Labyrinth by Taylor Swift.

Oh no, I'm falling in love again.

The rest of the auditions went well, I wasn't eliminated that night which meant I had to go back the next day. 15 students total are left, after 15 were sent home. The next day I actually wake up early and remember to pack food and water after a reminder text from Grayson.

I show up with Rachel and Hayden and start dancing normally. Today we do similar tasks to yesterday except not as long and no solos. 

We reach 6pm and they tell us to form a line. 

"If we say your name, step forward. You have been selected as one of the four." A male teacher with an Italian accent speaks sharply. 

"Bailey Campbell." He starts, speaking painfully slowly to build anticipation. 

I grip onto the hands Hayden and Rachel. Bailey is a fourth year who has apparently been selected every year for everything. She barely even reacts, just nods politely and steps forward. 

"Michael Chen."

Michael is a third year who always smiles to me in the corridors, he seems like a really sweet guy. He's dating a guy in Grayson's friend group. He steps forward looking ecstatic. 

"Rachel Jones." 

I gasp excitedly as I squeeze my friends hand and let go so she can step forward. 

Hayden and I hype her up as she steps forward. 

"And finally.. Paris Rooney." 

I hum a small squeal quietly and step forward. A lot of disappointed sighs come from the line behind me but I hear the really loud whistle of someone from the back row, Grayson.

Everyone claps and applauds us all. 

"Rehearsals will begin four our selected four this week and will be every day after school. In October, ensemble rehearsal will begin. The show is scheduled for December 23rd. There will be 5 other showings for family and friends a week prior. You are dismissed." 

The second everyone begins moving I walk closer to Rachel, we both start squealing excitedly and hugging whilst jumping up and down. 

"Good job ladies." Hayden approaches us with a grin. "Next year it'll be all three of us." Rachel assured him. 

"Like I said, I'm not too bothered. I'm glad it was you two." He says genuinely. 

We collect our bags again together, Rachel and I still really excited. 

Hayden and Rachel both cease their conversing and look behind me grinning. They walk away slowly and I turn around to find Grayson holding a bouquet of flowers. 

I try to hide the smile appearing on my face as he jogs towards me. I run into his arms for the most intimate and meaningful hug. He lifts me off the ground and spins me around with only one arm.

He places me back down and separates to look down at me. 

"I can't wait to see you performing up there." He passes me the bunch of dark red roses. 

He ends up walking me home that night. When we get back to my house I invite him inside. 

"Congrats Paris! We heard you and Rachel got the spots. We're so proud!" Maddie squeals the second she sees me.

We find my friends gathered around the kitchen table discussing something that looks very serious. 

"Everything okay?" I ask hesitantly. "Actually no! Wyatt here thinks it's a good idea for us to order Chinese food tonight, but last time we ordered it he spent the night blowing up the toilet and I had to clean it." Rachel complains. 

"Well what do you want?" I ask her, "Maddie and I think Italian because we both want pasta but Hayden agrees with Wyatt." 

I lock the door behind Grayson and I, I take his jacket from him and hang it up for him.

"Pasta sounds good." I grin. "But dumplings sound good too." I groan. 

"Why don't you just order both?" Grayson suggests innocently. "Grayson baby, I know you grew up with unlimited money but us middle classians cannot afford the delivery of two takeouts." I speak in a joking tone, patting a hand on his cheek.

"Well it's on me." He shrugs as if it's nothing. "Gray, we eat like beasts. We will be ordering half the menu and shamelessly devouring every bite of it. You would be in debt for years." I joke.

"Think of it as a congratulatory gift for getting that spot." Grayson smirks. 

"Are you sugar daddying me?" I raise a brow with a smirk. "Never repeat those words in your life.. But yes, I am." 

We end up ordering only Italian but Grayson still insisted on paying, he wasn't going to stay for dinner originally until I managed to convince him. 

 We all place our orders and my friends all scurry off upstairs, purposely leaving me alone with Grayson. 

"Can I ask you something I've been wondering for a while?" I ask, leaning on the counter facing him n the opposite side. "Go ahead."

I try to figure out how to word this. "You remember when I was in that gang?" He grins, "I do." 

"How did you know all the people in said gang? They knew you and said you betrayed Yoda by ratting his Dad out to the cops? And got his family business shut down?" I ask sceptically.

"That is not what happened." He scoffs. I look at him for an explanation. I see him tense uncomfortably and sigh.

"When I was 15 I became friends with them, did all the things you were doing when you were with them. When I was 16, there was this drug deal we had to make. I took over and when I was giving the drugs to the guy, the cops arrived, turns out that guy was working with them so they could catch us. They only got me and took me to the station. I spent the night in a holding cell until the old man paid someone to let me out and make the whole thing disappear. When we got home he gave me drug tests and forced me to tell him who gave me them. I wouldn't have told him if he hadn't made me. I told him and he got the cops involved. Yoda's Dad was the one getting us the drugs so he was the one who went down. As for the family business, it got shut down because it was a shit hole." 

