had always been weapons around the house. When they were little she had developed the habit of keeping her gun locked in her car, a habit she obviously hadn't lost, but still she had made sure Jesse understood the dangers of pointing a loaded weapon at someone.

He knew though that Shelby wasn't aware of that and had been incredibly frightened with the whole ordeal, and he felt terrible. It really wasn't something that he had meant to do at all. Nor was taking her hostage. The adrenaline of their argument, coupled with his massive screw up and then the presence of Mr. Baris had freaked him out, and he had only wanted to run and hide, like a scared little boy, but at the same time he had had to stop Shelby from getting him the punishment he so well deserved.

He tried to keep in mind what she had required of him and tried to put himself in her place. Even if everything had gone according to plan, what would he feel if she feigned playing Russian roulette with herself just to get his attention? He'd be horrified and then he would never forgive her. And if she physically assaulted him, threatened him with a weapon, shoved him into a vehicle, restrained him and driven him to an unknown location?

His stomach felt strangled into a knot and he had to rush to the toilet, thinking he would be sick, but unfortunately nothing happened and the sensation stayed with him. And then he felt himself sink into despair as he realized that she would not, in a million years, forgive him. He wouldn't if the parts were reverse.

Shelby was the one presence in his life that was reliable. He knew a lot of kids in VA had really problematic families. Cruel parents, absent parents, people that were just plain fucked up. It wasn't his case. His parents loved him, worshipped him, tried the very best to be supportive of him. But they were acid, cut and dry, and it wasn't easy to call his mother when she was between field operations to whine about how he was feeling lonely, and sometimes when he wanted to tell something that was on his mind to his father the words didn't come out of his mouth so effortlessly. He loved them, and he was conscious that they tried hard, but he couldn't honestly say that they were the best of friends. That he would bare his soul without trouble at home.

That was a piece of him he only had let Shelby have, and to a tiny extent, Rachel. Shelby always made him feel safe. And he knew that in a way, he had made her feel that too. He had made her feel that she could confide in him her darkest, most painful secret. She had learned to let her guard down and actually put into words when she was tired, sad, confused, anxious. And then he had learned to read all of that in her eyes, in the way she clenched her jaw and tensed her shoulder, in how many chocolate bars he saw her snacking on in a given week, even in the way she coached, and she hadn't needed anymore. They could talk silently, sometimes even give each other some support by merely crossing for a second in the hallway, or exchange an inside joke while he was all the way up the stage and she was sitting at her desk.

How would she do that with someone that had actually dragged her to the middle of the woods at gunpoint? How would she feel safe now? He knew that no matter how well he explained to her that he hadn't meant to hurt her, it wouldn't change the fact that he had done horrible things to her, and it wouldn't make it better. His remorse was better than nothing, he wasn't as she had put it: a monster, but he just didn't see how he could just erase what he had done. It seemed impossible.

At that moment he was the one who wanted to cry. But he didn't feel he even deserved that, so he bit back the tears and marched back into the room he had accommodated her in, his room, but she was still asleep and once he took a look at her he lost all courage to wake her up.

Even unconscious Shelby seemed very scared at that moment. She was curled into a fetal position, her arms raised before her face, as if to protect it, a tense expression over her pale and bruised features. She looked cold too.

Jesse went to the linen closet in the hallway and grabbed a few blankets. He hadn't known what he was doing when he got to his car, he just needed to get her away from Mr. Baris, because as soon as the older man found what he had done to Shelby he would be in heavy trouble, and then he had to admit he had gotten a kick of driving around, having her forced to be in the same place as him, and wanting to communicate with him, but being bluntly ignored, just like she had done with him.

But the punishment got despicable pretty fast; he could tell she was really terrified and he wasn't enjoying it. And he wanted to take her back, but considering the state of affairs, he dreaded that the first thing she would do would be calling the police, and he had wanted to at least buy some time to calm her down and properly apologize, not that he had succeed in that so far.

His family had been to the cabin just the week before and he knew the place was clean and stacked with linens, and since they intended to return soon, some bottled water and dry goods. He was sure there was some medicine in there too, plus the key had been on his mother key ring, so it had seemed a pretty convenient place to keep Shelby captive for a few hours. How he regretted that at that point. He thought about just scooping her up and rushing her to a hospital, but she actually didn't seem that critical, and he really didn't want to rob her from the rest she sure was needing at that juncture.

