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I have performed in front of audiences my whole life but, fuck, this applause is something else entirely. A room full of people on their feet making a noise that isn’t polished or the normal controlled applause. It’s the thunderous sound of people who came expecting one thing and received something they can’t even describe.

We fucking did that.

To me, though, it’s background noise. My entire universe has narrowed down to the girl sitting next to me. My focus is locked on her and her alone.

She kissed me right here on this stage, in front of everyone, and then she whispered I love you directly against my lips.

My face produced an expression that I don’t have proper words for. It wasn’t the defensive arrogant smirk that I’ve spent years deploying as armour to keep the world at bay. This was something else entirely. It’s what happens to a man’s entire system when Ellise Vance looks him directly in the eye and hands him her heart on a silver platter.

I didn’t say it back. Not yet.

It’s not because I don’t mean it. God, I mean it in a way that has been quietly building for months. I mean it with every single molecule of my being.

When I say it back to her—when I finally hand over the words, I don’t want my voice to be drowned out by applause.

When I tell her I love her, I want to tell her exactly how I feel. I want her to hear every single detail of how she completely ruined me.

42

Ellise

The ringing in my ears isn’t from the music. It’s from the applause. It’s a deafening tidal wave of sound that follows us all the way off the stage and into the dark sanctuary of the wings.

The heavy velvet curtains cut the bright auditorium in half, but the noise still vibrates through the floorboards beneath my heels. My chest is heaving, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm. The adrenaline rushing through my veins feels completely intoxicating.

I did it.

I actually broke the rules. I didn’t just follow Julian off the score, I jumped into the deep end with him, and it was the single greatest high of my entire life.

A pair of hands clamp onto my waist and drag me backward into the shadow of the heavy stage curtains, pinning my back firmly against the brick wall of the backstage alcove. My violin is still clutched in my left hand, the violin bow in my right.

Julian’s dark eyes are completely wild and intense. He looks at me like he wants to completely consume me right here in the dark.

“Say it again,” he commands.

“Say what, Thorne?” I grin.

“Tell me again, Bow-Peep.”

“Julian, someone is going to walk back here—” I giggle as he grabs my hips, pulling me closer to him.

“I don’t give a fuck who walks back here,” he mumbles against my lips. “Say it again, Ellise.”

I swallow hard, looking into the raw, unmasked vulnerability in his eyes.

“I love you.”

Julian lets out a ragged sound as he leans in, pressing his forehead to mine, his eyelids closing tightly.

“God, Bow-Peep. You’re going to be the absolute death of me.”

He pulls back long enough to look at me, his gaze burning right through my defences.

“I love you,” he declares.

The words are a vow, delivered with a fierce gravity that knocks the remaining breath straight out of my lungs.

“I have loved you far longer than I cared to admit to myself,” he murmurs, stroking my cheek. “I have loved you when you hated me, and I have loved you every single second since you let yourself go for me on that piano bench. You are the only person that I want. It’s you, Ellise. It has only ever been you since the moment that I first saw you. You have completely ruined me in a way I didn’t even know was possible.”