Book 2 bonus scene
My mind is miles away as I look out at the water. It’s choppy today, a restless churn. A storm is coming. I can feel it.
From the St. Marlowe Maison's oceanfront dance studio, the sun doesn't just hit the water; it splinters. The choppy surface is a glittering disco ball, reflecting shards of warm light through the floor-to-ceiling windows and turning the white oak floors into a stage of pure heat.
I don't mind the heat. I don't mind the sweat stinging the corners of my eyes or the way my lungs feel like they’re on fire. It’s the stillness I mind.
As long as I’m moving, my mind is quiet.
Extend. Pirouette. Hold.
I catch my reflection in the wall of mirrors. My blonde ponytail swishes as I turn, and the lines of my legs and arms perform with muscle memory. This is what twenty-one years of investment looks like. This is the standard.
I can still hear my father’s voice from this morning, rattling around in my skull like a loose bullet.
He hadn't even looked up from the Financial Times with his espresso when I walked into the breakfast room.
He adjusted the knot of his silk tie, his eyes tracking a line of numbers as if they held more life than I did.
"The studio is a distraction, Sloane. A vanity project. You’re spending your time spinning in circles while the world is being built by people with drive. When will you stop pretending this is a career and start acting like a Sterling? Do not embarrass me."
He didn’t even say ‘Good morning.’ He didn’t see the years of discipline, exercise, and conditioning my body to be the absolute best it can be. He simply issued a requirement. I am a Sterling, which means I am a brand, and brands don't have the luxury of being human.
I drop from the pointe, the sound of my blocked shoes hitting the wood echoes even over the thrum of Unforgettable by Perfectly ImperfeKt.
"God, Sloane, you’re going to snap a tendon if you keep that up."
I don't break the extension. I stay locked in the hold, watching Rhodes in the reflection as she scrolls through her phone at the far barre.
She has been the soundtrack to my life since we were both six years old.
The aromatic scent of her iconic Santal 33 and the sound of fingernails tapping against glass follows wherever she goes.
She’s supposed to be in the middle of her adagio, but Rhodes doesn't do anything that requires too much sweat if she can help it. She scrolls through her feed in between sets while I try to sweat the residue of my father’s disappointment out of my pores.
His words pulse in time with my heart, a rhythmic insult that keeps me pushing long after my muscles have started to scream.
I watch her long legs stretched out against the wood, the scent of her spicy perfume drifting through the warmth of the room, mixing with the salty ocean air.
She looks exactly like what she is: the daughter of the billionaire who owns half the zip codes in St. Marlowe Bay.
The Ashford family built the skyline from the cliffs up.
It’s why Rhodes can afford to be this casual.
She’s beautiful in that effortless, messy way that only truly rich girls can manage.
The studio door creeps open, and a sliver of cool air breaks the heat of the room.
Eloise walks in, tucking her hair behind her ear, and draping her dance bag back onto her shoulder.
"Oh, sorry Sloane, I just needed to pick up my wrap. I forgot it."
She finished her practice session right before Rhodes and I started.
With her pale skin and hair so dark it’s almost pitch-black, she looks like a siren pulled from the dark water.
Hauntingly beautiful and completely hollow.
She’s the girl everyone in St. Marlowe Bay is supposed to envy.
The current favourite. The girl on Sebastian Drake’s arm at the regatta, the gala, and all the fundraisers.
She’s the blueprint I’m being measured against. The one who never misses a step, never breaks a line, and never, ever says no.
The gold standard of a Sterling asset, even if her last name isn't Sterling.
I remember seeing her with Drake at the Winter Gala.
They looked like the perfect couple. Her so ethereal, and him, handsome with a don't-fuck-with-me attitude. Most guys look at me as if I’m only a piece of arm candy, but when he caught my eye, there was a terrifying stillness that made my skin crawl.
I felt his attention like a cold hand on the back of my neck, long after he’d disappeared into the crowd.
I spot her cashmere wrap on the floor near the speaker system. She bends down to retrieve it, and as she reaches, the scoop-back of her leotard pulls tight against her skin, the fabric stretching thin over her ribs.
I freeze.
Even in the golden-hour light, the marks are undeniable. A kaleidoscope of mottled purple that mimics the telltale shape of fingerprints pressed deep into her side, wrapping toward her spine. It isn’t a dancer’s bruise, nor a fall.
It’s a grip.
Eloise feels my gaze. Our eyes meet in the mirror, a split second of pure, unadulterated terror, before she jerks the wrap back up, hiding the damage. She doesn't say a word as she hurries out the door, her shoes clicking an uneven rhythm against the hallway tile.
The door hums shut. The silence in the studio feels twice as heavy as before.
"Seriously, Sloane, stop staring," Rhodes says, not even looking up from her screen. "It’s so tacky."
"She’s bruised, Rhodes," I whisper, my voice sounding thin against the vastness of the glass. "On her ribs. I saw them."
Rhodes finally looks up, her eyes flat and bored. "Eloise is fine. She’s lucky compared to what happened to Chloe. Did you hear about that party at the lodge last spring break?"
I turn around now, my heart starting a heavy thud against my own ribs. "Chloe? The girl before her?"
"My brother was there," Rhodes says, her eyes still glued to her phone, the blue light washing out her expression.
"He said Sebastian didn't even bother taking her to a bedroom.
He just fucked her right there on the pool table while the whole team watched.
And then he let the rest of them have a go, while he went off with someone else.
Like she was a shared bottle of tequila or something. "
She shrugs, already back to her phone. "Honestly, Eloise should be grateful she only has a few bruises to hide. Come on, I'm hungry. Meet you at the car."
She walks out without waiting for a response, leaving her words to settle in the heat like lead. I open my mouth to ask something, anything, to stop the silence, but the door has already hummed shut.
I’m alone now.
The sun is dropping faster, the golden light turning into a bruised purple that stretches across the floor. St. Marlowe Bay is laid out below me. The clouds are rolling in and the swell is starting to pick up. A storm is rolling in on the horizon.
I look at the girl in the floor-to-ceiling mirror. The posture is perfect. The line of her neck, the set of her shoulders, the careful arrangement of her face. Every inch of her exactly as required.
I reach for the music player, but my hand stops mid-air.
There is no sound, but every hair on my arms stands up at once. It’s a physical sensation, like a finger tracing the line of my spine through the glass.
Someone is watching me.
The gaze doesn't feel like the others. It doesn't have the weight of my father’s disappointment or the clumsy hunger of the guys in the varsity blazers. It’s a predatory attention that hits the base of my spine and crawls up my neck, turning the sweat on my skin into ice.
I turn toward the glass, my eyes searching the broken coastline, the unlit windows of the modern towers across the bay. There is no one in the pines. No shadow in the door. The docks are a mile away, the pier a dark sliver in the churning water.
But the feeling is still there. A gaze that isn't asking for a performance. A gaze that isn't asking for anything at all.
I draw a sharp breath and try to shake it off. I have to. If I stop moving, the silence will swallow me whole.
I find the play button. The music pours back into the room, a massive wall of sound that acts as a shield against the impending dark. I let the rhythm take over, my pulse syncing with the thrum as the lyrics bleed into the heat of my skin.
My favourite part of the song cuts through the speaker system at one forty-one. The melody drops and the words come in, and I let it pull me under.
I don't look at the glass. Nor do I search the shadows for the gaze I can still feel resting against my neck. I just find my position and move, dancing until the room goes black.