Page 47

What does everyone think is going on?

The humiliation hits me, and I am suddenly all hot and sweaty again, my mind racing with the endless possibilities of Belrose gossip.

I feel like I’m back in school. The familiar, sickening feeling of hiding in the library or locked music rooms just to escape the cruel whispers hits me in full force. I thought I was done with this. I’m too old for those childish games.

Before I can spiral, Julian’s hand closes briefly, but firmly around my waist. His palm is hot through the fabric of my clothes as he guides me forward—those big hands holding me securely in place.

“Vance. We haven’t got all day.” He ushers.

I don’t look at him, and I certainly don’t look back at Nancy as we push through the doors. My skin is tingling where his skin made contact on my face, and my pulse is racing. As we stride across the entrance hall, I can only think about his hand around my waist, and every single scandalous word that Nancy said about him.

I hate him. I tell myself over and over like a frantic mantra, but I am becoming aware that it is not only because he pulled a bow from my hair or because he provoked me for over a year and was a dick to me.

I hate him in a specific, terrifying and hopeless way because I know that he is a volatile disaster who is completely bad for my survival.

But looking at him as he holds me, I can’t stop wanting his hands on me anyway.

16

Julian

The Manhattan townhouse is the main ‘family’ home.

I use the word family loosely, considering I haven’t experienced the true meaning of it for the last ten years—not since I was fourteen.

There is no family here anymore.

It was a completely different space when I was younger. Mum made it something real. She possessed that rare quality where she could walk into any room and light it up instantly.

It seems that I inherited the exact opposite effect. I walk into a room, and the shadows immediately appear.

Since she passed away, this house has been a different kind of place entirely.

Everywhere I turn, I see her. I see her tucked into her navy armchair with a book, or at the grand piano in the lounge where I used to sit at her feet for hours listening to her play until the sun went down.

My father has been in Dubai for weeks, which is normally a complete relief. The longer that he stays out of the country, the better. I don’t have to tiptoe around his suffocating judgement, even if this place is easily big enough that I don’t really run into him anyway. I prefer the absolute certainty that he is thousands of miles away from me.

He’s been out there hunting for the next major real estate acquisition—the next way to make himself millions, which has been his sole focus for years. To him, money is power, and nothing gets in the way of that.

Normally he is gone for months at a time, but Carmela mentioned this morning that he came back in the early hours. The air already feels different, polluted, knowing he’s breathing under the same roof again.

Only another few months of this exhausting Master of Music program, and I’ll finally be free of him. I’ve already ground my way through a gruelling four-year undergraduate degree in music performance in Houston, enduring his endless scrutiny every step of the way, just to reach this point. To prove a point. Once this MMus is wrapped up, I’m ready to take on the world entirely on my own terms.

Having a narcissistic prick as a father isn’t difficult; it’s soul-eroding.

The endless comparisons to people who don’t exist, the fabrication of stories, the calculating, toxic twisting of facts until I don’t know what is right and what is wrong anymore.

After Mum died, his judgement sharpened into a weapon, and his narcissistic tendencies reached a fever pitch. Now, he only speaks to me if he needs something.

I’m sitting at the grand piano in the lounge when the door clicks open.

“What are you playing?” His voice is sharp as he glances at the instrument, entirely refusing to look at me. “It sounds… mediocre.”

There it is. Welcome home.

What the fuck does he actually know about music?

Nothing. Not a single damn thing.