Jesse removed Shelby's stilettos and then sprawled two thin blankets on top of her body. It was a cold night for spring, especially where they were. Of its own accord, his hand went to her cheek, and his knuckles brushed it soothingly. Her face almost immediately relaxed a bit, and he couldn't help but feel that pressure in his chest loosen up a little too.

He also didn't approve but couldn't prevent himself from sitting on the edge of the bed, next to her. He just wanted to feel her; to feel the warmth from her body, the soft, floral perfume she exhaled. And if that could at least make her feel like she wasn't alone, like she was a bit protected, even if she was unconscious, it already made him feel better for the awful things he had said to her.

Shelby instinctively snuggled into him, and he felt bad for she didn't know what she was doing, but he kept caressing the side of her face, and then rubbing circles in her back, until she seemed somewhat peaceful. He knew he should be waking her in fifteen minutes or so, per her orders, but he felt he would be doing her more harm by not letting her rest a bit more, so he decided to go take a walk and meditate over their situation more thoroughly.

Shelby turned instantly into the spot he had vacated as soon as he got up, and it was almost too hard to leave her, but it was harder to process intense thoughts while having to quietly watch over someone's sleep. He couldn't pull away though, and he just got closer and closer to her, and eventually his face was so close to hers he hadn't been able to resist burying his nose into her hair, and as his lips touched softly the base of her skull, he felt a tear running down his cheek and down her neck. His body shuddered with a nervous energy that wasn't just pure sorrow, he knew, and he quickly straightened his body, more sickened at his behavior than never, and stumbled out of the room as fast as possible, rushing then outside and hoping the full moon and the fresh air would knock some sense into his head.

There was much to be questioned about his brief and disastrous relationship with Rachel. He knew some people, if there was anybody aware of the truth, might have found petty and irresponsible of Shelby to ask him to get to know the girl to see if maybe she would be open to an approach. He hadn't understood her fear at all at first, but the day she had explained it, she had looked so broken and vulnerable, he had seen that even trying to connect with that girl was frightening her to death.

And Shelby wasn't a person that he knew to be easily scared. Not much fazed her. And he knew her personal life enough to have seen a certain fragility take over her a few times. He learned that when she went missing in one of their trips or celebrations and came back with a hollow look in her eyes, that she had been making out with some gay or married guy that was just using her for a cheap thrill. He still didn't know why she allowed that to happen, she was a beautiful woman, and she knew that; and even if her life was Vocal Adrenaline there were a couple – not many, true, but they existed – divorced dads in the Carmel community that wouldn't mind trying to woo her. The risk of one of them just wanting the kick of possessing the ice queen was just as high, but at least she would be taking chances with available men. He had noted too that in certain weeks of the year she would give them really short rehearsals, then become distant and distracted, her eyes would become sadder and her smiles would turn fake. Jesse guessed those were periods when she had lost loved ones, considering Shelby was all alone in the world. He had already found out that one of them aligned perfectly with Rachel's birth. He had been there when she lost titles (it wasn't really true that Vocal Adrenaline won it all) and had baffling anxiety attacks. She was very demanding with them, but more so with herself, and failure did send her into disarray. But that look that she had in her car the day she told him the whole story, that air of pure misery, it had been new.

Shelby did carry an aura of loneliness and sadness, but she had a tight wall around it, and it was an efficient, tightly controlled one. Hell, it was even excitable and amicable. Once you got past her reservations, she wasn't that unfriendly, he saw her treating other people with affection quite often in the halls of Carmel. So he had never considered the possibility of her being actually an unhappy person. He couldn't help now but to want to reach out, to make it better somehow, to protect her from her life of constant disappointments. Instead, he had just become one more; with the abduction, more than ever, but surely it had already been the case before, with Rachel.

He didn't want her to think he was a bad human being; he hadn't taken the opportunity to gauge Rachel's life for her as a game. The situation just had been bizarre: finding out she had a teenager daughter that she had given up that not only surfaced before her eyes without any awareness that her mother was that close, but was also their freaking competition. He did love a little drama, he couldn't deny that. Living like a character on a Broadway tragedy or a Mexican soap opera did give him a thrill. But he did care that this girl seemed to be the only relative Shelby seemed to possess, and he had fantasized that Rachel could have been like one of those characters too, hollow without the love of a mother, depressed with her existence, and that he would lead her right into blissful happiness and save the mentor he idolized and adored from her life of abandonment and isolation (and jerks that used her for sex).

