Page 31

THIRTY-ONE

DANNI

I’m on edge all through dinner that night. So much so I can barely eat.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Rose asks from her place next to me. Under the table, she nudges my foot with hers. “Does anyone know if a lack of appetite is a sign of a concussion?”

“Why would you have a concussion?” Molly asks me from across the table while she cracks her crème br?lée.

“She fell down at skating and hit her head.”

“Well, have you gone to the nurse?” Molly asks, pausing with her spoon halfway to her mouth.

“No, I’m fine, I promise,” I say. “I’m not in pain anymore.”

“You don’t look fine,” says Eleanor. “You look pale.”

“I am pale.”

“I’m taking you to the nurse after dinner,” Rose decides.

“We have the arts performance after dinner.”

“We’ll skip it,” Rose says.

I shove down a mouthful of crème br?lée pointedly, but it doesn’t convince her.

Once the plates have all been cleared, and the headmaster stands to announce tonight’s performance details, Rose runs a fingertip along my thigh under the table, causing a shiver to run along its trail and radiate up and out. My mind fogs over. “Come on,” she says. “We can leave now, nobody will mind. If you’re not well…”

“I can’t leave,” I say, as quietly as I can get away with. “I wrote you something.”

“You… pardon?”

The headmaster takes center stage, and I almost pass out. Here I go. “For tonight’s arts performance,” he says, “we’re being treated to an original piano piece by Danni Blythe. For those of you who haven’t yet had the privilege of meeting Danni, she joined us this year from America, and is one of the most remarkable piano talents Caroline has seen in a long time. And anybody who knows Caroline will agree this is high praise from her indeed.”

Understanding dawns on Rose’s face, as our friends whoop and cheer for me, and Harriet gets to her feet, clapping and jumping she’s so excited. If I thought I was nervous at dinner, it’s nothing compared to how I feel now.

But like Rose said, I have to keep taking the next step forward, or I’m going to be stuck in place. If there’s even a chance in hell of me becoming a soloist one day, I’ve got to let myself be perceived.

Besides—I’ve already been perceived, right? I’ve had my face plastered all over Molly’s socials, and tabloids, and news articles. I’ve been watched, and photographed, and filmed, over and over again, for the whole freaking country to see. People in other countries, even. Today is the perfect example of that. This is just a teeny tiny piano piece—a simple one at that—for one roomful of students.

Still, somehow, this feels a thousand times scarier.

The piano was brought onto the dining hall stage especially for this—I’m surprised its presence didn’t tip Rose off, actually, but she was too busy freaking out about my head to notice anything else.

I’ve sat in this piano seat so many times now, and tonight isn’t any different—other than my aching tailbone. I’m in the ballroom, and no one else is here, and the only people listening are the people crossing the courtyard. I’m safe.

Then I catch Rose’s eye, and she breaks into a grin, and I almost believe what I’m telling myself.

I start to play with shaking fingers, and, surprisingly, I don’t pass out from fear. It helps that it’s an easy song, like I said. Just something I composed a couple of weeks ago, when none of the songs in my repertoire seemed to really capture my feelings. This tune is all Rose. It’s about how much better euphoria feels after you’ve been living your personal hell. How beautiful it is to kiss someone for the first time, and how much more beautiful it is to kiss them when you thought you never would again. How it feels to find someone who makes you into a version of yourself you want to be forever.

At first, it was only going to be for my ears. But then when I was trying to figure out what, exactly, I was going to give Rose for Valentine’s Day with a budget of zero, I thought of this. And I don’t know, maybe it’s cringey, or not enough. It obviously can’t measure up against a brand-new pair of leather skates. But it’s all I’ve got to give.

Then I dare to look out at the crowd, just for a second. I thought I would feel terrified, but no one’s laughing. No one.

I find Rose, who’s watching me with a hand over her mouth. I can tell she’s smiling behind it. As wide as she possibly can. And Molly—the only other person in the room who has any idea what’s happening right now—is watching Rose smile at me.

