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I look at her wrists. They are thin and pale—like they’re held together by nothing but sheer, stubborn will.

“Is that why you play so stiff?” I ask.

It comes out wrong and sounds like another insult, which was not entirely my intention. Okay, maybe it was. But the usual mocking bite in my voice is gone, replaced by something far deeper and unsettling. I can tell from the way she is looking at me that she registers the difference.

She stiffens anyway, her spine turning to steel as her chin comes up.

“Don’t worry about it, Thorne.” Her voice is low and calculated, trembling with a particular pain. She is not bending for me today. “I have managed well enough for the last twenty three years without your expert diagnoses. My stiffness, as you so eloquently put it, has won me every competition I have ever entered. It has kept my scholarship intact while you were busy getting high and pretending you’re too good for the music you’re supposedly here to play.”

Getting high? Presumptuous.

Don’t hold back, Vance. Say it like it is, why don’t you.

“Christ, I only asked a question.” I reply, rolling my eyes as I turn back toward the piano. “Sorry for opening my mouth. Forgive me for breathing.”

My ego is more than a little bruised.

“I don’t need a piano player to tell me how to handle and manage my own body,” she continues, her voice dropping another tone. “I know my limits. I know exactly how much pressure it takes to keep myself from shattering, and in ten years, I’ve never missed a single note. Can you say the same?”

Apart from when she choked last year.

I assume she is conveniently missing that out.

Her question lands somewhere specific. She isn’t wrong, which is the most irritating part of it. She's calling me out on my shit, exposing the fundamental difference between us. She’s a girl who refuses to break, and I’m a guy who’s already broken—someone who has spent considerable energy making damn sure nobody looks at the cracks directly.

Maybe she has actually seen past the bullshit from her ivory tower.

Well, fuck me.

Point, Vance.

“Did you see the list I sent?” She pivots the conversation so fast it’s almost impressive—desperate to get back to the safety of the music, so we don’t have to continue with this painful small talk.

She’d bombarded my messenger inbox this afternoon with the usual suspects—Vivaldi, Rachmaninoff—all technically demanding and emotionally sterile. They were exactly the kind of pieces designed to demonstrate that she is a flawless machine to anyone watching from the outside.

“I looked at them.” I sigh, pushing off the Steinway and looming a fraction closer. “And yeah, they’re pristine.” I watch her face for the flicker of satisfaction and find it, briefly. “They’ll turn a few academic heads and satisfy the scouts and scholarship board.” I stop for a moment. “But we aren’t playing them.”

“So what do you propose we play then… Thorne?” The mockery in her voice is sharp, but it's a sloppy shield that doesn’t manage to cover the panic underneath it.

“Chopin.” I hold her gaze. “Nocturne in C-sharp Minor.”

Her breath hitches. She knows exactly what the Nocturne means. It’s a slow, bleeding piece of music. There are no rapid runs to hide behind, no wall of sound to mask a trembling hand. It is completely naked. Maybe that’s why I like it. It’s intimate and exposed.

If she is going to play with me, she is going to have to actually feel something. There are a dozen other people on this campus I would prefer to play a piece of raw, melancholic Chopin piece with. Anyone else to be honest. But I have been shackled to Ellise Vance, so I am going to have to suck it up and force her into the deep end with me.

She stares at me, genuinely stunned.

“Chopin? For the Showcase?”

She looks at the black and white keys of the Steinway and then back to me, her blue eyes wide and searching my face for the usual sarcastic response.

“Well, yes for the Showcase. We aren’t exactly here playing for the fun of it are we, Bow-Peep?” I huff, loudly.

The quietness of the room stretches, thick and heavy with the weight of the city lights outside, until she finally lets out a breath that sounds dangerously like defeat.

“Fine,” she whispers, her shoulders dropping an inch. “Honestly, Thorne, this nightmare can’t get any worse. If we’re going to go down in flames, Chopin is a good choice. At least we’ll fail with a shred of dignity.”

“Dignity is overrated, Bow-Peep,” I say, a dark edge creeping into my voice. “I’m looking for something a hell of a lot more dangerous than that.”