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I slide the phone back into my pocket and grin.

Julian Thorne thinks I am perfect.

The same Julian Thorne that spent the first year of knowing me being God awful to me. The guy who tore my technique to shreds the very first time I performed in front of him. The same guy who also happened to give me the most mind-shattering orgasms of my entire life.

That Julian Thorne thinks that I am perfect.

I tuck the book tightly under my arm as I walk over to the counter. I don’t say a word to Mom as I begin to wrap it in a fresh sheet of brown paper because the book is obviously his.

As I tie the ribbon into a neat bow around the center, a realisation settles deep into my stomach.

The Spring Showcase is only a few weeks away. Once our performance is over, the perfectly justifiable reason to be with him every single day will soon be gone.

All of it ends in Spring.

Standing in my family’s bookstore, wrapping a book for a man I once wanted to hit over the head with my violin case, I realise that none of this is going to end in spring for me.

I won’t even be close to ending this. I don’t want to.

It is going to be about him long after the last note of the Nocturne fades.

35

Julian

Two weeks.

Bloody hell.

She’s been gone for fourteen fucking days, and I am officially a wreck.

I miss her. It’s a deep ache in the center of my chest that I didn’t see coming with this kind of brutal force. I hadn’t realised until this agonising time away from her how much I’ve relied on her presence this last year. The sarcastic comments, the snide remarks she threw at me, the way her eyes flashed with anger when she looked like she wanted to hit me over the head with something, the sheer weight of the attention that she gave me was addictive.

Whether it was good, or bad—and let’s be honest, it was mostly bad—it didn’t matter. My entire system craved it.

I needed it.

I needed her.

And now that she isn’t around, I feel the crushing emptiness of it all.

I thought coming back to the Greenwich estate for the holidays would act as a distraction, but it’s done the exact opposite.

Carmela has been fussing over me like usual, feeding me absurd amounts of home-cooked food. I’ve spent hours riding Mystery through the frosted lawns—something I haven’t made time for in far too long.

I even tried retreating to the West Wing library, sitting down at the tiger-mahogany Steinway to run through some Brahms, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Ellise sitting on the lid of the piano, completely unraveled, throwing her head back as she lost herself under my touch.

None of it has distracted me.

It’s driving my out of my fucking mind.

I pull out my phone, unable to resist bothering her.

BOW-PEEP

Two weeks is my limit. Can you come back now, please?

I didn’t have you for the needy type, Thorne.