My mouth sits agape as I listen. He was in the same gang as me. That is words I never thought I would think.

"Did you ever get a tattoo or piercing?" Is the only thing I can think to say. He laugh under his breath. "I got a tattoo on my back." He informs me.

I gasp, "No you didn't!" I raise my voice excitedly. He promptly removes his shirt and points to a point on his back. I have to squint to see it, a single black dot, no bigger than a grain of salt. It's just a tiny little black dot. 

"What is it?" I ask. I hadn't even noticed it all the times I'd seen him shirtless before, it looks just like a freckle.

"I was supposed to get 'Fuck the money' but I passed out after seeing the needle." He looks embarrassed. I burst out laughing. 

"You aren't allowed to laugh when you got 'insert dick here' permanently imprinted onto your body." He shakes his head. 

"I seriously need to get that removed." I flush red in embarrassment. "It's pretty small, you could get it covered with something else. It wouldn't leave much of a scar if you got it removed." He shrugs. 

"It's pretty big." I tell him. "Really? I remember it being tiny."

I roll down the top of my pj's and show him. He looks at it, "Yeah it's a little bigger than I remembered but if you got it removed it would only need like 4 treatments because it's so small." He tells me.

"I guess I've got some research to do then." I pull it back up and turn to face him again.

When the takeout arrives Grayson pays and we all start eating. 

"So tell us about yourself Bronco." Rachel smirks. "What do you want to know?" He asks as he eats his chicken risotto. "Got any hobbies?" Hayden asks. 

"I dabble in photography." He shrugs a little. I grin to myself, "Really?" 

He looks to me with a slight smirk, "Yeah."

I tilt my head, "Any other hidden talents?" I ask. 

"I play the violin sometimes. I speak Latin." He tells me. "I actually knew that." I challenge. "And how's that?" He asks.

"Nobis opus est. Illa iustus hedum in frusta concerperet." I quote. "Sound familiar?" I raise a brow.

He looks down to his food and tries to withhold the grin creeping onto his features. 

"I have no idea what that means but that whole conversation was so hot." Maddie scoffs from across the table. 

Light conversation is passed around the table until everyone is finished. I volunteer to clean up and Grayson starts helping me. 

"You don't need to do that." I tell him. "You wash I dry. It's only fair." He tells me. 

"So since when are you so talented?" I ask him. "You have your dancing, I have my photography. You have your cheerleading, I have my violining." He shrugs.

"Okay I have not done cheerleading in months." I laugh. 

"So you just speak Latin or do you have any other languages?" I ask him. "I speak English, Latin, French, Italian, Russian. A little Mandarin and I'm currently trying to learn Arabic." He says as if it's nothing.

"Are you fucking kidding me?!" I gasp. "Yeah?" The corner of his lips crook up at my overreaction. "Thats like seven languages?!" 

He nods. "How many do you speak?" Grayson asks me. "One." I reply flatly. "You're name is Paris and you never once got curious and learnt a little French?" He laughs. 

"No. Because I'm sane." I say with bulging eyes.

"Well it's okay. I can teach you." He speaks lowly, placing the last dish down. 

I lead him upstairs with his rucksack to my bedroom and sit criss cross upon my bed, he hesitates but I tap in front of me for him to sit and he does. 

"Uh uh!" I yell suddenly, he looks at me like I'm insane. "If you wish to sit in my room you must sit crisscross applesauce." I demand. I see his nostrils flare and his lips crook up.

"You just told me you were sane." He scoffs jokingly as he mirrors the way I sit. 

"Say something in Latin." I instruct. He looks at my face with a strange look in his eyes.

"Pulchra es amica mea." Grayson speaks lowly. I look between his piercing silver eyes with a small smile.

"What does that mean?" I ask. He hesitates, "Uh- It means 'that risotto was good'" I can tell he lied. He averts his gaze from mine and readjusts uncomfortably. "Close your eyes." He tells me.

So I do. I hear his bag zip and he removes something. I wait patiently until he tells me to open them. 

I'm met with Grayson holding a camera close to his face, "The camera in all its glory." I gasp and then laugh. There's a bright flash and he smiles, separating the camera from his face.

"Did I just get photographed by the Grayson Hawthorne? Billionaire, famous Photographer, Violinist and bilingual genius boy?" I gasp, pretending to fawn over him. 

He keeps the camera hanging around his neck. "Got any photos I can see?"

He reaches into his bag and removes a laptop. He sits it in front of him as he logs in and gets photos up.