To anyone else, it probably just looks like Rose is proud of me for getting up here. Part of me knows that, even though another part of me can’t believe that anyone else can hear this song and not know all of my most personal feelings. It feels like I’m standing in the middle of the dining hall, screaming at the top of my lungs that Rose and I are together, and I’m falling for her harder than anyone I’ve ever met before.

It’s the closest I’ll ever come to doing just that, I guess.

And I’m so glad I did it. Because Rose’s face tells me she doesn’t find it cringey or not enough at all. I’ve never actually seen her look exactly like this.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anybody look at someone the way Rose is looking at me right now.

Later that night, when I’m already in my pajamas, there’s a knock on my door. I’m hoping it’s Rose before I open it, and when I see her on the other side, I can’t help smiling. That is, until I notice the wild look on her face, and how out of breath she is.

“What is it?” I ask, letting her in. As soon as my door closes, she’s up against me, kissing me and steering me toward the bed. I’ve kissed her hundreds of times by now, but these kisses seem intense, and urgent. Starved.

We hit the bed hard enough to bounce, and then I’m stretching out underneath her, tangling my fingers in her curls. One second her bodyweight is pressing down the length of me, and the next she shifts to the side a little. She rests her knee in the space between my legs, and at first I think it’s for balance. Then she shuffles higher, and her knee makes contact with me, and I pause mid-kiss.

“Is it—” She breaks off just before it becomes a question, but I answer it anyway by bringing my hips up toward hers. Until I found this friction, I had no idea how much I wanted it. It gives instant relief to the aching feeling I’ve become familiar with recently. More than relief, even. Something way better than that.

I try to press into her harder, and she responds by leaning her weight forward to meet me more firmly, kissing me deeply as she does, and I make a sound I’ve never made before. She takes both of my hands in hers, threads her fingers through them, and then rests them both on the mattress above my head, so all I can do is arch my back and kiss her harder as she starts to move forward and back. Every time she pulls away from me, the ache returns, heavier and more insistent than last time.

At first, it makes every time she rises back up better than the last. But eventually, it stops being enough. I grab at her as she goes to move away and pull her back in, shaking my head. She’s happy to oblige, and she closes her eyes, lips slightly parted, as I pull the full weight of her down on me. “Danni,” she whispers, letting go of one of my hands. “I want to…”

When I realize what she means, it’s like being slammed by a hurricane wall. So many things are true at once. I want her to as well, so badly, more than I’ve ever wanted anything, because her knee isn’t enough to subdue the ache anymore. And my heartbeat is going crazy, and I can barely breathe, and I can hardly even think . But the part of me that can think is coming up with lots of very scary thoughts. Like, how will I know what to do? And, what if I’m really awkward and horrible, and it makes her not like me anymore? And, what if she hates what she sees under my clothes?

She studies my face, and swallows. “We don’t have to,” she whispers, and no, no, I definitely—

“Want to,” I breathe, and it’s not even a proper sentence, and I don’t even care. “Please? But I haven’t done it before.”

“Me neither,” she says, dropping her knee back down. “But I’ve thought about it. Quite a lot.”

Her chest presses against mine, and I can feel her heart racing, too. And I guess somehow I’d forgotten that this is as new to her as it is to me, but remembering that makes me feel much more confident. Enough that I slide my hand between us without wasting any more time worrying about it. Unlike me, she hasn’t had a bit of friction this whole time, and when I find her over her underwear she lets out a strangled gasp that turns into a series of shallow, shaking breaths. It makes me feel powerful, and wanted, and so turned on I feel like I might pass out if it goes on for much longer.

When she undresses me, I stop worrying altogether, because it’s not possible to see the way she’s looking at me and be self-conscious. She drags her eyes and her fingertips down from my collarbone to my hips in sync, and she tips her head to one side and shakes it slowly, and I feel—

“Just so fucking beautiful,” she murmurs, and it’s the last thing she says to me before she finally gives me what I asked her for.