It wasn't like that at all. As soon as their relationship had moved into that phase where is okay to go to the girl's house and hang out with her, which had been pretty fast considering Rachel's equally expansive flair for exaggeration and for giving too much of herself, he had realized that Shelby might have been a little more realistic by dreading an approach than he had been. Rachel's dads were pretty doting and present. That relationship that he wished he had with his parents and that he had developed with Shelby instead, Rachel had with Leroy. She could just sit on the couch, or join him while he did the dishes, and tell him everything, or so she had confided. And any time she felt down, because of the bullying or losing a solo or a competition, she would just go after Hiram, even if he was at work, and he would find the right thing to say to her to bust her confidence and help her keep going.

She didn't seem broken. A little ill-adjusted at McKinley, but not more so than Jesse too would be if he had landed there instead of Carmel. She didn't seem like she would gladly run to Shelby, move in with her, give her the family he knew his coach so desperately needed. He still believed that they should at least be aware of each other, and was glad to see that immense weight moving from Shelby's chest, even though it had been a really troublesome experience. He had seen enough Lifetime movies to believe firmly that at some point they would gravitate back towards each other and find an organic way to bond, and develop a friendly relation from there.

His biggest issue probably had to be his true involvement with Rachel. He didn't expect to get a little infatuated with the girl, and he had been more disturbed by it than he had cared to show. After he had put his head down in San Diego, and then paid his brother a visit in college and for the first time ever held a conversation with him – Patrick was just out of rehab and full of emotions shit talk, but it had helped him – he had become conscious of two very grave things: the first was that he might have been transferring his high-school crush on Shelby to her age-appropriate, adorable, accessible daughter. His brother had come up with some very fancy psycho-babble about how he could be doing that to be able to settle with the motherly role Shelby played in his life without the major sexual attraction conflict that was plaguing his id, ego or whatever the fuck. Patrick seemed to be polishing the conversation to prove to him that the tuition money their dad was dispensing was being well availed, but Jesse was simply glad that his brother seemed able, for the first time in years, to do anything without going through uppers and downers like they were a Disneyland ride, regardless of how much Freud he was being able to soak up and spit back at somebody who only really needed some simple relationship advice.

The second thing, and the ickiest, was the fact that even if Shelby and Rachel were virtually strangers, embracing Shelby as kind of a mother and moving on to Rachel meant that he was using someone akin to a sister to placate a physical temptation that wasn't really complicating his relationship with Shelby at all. It hadn't got in their way, it hadn't hurt them. It was just an annoying detail hanging there, but after four years, he had even lost the instinct to check out her ass when she was walking in front of him. Respect had really trimmed the edges, and now what was left was just that urge to touch her, to cup her cheek or pull her into him when they were sitting really close and talking gibberish, and she was being cute and tossing that dazzling smile around. It wasn't as if he hadn't touched her like that; he had, plenty of times. But it had always been in times like that one, when she needed comfort so badly he knew even her sense of professional virtue wouldn't kick in.

He was still at a loss from how he had traveled to slowly falling for Rachel, even in the mist of all the internal controversy, and egging her on that parking lot. He knew that the only reason he did return to McKinley was because of Shelby's face when he had tentatively told her it was over, that Rachel and he had gotten into a fight and he wasn't comfortable anymore with that sham. He didn't tell her that it was because it felt too real, that he was too engaged; that she had been Shelby, except with promise, instead of unfeasibility, and then it had became clear that he didn't hold that sense of future for her, that realm of possibilities, and that had squashed the very foundation of what had made her desirable to him.

Hell, if he wanted to hit a brick wall, he might as well pursue Shelby. It would be just as frustrating, possibly more disastrous, but Shelby needed his love, attention and care a lot more than Rachel did, and she had already given him so much in those six years.

He had only gone back to finish what he had promised himself and Shelby to do; to give her a chance of getting acquainted with her daughter. That had involved stringing Rachel along, and he wasn't proud of it, but he didn't think it was particularly cruel. Rachel was as invested in their dating as he was; he was the rebound and the guy she was using to make Finn realize she was wanted. It probably had upset her more to be humiliated in front of the club as being wrong about his true intentions, and he did feel sorry for it, but she technically hadn't been mistaken. He hadn't wanted to destroy her and discard her, breaking her heart was never on the agenda.

