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“Some Debussy.” He shrugs like it is nothing.

“Which piece?”

He looks at me, properly, like the question has surprised him slightly.

“La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin.”

The Girl with the Flaxen Hair.

“That’s a lovely choice,” I say softly.

“It’s not for him,” he replies. Just like that, plain and simple. Nothing more.

“Thank you for asking me.” My voice is calm and steady in a way that does not match what my pulse is doing.

He reaches out, his fingertips tilting my chin upward, exactly enough to meet his gaze.

“It’s only you I want there with me, Ellise.” His intense eyes don’t waver.

Holy shit.

“I don’t know if I’ll fit in,” I admit, the confession slipping out before I can filter it. “I’ve never been to anything like that before. Private galas I mean. It’s not my world, Julian.”

He pulls back just enough to look at me properly. God, he is hot.

“That’s exactly why I want you there.” His thumb strokes softly over the curve of my cheekbone. “You’ll be the only real thing in that entire room, Ellise.”

The words settle over me like something heavy and warm.

"The only real thing."

This version of him is playing absolute havoc with everything I thought I understood about this situation. Gone is the dickhead who spent a year provoking me—the guy who lived to get a reaction out of me.

This is something else entirely.

“Julian.” My voice is unusually sure. “This is a lot...” I continue to look into his dark eyes. “For the last year, you mocked me and tried to sabotage my focus. You got under my skin in every possible way and now this? This is a genuine question, and one I need an answer to. What is this?”

His jaw tightens, and something moves behind his eyes—a flicker of hesitation—something raw.

“Every time I antagonised you…” He begins, his voice laced with a bitter sort of honesty. “Every dig, smirk, and comment that I knew would get a reaction—it was because I couldn’t stand how much space you took up in my head. I mocked you because it was the only way I knew how to get you to look at me.”

No words. I cannot form words for an admission like that.

I reach out, my fingers finding his forearm and lightly tracing the line of the piano keyboard tattoo onto his skin. He watches my hand move but doesn't pull away.

“You thought about me like that?” I whisper.

He lets out a dry laugh.

“I hated that no matter what I did, you didn’t seem to see me.” The confession is quiet but so loud. “It drove me fucking insane.”

“I saw you,” I interrupt. “I saw every smug smirk and every moment you looked at me like you wanted me to crack. I hated you because you were the only person who could get under my skin.” I lean into his shoulder, as his hand slides down the back of my neck. “The only person who has ever got under my skin.”

He begins moving his fingers gently through my hair.

“So the nicknames? The mocking? It was all—”

“A shield,” he admits, staring at my lips. “A pathetic and arrogant shield to hide the fact that since the moment I watched you butcher that Vivaldi—” He lets out a playful snicker. “Since I watched you perform on that stage in first year, I have wanted to do exactly this.”