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“I liked it better when all you did was be mean to me,” she says, practically spitting the sentence out. “It was easier. We could just shit talk each other at competitions, take it out onstage, and leave it all behind until the next one. It made sense.”

I want to tell her I never ‘left it all behind.’ I carried it with me everywhere I went: the heavy knowledge that I wanted a place here more than anything, which meant I needed to earn it, which meant I needed to spend every day working to be as good as and preferably better than her.

“But this thing where you’re nice to me,” she continues, “and then you disappear, and then you’re rude, and then you apologize, and then you’re...you’re acting like you want to kiss me, and then you’re immediately all mean again, it just...it fucking sucks, Kenzie, and I don’t want to do it anymore.”

The bottom of my stomach drops out as the truth of what she’s just said sinks in.

That’s what I’ve been to her, and maybe she’s been confusing too, but it’s all been in response to me.

This is why I don’t get close. This is why I don’t lose control. My life outside the dance world is a complicated mess waiting to swallow me up, and if I don’t have rules and expectations holding me in place, I become a complicated mess too.

“You’re right.”

Moira pauses in the middle of the deep inhale she’s taking. She tilts her head and squints.

“Huh?”

“You’re right,” I repeat. “That’s exactly what I’ve been doing. I...I don’t know what’s going on with us, Moira, and I don’t know what to do about it either, but I can’t keep doing this. You don’t deserve it, and believe it or not, it’s really not a fun time for me either. I’m sorry I’ve been hurting you.”

“O-oh.”

Some of the tension leaves her stance. She’s still panting, her eyes getting wider by the second, and the hallway suddenly feels smaller, like the lockers are leaning in to press us together.

I need to push back.

I ball my fists around the fabric of my skirt and stare just past her shoulder instead of at her face.

“The interview is done,” I tell her. “I really did mean it when I said it was amazing. Now we can focus on the scholarship on our own. We’ll only see each other at competitions. We don’t need to talk at them anymore. I mean, we’re twenty. We don’t need to shit talk each other like teenagers anymore. We can just focus on dancing and let”—I pause to swallow—“everything else go.”

I expect a nod or some kind of an agreement, but what feels like a full minute of silence passes after I finish.

Then she makes that growling noise again.

“Really? That was your takeaway?”

I blink a few times. “What? What do you mean?”

“Kenzie, come on. That is...that is not what I want, and I don’t think it’s what you want either.”

Her voice drops lower at the end of her sentence, and the walls move in even closer. The air gets thinner, forcing me to take rapid, shallow breaths. My chest is full of hot coals waiting for a spark.

“What...what do you want?” I whisper.

She takes a step toward me. “Do you really need me to say it, Kenzie?”

I can’t move. Even breathing feels dangerous now, like the slightest shift of my body might send me tumbling straight into what she’s offering with no way to get out.

And no desire to get out.

“I want...” She trails off, her tongue darting out to wet her lips, and I feel flames start to lick my skin. “I just want you, Kenzie. I want you. I don’t know how it started, but I do. I want you to kiss me, and—”

She doesn’t finish. I don’t give her a chance. As soon as I heard the words ‘I want you’ leave her mouth, I knew I’d never be able to walk back down the stairs without tasting her.

I just need to know what she tastes like.

We collide in the middle of the hallway, me lunging forward to frame her face with my hands as she grips my waist to steady us. I get one look at those wide green eyes before she leans in to press her lips to mine.

Everything stops, all my senses grinding down to a complete halt before they fire up again, more vivid than ever before.