Well, not until he got back to Carmel anyway. School spirit was genuinely an uncanny thing in Carmel. When he was with Vocal Adrenaline, even if he was their star, he felt like he was a part of something; something special. He was wholly loyal to them, surely more than to the girl he dated under false pretenses for the period of two months. He had had fuck buddies for longer than that. His confusing feelings aside, Rachel couldn't be considered very significant. Her ties with Shelby ignored, she wasn't Shelby and he didn't owe her anything. Egging her, considering her sensible lifestyle, was pricky, but he had done worse and Shelby knew that. He couldn't understand what the big whoop was.

Of course Rachel was Shelby's kid, and she had the right to feel more protective and offended about his transgression, but apparently it wasn't just that. If he had grasped it right, and he hoped that he did, she was under the impression that he didn't care. And thinking back he had to admit that refusing to apologize and trying to go back to normal might have let her feeling that he didn't give a rat's ass about how Rachel and her were feeling about the incident, which wasn't true at all.

He had meant what he had said to Rachel in that parking lot. He had loved her. He had loved her for what they could be, he had loved her for being an accomplice to him, and for listening to some of his silly problems and really giving a damn about them, and for laughing in that way that was so akin to Shelby's. Shelby had made him who he was, but that was coming to an end now; and maybe in Rachel he could have had another woman that would help him be great.

He didn't want to harm her because she wasn't. There could only be one Shelby; he had made a mistake trying to shift those expectations towards Rachel. And he was sincerely sorry to see her so vulnerable and hurt, but he cared about the integrity of his team more.

Jesse finally stopped and lifted his head. He had been wandering aimless through the woods, letting the cold air and the moon light be absorbed into his skin, but he had lost completely notion of the world around him, including the time. Concerned, he decided to turn around and tried to find his way back to check on Shelby.

He tried to walk steadily and watch his path, but his head was elsewhere, his fingers brushing the calloused trunks of the trees as he cut through them; the moon was bathing him through the leaves and he felt naked under it, observed. It was disturbing and consoling at the same time; after all, Jesse needed an audience to live, even if it was the stars. He gazed up at them, a plea never leaving his lips but shining through his eyes, and muttered the first thing that came to his mind.

Waste away the days

Waiting on a new age

But time betrays me

And I get older one more year

The melody was a little off, he knew. He tried to find his footing; on the ground too, and he inched closer to his house. But it came to him. And then it built inside of him.

Walk Lima's windy streets

Go anywhere but home

Cause I'm looking for the secrets

That only cobble stones hold

Only the cobble stones know

And I've never been so sure

That after all these years, I'll never learn

That heavenly creatures never come

Jesse stopped on the fringe of the woods, seeing her. She seemed like a vision, eerie. Under the light, she shone, mighty but so, so delicate, and he wanted to pull her into him and never let go, but he also wanted to punch her.

You've got a knife-throwing kind of love

But your silence cuts the deepest

And I know I've made a mess of things

And I'm sorry for all that

Wish we could get the time back

'Cause I've never been so sure

That after all these years, I'll never learn

That heavenly creatures never come

But I wait for it

I wait for it

A/N: I know, I know. A song. Again. Eye rolls. I couldn't resist it. I'm addicted to Vanessa Carlton's new CD and I thought this song, London, was just so perfect for this. Especially that last part. I hope this musical thing I'm trying to pull isn't too ridiculous. But I do apologize because I hate songs in fics as much as anybody. I'm sorry this took so long, but I just want to say that I'll keep writing and updating and I'll see this fic through even if it takes a little while. I have a bit on my plate now, with graduating college and having to become an adult with a full time job, but don't ever worry I've given up on this. I would never post it here if I didn't intend to finish it. So, I'll ask for a bit of patience. It might take a while between updates. But I'm really committed to this story and fiercely looking for my inspiration since she seems to have gone missing lately. Critics and suggestions are always appreciated, and I love, love, love all of your reviews; I hope you know that. Whenever I'm in doubt as to why I do this, I reread my reviews. So thank you so much for all of your kind words.