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“What else am I supposed to think?” I counter, rolling my eyes and letting out a sharp, frustrated scoff. “You look hungover as hell."

Julian lets out a laugh—though there’s zero warmth to it. He stands up from the bench, his towering frame suddenly dominating the space of the practice room.

“For your information, Bow-Peep, I didn’t spend the night drinking. I was actually home earlier than normal.”

Well done?

I blink, thrown off by the sudden shift. “Then why do you look like you’re about to collapse?”

“Because I had a sleepless night,” he admits, his dark, heavy-lidded gaze deliberately raking over my face and body. “An entirely sleepless, frustrating night. Not that it’s any of your business.”

True. It really isn’t.

He holds my gaze for a moment, the tension stretching so tight between us, it feels on the verge of snapping. Before I can look away, he sinks back down onto the piano bench.

“Now,” he continues. “Are we going to play, or not?”

I swallow hard, forcing my screaming joints to cooperate as I lift my violin back into position.

“Yes.” I mumble.

We finish the two hour practice in silence. It’s not the comfortable kind. It’s the heavy silence of two people who have wasted their evening playing schoolyard games. A complete waste of time.

I stand there, the ache in my joints flaring up viciously as the adrenaline fades. If we can’t get through a basic rehearsal without a petty tug-of-war, I have no idea how we are ever going to get to the stage where we are actually performance ready.

I lower my violin with the slow care of someone managing a body that has reached its physical limit. I don’t look at him while I do it. I don’t want him to see the grimace of pain on my face. Every movement is excruciating, my body burning beneath my oversized sweater as I carefully place the violin in its case, closing it and checking the gold clasps, twice.

Julian stays at the piano bench, his large hands resting on the ivory keys as he stares at the sheet music in front of him. He looks as physically drained as I do. Which is something, I suppose.

“Same time tomorrow, Vance,” he says quietly. He slides a hand through his dark hair, pulling a stray lock back from his forehead without looking up from the score.

“Six o’clock,” I confirm.

I walk out into the empty corridor, leaving Julian sitting alone at the piano.

But as I walk back towards the residence halls, I realise something terrifying.

I’m already counting down the hours until six o’clock tomorrow.

I hate him. He is arrogant, and he is cruel. I detest the way that he makes me feel whenever he is near me. Fighting him. Surviving him. It’s the only thing my entire day is focused on now.

But I can’t stop looking at him. That is the most humiliating part.

I can hate him with every fibre of my being, and still my eyes search for him across a room. I notice him the moment he walks through a door, his dominating frame and the effortless way he commands the space. The way those dark strands of hair hang loose over his face.

And his hands. Those hands. I notice the way they glide over the keys, and the sudden shift in his weight when he touches the back of his neck when he gets agitated.

I notice all of it against my will.

And I have no idea what to do about it or how to make it stop.

Ellise, you are in serious trouble.

The sun does not wake me the next morning. The pain does.

It arrives long before the piercing scream of my alarm—a heavy, throbbing presence that settled deep into my joints overnight, slowly consuming my entire body.

This flare up is bad.