He turns the laptop towards me and I immediately pick it up, laying on my stomach across my bed as I scroll through them. Thousands of well captured images of museum artefacts, some of plants and trees, some of the sky and ocean.

One that I really like is an image from the bottom of the pool at The Hawthorne House, the sky is dark and looks like there's a storm. The silhouette of the house shadows onto the camera, looking like some sort of scary monster. Bubbles of air come from under the camera and makes it look like he's drowning. I look at it for a little longer than the others.

I sort of get it as weird as it sounds. To me this photo represents the weight of it all. The heir apparent must've had it pretty hard. 

I scroll back so many photos I find myself looking at an image of Emily Laughlin. In the photo she is sitting under a tree reading, around her wraps a pretty yellow summer dress. Half her auburn hair is tied up with a white ribbon, the rest falls over her shoulders with beautiful curls.

"Sorry." I mutter, giving him his laptop back. "It's fine." He shakes his head, placing the laptop back in his bag. He lays on his stomach now beside me. 

"I never photograph people. I only took that one because she told me to, said she wanted it to look natural. She had me retake it eight times before she liked the way it looked." He laughs in memory.

"I'm really sorry you lost her." I frown sympathetically. "I'm not. She was a narcissistic, manipulative, cheater." He says, avoiding my stare. 

"But she had this hold over me. Like no matter what she did and how much her actions infuriated me, all she had to do was look at me or flash me one of those devilish smiles and I would run back to her without hesitation. It's still there. Even from the pits of hell she still has this compulsion over me. In some ways it's the same as you."

I furrow my brows in confusion, "What do you mean?" I ask.

"Not only do you look just like her but a lot of the things you do make me think of her." He speaks softly, vulnerably. 

"Like when I jump between you and Jamie?" I laugh shamefully. "No. No. Not at all." He finally looks at me, not wanting me to think that.

"The worst part about Emily wasn't that she went between us, or even that she dated us both at the same time. It was the way she treated us. She would manipulate us into thinking it was our fault that she was with us both. She would pit us against each other. She would cause fights and arguments purposely. She even convinced us we loved her. I'm not entirely sure I even did at first." He admits.

"Then what makes us so similar?" I ask insecurely. He's just listed all these terrible things right after comparing us.

He takes one of my hands in his, "You're both determined, for different reasons of course. And ambitious. Brave. Smart. She could never be as funny as you though, or as gentle, as genuine, nowhere near as kind as you.. or as beautiful." He speaks the last part quietly. 

Part of me wants to kiss him but I can't after he's just opened up so much, it wouldn't be appropriate. I feel my cheeks glowing a bright red color and try to turn my head to face the other side of the room so he doesn't notice. 

I feel one of his fingers on my chin, in one gentle and slow motion he manages to turn my head back towards him. I laugh nervously trying to look anywhere but his eyes. 

"You're adorable Paris." He smirks. 

I'm at a loss for words. I can feel myself getting all flustered as I try to think of what to say. Thankfully he speaks before I have to.

"Can I kiss you?" Grayson asks. My eyes widen. Maybe the kiss in his dorm wasn't a mistake. 

He waits for an answer as I internally scream at myself to say something. "Mhm.. Yes please." 

I cringe at my own words and bite my lip with embarrassment. "I mean- not like-" I begin trying to justify my awkward remark but thankfully he cuts me off with a small chuckle before connecting our lips softly.

His hand rests on my cheek, the kiss isn't particularly spicy but it's delicate and meaningful. When we separate I giggle a little, still finding myself flustered and nervous in his company. 

"Thank you." I say.

My eyes widen when I realise what I said. I sit up and cross my legs again, my head falling into my hands with embarrassment. 

He sits up in front of me with a wide smirk. "I'm sorry. That was so awkward. I don't know why I'm so embarrassing." I groan. He takes my hands away from my face and holds them in his, "I think you're cute." He teases. 

I burst out laughing at this, he looks at me with a confused grin. "What's funny?" Grayson asks. 

"This. You. What is going on right now?" I giggle. "I'm not entirely sure. But I think I like it." He replies.

(a/n. I normally upload once a week but I've honestly got so many chapters pre written that i'm gonna start uploading a lot more frequently, maybe three times a week? I'm thinking Monday, Wednesday and Saturday?? Anyway, I thought it would be cute for Grayson to say he never photographs people right after taking a photo of Paris laughing because she's the only exception for him, plus how he said Emily made him retake the photo several times until she felt she looked perfect but for Paris' he took one photo of her naturally and it was enough cause he already thinks she's perfect. Let me know your thoughts for this one. I have so much planned and written out for this chapter. Also so many spicy smutty scenes with different characters. I just wrote a spicy hot tub scene where someone may or may not eat her out.. anyway, everyone get your holy water and buckle up.)