Page 282 of Blackwood

Cade chuckles and shoots me a look. “Let her go, Lex.”

My grip tightens dramatically like I’m some damn villain in a melodrama. “I’d rather die.”

Bella laughs, leans back, and presses a kiss to my jaw, then swivels to Cade and kisses him too, just as quick.

“I’ll be right back,” she says, flashing that look that always promises trouble.

As Ellie and Haley finish their number, the gym roars with applause. The Legacy boys push out this massive square stage onto the center of the court. It’s heavy, reinforced, covered in black panels, and raised just enough to feel like a pedestal. Callum and August start going crazy in their seats.

“What the hell is that?” I ask, glancing at Cade.

He shrugs. “I’ve never seen it before.”

I tilt my head. “You think this is that rain stage thing she told Ellie not to bring to her party?”

Cade’s brows lift. “Oh, shit. Maybe.”

The gym lights drop as she steps out from behind the curtain. Barefoot and in a sheer lavender dress clinging to every perfect line of her body. It looks like something out of a dream, short and gauzy, layered like petals. Her skin glows under the pale lights, her hair pinned half up with soft waves spilling down her back. She looks like a fucking ballet fairy. If that fairy was carved out of every dark craving I’ve ever had.

Josh meets her at center court and takes her hand. They walk in sync up the steps to the stage. The only lights still on are two soft blue beams hitting the square platform.

The first notes of “Midnight Rain” by Taylor Swift echo across the gym. I lean forward in my chair, elbows on my knees, eyes locked on our girl. She moves like the song is hers. Every extension of her leg, every turn of her neck, every flick of her fingers, it’s beautiful.

Josh lifts her and spins her into a dip that makes the crowd gasp. Her back arches, her arms stretch, her feet graze the surface like she’s gliding on water.

When the chorus hits, so does the rain. Water pours down from hidden slats above the stage, soaking them in seconds.

My phone is already up. Because holy shit. That’s our girl. Dancing barefoot in the rain. Drenched in lavender. Spinning and bending and swaying with this haunting kind of beauty that belongs on a stage in Paris, not a college gym. I can’t stop watching her.

“She’s unreal,” I mutter, still recording. “Like, not even real. That’s goddess-level shit.”

Cade nods beside me, just as gone. By the time the song fades, she’s soaked to the bone. Hair clinging to her back, dress plastered to her skin. Breathless and glowing. And fuck, she’s smiling. Like it wasn’t a performance. Like it was a release.

The crowd doesn’t even clap at first. They just sit there stunned. Then someone yells, and the whole place erupts. She steps down from the rain stage completely soaked, shining, fucking breathtaking, and starts walking back toward us, squeezing water from her hair.

But Knox’s voice booms over the speakers before she can even reach the edge of the court. “Uh-uh. Bella Blackwood, where you goin’? You’re not done.”

She stops mid-step, blinking up at the DJ booth like she misheard him.

“Excuse me?”

Knox grins, one hand cupping his mic, the other throwing her a challenge. “I said I’m calling you out, bitch. Lip sync battle. You and me. Right here. Right now.”

Cade laughs beside me. “Oh my God.”

I lean forward. “He’s actually lost his mind.”

Bella wipes water from her eyes. “Knox, I’m soaked.”

“And your point?” he fires back. “What, you scared?”

She lets out the most dramatic sigh I’ve ever heard, like Broadway-level dramatics, and then shrugs off her drenched lavender dress and tosses it to the floor.

My jaw drops. “What the fuck are you doing, baby?!”

“Holy shit,” Cade mutters beside me. “I knew she had Rico make her some more fight night outfits, but damn.”

Yeah. Damn is right. A Rico original—purple, glittery, and skin-tight—but it’s the word across her chest that nearly knocks the air out of me.