Then Luka Havran walks out, black shirt, sleeves rolled, top buttons undone just enough for the front row tocollectively lose structural integrity. His dark hair catches the stage lights with a smug kind of shine. He takes his cello as if it’s an extension of his body, settles into the chair in one fluid motion, and scans the audience with a slow, deliberate sweep.
When he pauses on a cluster of women in the front row, his mouth curves—a private joke that sends screams across the hall. He lifts his bow toward the balcony in a mock-salute, and the roar spikes into electric thunder.
Erin O’Connor follows, elegant and fierce in black, her gown catching light. The slit reveals toned leg and heels that make half the hall sit up straighter. She moves with the kind of command you can’t fake—precise, composed, dangerous in the way only real talent is.
She takes her place beside Luka, adjusts her endpin with precision, and the atmosphere tightens as if the entire room inhaled at once.
Next to us, a low sound rumbles—half exhale, half growl.
Dmitri.
“That’s my girl,” he mutters. Not loud, but with the weight that makes the hairs on my arms rise. Pride. Awe. Possession.
Liam huffs under his breath. “Easy, Sokolov.”
Sophie bumps his shoulder, smiling. “Relax. He’s fine.”
Dmitri doesn’t bother with them. His hands are clenched on his massive thighs, shoulders tight, focused entirely on Erin.
Larisa leans into me, whispering, “Is he…okay?”
“He’s in love,” I whisper back, unable to suppress a smirk.
Erin settles her cello between her knees, lifts her bow, and something aches in me. For a second, I’m eight years old again, watching my mother play Debussy on her goldenflute. The hush before a downbeat. The way the air seemed to thrum before the first note.
My parents are gone. The life where I belonged to something beautiful is gone.
And Kieran took the part of me that believed I could have it again.
The stage drops into blackout, then a single spot snaps onto Luka Havran, bow raised. A heartbeat passes.
His cello growls the opening bassline of “Bad Guy”—dark, sinuous, liquid mercury. The crowd gasps as the sound ripples through the hall, heavy enough to vibrate in my ribs.
He shoots Erin a sideways grin, a slow, wicked curve that says, “watch this,” the Havran brand of charming arrogance, and the audience loses its mind for a full three seconds.
Erin doesn’t flinch. She just lifts her bow with that warrior-princess poise and launches into the counterline, her sound flaring ruby red threaded with cobalt, sharp and wicked and impossibly clean.
The hall erupts.
Larisa grabs my arm with a silent, ecstatic scream.
The house lights flash neon—too bright, too much—and something shifts at the edge of my awareness.
I turn instinctively.
Kieran is standing halfway down the row, ticket in hand, waiting for the usher to let him through.
My whole body jolts. Pulse spiking. Every nerve ending suddenly aware of the six rows of floor between us.
The light brushes over him for one impossible moment. His hair is damp from the cold. His jaw is tight. He looks…exhausted. The sort of tired that comes from not sleeping for days, not from winning games.
When his gaze finds me, steel blue threaded with white static, a thin halo of gold flickering at the edges—everything in me locks, waiting.
I snap my gaze back to the stage.
No. Not tonight. Not here. Not while Erin is about to pour her heart out through gut strings and Larisa is clutching my hand like I hung the moon.
The music swells, but the colors blur.
