Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
For the third time in twenty minutes, I stopped midphrase and lowered my violin with a frustrated sigh.
I couldn’t focus.
The practice room in the music building felt smaller than usual, the walls seeming to close in as I tried and failed to concentrate on the piece I’d been working on.
Every time I raised my bow to the strings, my mind wandered.
Not to the technical challenges of the Bach Chaconne or the upcoming Montana Philharmonic summer fellowship audition that should have been consuming my thoughts.
Nope, instead I kept thinking about yesterday.
About Drew’s face when I’d been holding his daughter.
About the way he’d looked at me when I was singing.
There had been something different in his eyes. Something softer than the usual cocky smirk or irritated scowl I was used to seeing. And thinking about it was slowly driving me crazy.
I shook my head and tried again, positioning my violin under my chin. The opening notes filled the small space, but my heart wasn’t in it.
All I could think about was Drew. The way the expression on his face had made my heart beat faster the same way it had when we were younger. I’d thought for just a moment that maybe we wouldn’t be enemies forever.
It had always been my secret shame that my first real crush was on Drew Dumontier. My bow snagged on the string, sending out a scratchy, off-key whine that made me wince.
“Shit,” I muttered, setting the violin down again.
This was ridiculous.
The last person in the world I should be thinking about right now was Drew. One moment of…whatever that was…didn’t change anything.
Except it did feel like something had changed. And that was the problem.
I packed up my violin with more force than necessary and headed for the door. If I couldn’t focus here, there was no point in pretending to practice.
The walk back to the music house was short—just across the quad and down the street that separated campus from the residential area where most of the upperclassmen lived.
March in Montana was unpredictable, and today carried the promise of spring even though patches of dirty snow still clung to the shadows.
The music house sat on a beautiful tree-lined street right off campus.
It was perfect, except for its proximity to the hockey house.
When Rachel had asked if I wanted to move in, I’d almost said no because being on the same campus with Drew was bad enough, but being next door sounded like torture.
But once I met my roommates, I knew I wouldn’t let his stupidly handsome face stop me from living with them.
Our house was a two-story Craftsman that had been rented out to students for decades, like most of the other houses on this street.
It became the music house nearly ten years ago and had consistently only housed music majors since then.
It wasn’t fancy, but it was warm and comfortable, with big windows that let in plenty of natural light and enough space for all four of us to practice without driving each other completely insane.
Although, more often than not, if we really needed to focus, we’d go to the practice rooms. The front porch was covered in Talia’s collection of mismatched outdoor furniture—a couple of wicker chairs she’d found at a thrift store and a small table that wobbled if you looked at it wrong—and an assortment of fake plants that always made me smile.
She’d insisted that the porch needed greenery, but we were all too busy to attempt to keep plants alive.
The living room was the heart of the house. We’d covered the walls with posters from various music festivals and concerts we’d attended, and there was usually at least one music stand set up in the corner with someone’s sheet music scattered around it.
I loved living here and being surrounded by people who understood that music wasn’t just a hobby or a major—it was a calling.
My roommates got why I needed to practice at weird hours, why I got emotional about certain pieces, and why the Montana Philharmonic fellowship meant everything to me.
They understood the pressure and the passion in ways my family never had.
In a lot of ways, the women in this house had become more family to me than my blood relatives.
Rachel was curled up on the couch with her laptop when I walked in.
She was the most grounded of all of us—practical and steady, with a dry sense of humor that kept the rest of us from taking ourselves too seriously.
We’d bonded immediately freshman year over our shared major and our mutual exhaustion with the intensity of the program.
“You’re back early,” she said, looking up from her screen. “I thought you had the practice room reserved for another hour.”
“Couldn’t concentrate,” I admitted, dropping my violin case by the stairs.
Rachel’s eyebrows rose. It wasn’t like me to give up practice time, especially when the Montana Philharmonic audition was coming up in a few weeks.
“Everything okay?” she asked, closing her laptop and giving me her full attention.
I flopped down in the armchair across from her, suddenly feeling exhausted.
“Is it Drew?”
Rachel knew all about my rivalry with Drew.
She’d been my roommate since freshman year and had witnessed every escalation, every prank, every moment of frustration and anger.
She’d helped me plot revenge schemes and had listened to me rant about the injustice of being forced to work with him on our psychology project.
“No,” I lied, because how was I supposed to explain that seeing Drew as a father was messing with my head in ways I didn’t want to acknowledge? How could I tell her that yesterday, for twenty whole minutes, I’d forgotten we were supposed to hate each other?
Rachel studied my face with the kind of intuitive understanding that came from two years of friendship. “I call bullshit.”
My phone buzzed with a text before I could respond, and I grabbed it like a lifeline. Drew’s name appeared on my screen, and my stomach did a weird and fluttery swoop that I absolutely did not want to analyze.
Andy
Found some good research articles for our project. Still on for tomorrow?
I stared at the message for a full minute, my thumb hovering over the keyboard.
This was just academic stuff. Just two students working on an assignment together.
It didn’t mean anything that my pulse had picked up when I saw his name, or that I was already thinking about what I should wear tomorrow.
Hockey season was still in full swing—the end of the season was coming up fast—which meant Drew’s schedule was packed with practices and games, so we’d already planned out our meeting times for the next two weeks.
Me
Yes
Simple and professional.
I ignored the fact that I stared at his message for at least a solid minute before my brain came up with that ridiculously simple response.
“Was that him?” Rachel asked.
“Why would you think it was?”
Why was I even getting defensive right now? This was Rachel. For fuck’s sake, would Drew ever stop messing with my head?
“Because your cheeks got all flushed and you got that weird look in your eyes you get whenever you’re talking about him.”
“I do not get a weird look in my eyes when I talk about Drew Dumontier.”
She pinched her lips like she was fighting back a smile. “Oh, my dear sweet bestie, you one thousand percent do. It’s like you can’t decide if you want to fight him or fuck him.”
My jaw dropped. Never in the two years of our friendship had she ever said something so outrageous.
“Did you accidentally ingest one of Brody’s weed brownies?”
She threw one of the throw pillows from the couch at me.
“So, was it him?”
I huffed. “Fine. If you must know, yes, it was. He was just confirming our project meeting for tomorrow.”
“Mm-hmm.” Rachel was still watching me with that knowing look. “You know, it’s okay to change your mind about him, Harper. Things don’t always have to be black and white.”
I sagged back farther into the chair. “Things were a lot less complicated when I hated him.”
“So, you’re admitting that maybe you don’t hate him anymore?”
I covered my face with my hands and let out a muffled, “I don’t know.”
I really didn’t.
Things had always been black and white where Drew was concerned—especially since our brief friendship in sixth grade disintegrated in a poof of smoke. But now I couldn’t deny that maybe my feelings were changing.
And after what happened with him before, it felt like a trap.
But as I sat there in our comfortable living room, with Rachel’s calming presence, the familiar sounds of Ayanna practicing her guitar upstairs, and Talia’s voice drifting down from her room as she talked to her family on a video chat, I had to admit the truth.
I was actually looking forward to seeing him again.
And that scared the absolute shit out of me.