Page 21 of Naz & Roz

Yeah, she was sure. But not really.

“You can see me. I’m fine.”

“Good thing. Wouldn’t want the next lead pianist for the Cordana Company to stop before she really got started, now would we?”

Kyle Mathus had come into the school Roz attended with the intention to mentor a cello prodigy. All she remembered was being in her favorite music room, and playing a piece she had finished after working on it for over a year. After looking up from the piano, there Kyle stood on the other side of it.

He’d been a pianist for one of the world’s largest and most successful companies. He’d played with orchestras all over the world. And then an accident irreparably damaged the tendons and nerves on one side of his left hand. He chose to mentor younger prodigies after that incident.

Roz was his third.

All his other students had gone on to be amazing things. They did amazing things. And his life—on paper—as a pianist was everything she thought she wanted to be. She was also seventeen—almost eighteen—and couldn’t remember a time these last few years where she didn’t look at this man’s face at least once a day.

She couldn’t just be a young woman when she was also this man’s student. She had to be all the things he told her to be instead.

“Did you shut your phone off, or what?” Kyle asked, dragging Roz back to the conversation.

“Did it keep ringing, or just go right to inbox?”

The man’s brow dipped. “What?”

“What did my phone do when you called—ring and ring, or go to inbox right away?”

“Rang and rang,” he said.

“Then, I didn’t shut it off.”

Kyle frowned. “So, I am to believe that means you were purposely ignoring me.”

“Or trying to sleep.”

“You don’t need more sleep, Roz. Not when you’re going to bed at nine every night, and waking up at eight.”

Yes, because even her sleep schedule was determined by this man when something as important as the Australia audition was coming up. She was pretty sure if she suggested he take over prepping meal plans for her, he would go ahead with that, too.

It was crazy.

“You need to prepare,” Kyle continued on, repeating the same shit he said each time they talked. It wasn’t new shit, and Roz was already starting to daze before he even really got going with his tirade. “As much and as often as you can manage. With and without people watching. At different times each day. Did you record your final session of the day yesterday for me to hear it?”

Shit.

She had meant to—it was the one thing she did like to do for Kyle. Even if she didn’t take all of his suggestions when it came to changing her piece for the audition, he had a good ear. Better than good, really. He could hear her missteps when even she couldn’t pick them out. He could hear—even through a recording—where she might have hit the keys a little harder than was necessary. He did make her music better.

He did.

And that was the whole reason why, despite a lot of the nonsense, Roz was grateful for Kyle. He was making her a better pianist.

She wanted to be the best.

He was giving her that.

“Can I assume by your face that your answer on the recording is a no?” Kyle asked.

Roz gave the man on the screen an apologetic smile. “I had a thing yesterday that I forgot about. A family friend had an engagement party. I was working on the piece, and meant to record the final run through … but someone interrupted, and I forgot by the time I got back.”

Kyle raised a brow. “Are they?”

“Pardon?”