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“Practice at six?” I ask.

“Practice at six,” she confirms.

I hold her gaze for one beat longer than is strictly necessary, letting my eyes drop to her plump lips before meeting her startling blue eyes again.

“Good,” I say quietly. “I’ll see you then, Bow-Peep.”

Her mouth curves again—that reluctant, gorgeous almost-smile I’ve been quietly obsessed with every time I see it, and she turns around, heading back up the staircase without another word.

I watch her go for exactly as long as it takes me to remember that I am standing in the middle of Belrose’s main staircase in full view of approximately fifty people.

I don’t turn around. The guys are probably watching my every move. I stay exactly where I am as the chaos continues around me, my boots anchored to the marble steps as I watch her leave. The air where she was standing still carries the faint smell of vanilla, mixed with a hint of a little menthol too.

For the first time in my life, I’m not calculating my next move, and I’m not wearing a mask. I'm entirely, helplessly captivated by this girl.

Only when she finally rounds the far corner of the landing above and disappears does the spell finally break.

I shove my hands into the pockets of my leather jacket, continuing up the steps towards my practice room.

23

Ellise

I’m unraveling.

Julian Thorne has unearthed a side of me I never knew existed.

The last few days have been a total blur. From the moment I dry humped him on a piano bench in a dim, empty practice piano room like some untamed version of myself to that reckless back-and-forth on the staircase earlier.

I have completely lost my grip on my usual restraint. And, for the first time in my life, I am not trying to stop it.

Why did I decide to lean down and kiss him? I still don’t have a logical answer.

But, I know with absolute certainty it was a risk worth taking.

Whatever has cracked open between us over the last few days has completely shattered me, and I am definitely not ready to piece my walls back together.

I’ve never met anyone who has made me feel so much all at once. So much suffocating heat, frustration and agonising longing, all tangled up together until it’s become impossible to separate one from the other. Compared to Julian, every other guy I have ever been with feels like background noise—utterly forgettable. None of them have ever set me on fire the way he does.

The worst part about it—the part I am least prepared to think about too much—is that I don’t think it is just physical.

I think it has never been just physical, which confuses the shit out of me.

The mental image of him beneath me—breathless and undone, his hands gripping my hips and grinding down against him—is doing unspeakable things to my body that I have absolutely no business feeling on a Monday afternoon.

I need to get it together. I really, really need to get it together.

I spend the rest of the day in a total state of preoccupation, attempting and failing miserably to lose myself in the library. I try everything that I can to try to calm my racing mind before our six o’clock practice session, but it’s a lost cause. By the time five-thirty rolls around, my stomach is twisting in anxious knots.

When six o'clock finally arrives, and I push open the door to Practice Room C, the air is already thick, charged with something electric. Looking at him sitting at the piano, it would be so easy to simply walk over, straddle his lap and continue where we left off.

Everything inside tells me to do it. But I force myself to maintain a shred of restraint and dignity.

Practically having sex in a Belrose practice room, again, would get us into so much trouble if we were caught. I’m not ruling anything out, but I know that I won’t be getting close to him on that bench tonight.

We try to practice for thirty minutes. It is an absolute disaster.

My head isn’t in the music at all.