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It’s one thing when I provoke her. That’s between me and Vance. But listening to Josh reduce her to some locker-room fantasy instantly crosses a line I didn’t even realise I’d drawn.

“Drop it, Josh,” I exclaim, glaring at him.

He blinks, finally catching the sudden shift in the air, his smirk disappearing as he looks at me. Josh knows my directness when I actually have something to say. He has been on the receiving end of it too many times. Today is one of those days.

A feral spike of protectiveness flares up in me, and the sheer absurdity of it infuriates me.

What the hell are you playing at? Protecting her? Fool.

“Jesus, alright,” he replies, raising his hands in a mock surrender. “Just talking, man. Didn’t know she was a sensitive subject.”

“She isn’t,” I lie, forcing my posture to relax as I take another sip of my coffee, though my fingers are gripping the paper cup tight enough I’m surprised it hasn’t exploded all over me. “She’s just a headache I have to deal with.”

For a second, Josh’s eyebrows narrow slightly as he tracks the white-knuckle grip on my cup, then shifts up to read my face. He isn’t stupid. He knows me better than most, and the lie hangs in the air. He opens his mouth, probably to call bullshit on the whole performance. But then catches the dark, dangerous warning behind my eyes, and thinks better of it.

“Yeah,” he mutters, looking down towards the floor. “Yeah, man. Sure, forget I said anything.”

The quiet ones.

The phrase echoes in my mind as I begin to walk away. Is she actually quiet? Or is she a secret volcano waiting for the right trigger to erupt? I’ve seen both her fire and her ice, and I’ve felt the heat when the mask slipped, revealing something roaring and entirely alive underneath.

Josh is right about one thing, though. My usual type is entirely predictable. I’ve always gone for the girls who are easy to read, the ones who wear their shallow intentions right on their designer sleeves. Girls like Nancy, who give everything up front, and ask for nothing but a good time in return—only the bragging rights of being seen with me.

Ellise Vance is the absolute opposite of them. She isn’t easy, and she certainly isn’t loud. But there is something utterly intoxicating about the way she carries herself. Most people in this building look at her and see an unapproachable nightmare.

I look at her, and I am intrigued.

She is the only thing in this entire place that is worth figuring out.

We’ve been grinding through the Nocturne for over an hour, and the air in the practice room is thick with a suffocating exhaustion. Again.

Everything is such a mess.

The memory of yesterday’s rehearsal has been eating at me from the inside out since the moment I walked out on her. I’ve spent the last twenty hours telling myself that I shouldn’t give a single damn about her, that she’s merely another passing irritation in a long line of pretentious students.

But I do give a damn. It’s bloody infuriating.

No matter how much whiskey I drink, or how hard I stare at the keys, I can’t scrub the memory of her wide, glossy eyes or the raw, aching vulnerability of her face from my mind. I absolutely hate her for having that kind of power over my thoughts.

“The Doppio Movimento section needs more work,” she states sharply, interrupting my train of thought. She doesn’t look at me, her eyes glued to the score as she hastily scratches a tiny pencil mark on the page. “The transition is too jarring. I’ll break it up and practice the specific fingering of it later tonight.”

“It’s not that bad,” I say, my fingers trailing off the keys. I lean back slightly, “It's a deceptively vicious part of the piece. It’s clunky for everyone, Vance. Even for the ‘greats’.”

There is an unfamiliar softness in my voice. But I mean it. I am trying to offer her an olive branch. I am trying with everything that I have not to mock her or be the usual dickhead that I am, and I think she realises the shift instantly.

Ellise freezes entirely.

She slowly lowers her violin bow from the strings, one dark eyebrow arching upwards in a silent and suspicious question. She looks at me as if I’ve spoken to her in a foreign language. And I suppose, in a way, I have. It’s the first time I’ve ever offered a single word of genuine grace towards her.

“What did you just say?” she asks.

“I said it’s a difficult phrase” I mutter, clearing my throat to hide the sudden roughness.

The silence between us turns instantly fragile, stretching until it feels thin enough to snap. The typical October rain is thrumming hard against the glass, but inside the room, the only sound is the heavy thud of my own pulse.

Fuck it. I may as well just get it over with. I can’t play an intimate duet with a girl while my own conscience is suffocating me.

“Look,” I start, my voice dropping an octave as I run a hand through my hair. “About yesterday. The shit about your bow… and pushing you about loosening up. It was a dick move. I should’ve backed off.” I can feel myself clamming up, the vulnerability clawing at the back of my throat, but I force the words out. “I’m sorry.”