Page 20

Who am I kidding?

I am absolutely, completely thinking about Julian Thorne, his beautiful, dangerous dark eyes, those calloused hands, and those darn tattoos.

8

Julian

Stave is packed with the usual mid week crowd, which is to say, it looks less like a bar and more like an expensive private lounge. Nestled into a quiet street three blocks from Belrose, the bar doesn’t feature neon beer signs or sticky bar mats. No, Stave is classy—not where the usual students go to get wasted.

Instead, there are low-slung leather sofas, polished dark quartz tabletops, and a custom vinyl system playing low-tempo jazz. The music hums softly through the air, completely burying the conversation of trust-fund prodigies who are too consumed with themselves to notice anything else.

I've been here for two hours. I came straight from Practice Room C—the same way I always do.

I’ve already burned through half a pack of cigarettes on the heated terrace and consumed more neat whiskey than I intended, but my mind remains a closed loop running the same thing on a permanent repeat.

Ellise Vance.

Those fucking black sweats.

That prim, defiant little silk bow clinging to the wreckage of her hair.

Those plump lips.

No matter how many times I blink or drain the whiskey from my heavy crystal glass, I can’t stop seeing the exact way she looked at me in the dim shadows of that practice room. Those ocean blue eyes, wide and glossy with unshed tears, practically begging me for a shred of kindness or a single sliver of mutual understanding. It was a look of pure vulnerability. A girl standing before me, completely stripped of her porcelain armour.

And I went straight in for the kill. Because that’s what I always do. I completely obliterated her. It is the only way I know how to function, precisely how my father raised me to handle anything that shows a crack—drive a heel into the foundation and see exactly when it gives.

She was right about most of it. The attitude. Carelessness. The fact that we ended up in that room because I pulled a piece of ribbon from her hair because I couldn’t stand to be ignored by her.

Why do I continue to do it?

Why do I continue to push her until she cracks?

That is the thing I am not going to think about directly. Not here. Not tonight.

I lift the glass and drain the remaining liquid.

Across the table, Josh is mid-rant about something Professor Hagan supposedly ‘butchered’ during a seminar this afternoon. His hands are flying through the air with the energy of someone who has been waiting to share this story for several hours and has finally found the appropriate audience.

I am not the appropriate audience right now. I am barely present.

Josh has known me since Houston. Four years of late nights at whatever bar was the closet, shared practice rooms, and the transition from our teens to our twenties. It’s the kind of friendship that develops between people who are both too competitive and too similar to be anything other than honest with each other.

He’s also loud. Really fucking loud. The type of loud that completely fills a room before you even see him coming. Josh never stops talking. And you can’t exactly miss him, either; the guy is tall. Really fucking tall. Standing at a towering 6’3” with an absolute beanpole of a frame that looks ridiculous folded over a piano.

He plays piano, too, but he isn’t as good as me. He’s technically proficient, sure, but he lacks the instinct, the absolute control and feeling I command over the keys.

He knows it. Everyone knows it.

“Really, man,” I cut through his rant. My voice sounds like gravel, raw from all the smoke and alcohol. “I don’t know why you let him get under your skin so much. It’s only a lecture. Don’t go if it bothers you that much.”

I’m being a dick. Again.

Josh pauses, blinking at me, completely thrown off his rhythm, but I’m already checked out from this conversation.

“Right,” he says. “Are you actually part of this conversation? Are you even here?”

“I’m here.”