Page 9 of The Sound of Us

“You’re very quiet,” she said. “You haven’t hummed a single song since you got up. I think that’s a record. Are you nervous about the tryout this afternoon?”

“I’ve just got so much riding on this…”

“You’re going to kick ass,” she assured me. “They’re going to offer you a place back on the team. I feel it in my bones.”

“And if they don’t?”

“In the unlikely event that happens, we’ll go to the financial aid office and apply for every single scholarship we can find,” she said firmly. “I’ll also hit up the editor of the Havencrest alumni magazine to see if he has some freelance work. I just hope he’s managed to get over our spectacular breakup.” She stopped at the corner where our paths diverged. Most of her classes were on the opposite side of the campus to mine. “It involved a pitcher of margaritas being poured over someone’s head.”

“Not yours I hope.”

“Of course not.” She patted her curls. “No one would dare ruin this hair.”

I was ten minutes from the end of my shift at the Buttercup Bakery Café in the main library when my injured leg began to ache—an irritating response to the cooling weather. It was our busiest timeof day so asking for a break wasn’t an option. I mentally chided myself for not keeping up with the exercises my physio had given me, but with all the intense training I had to do to recondition for tryouts, the twenty minutes of tiny movements three times a day was not only tedious and inconvenient, but it was also a constant reminder that I still wasn’t fully healed.

Gritting my teeth, I limped from the register to the espresso machine to give my co-worker Haley the cups for the latest order. Haley and I had hit it off the moment we were introduced. She was a sophomore, just shy of five foot seven inches tall, with high, sharp cheekbones and a wild mane of curly chestnut-brown hair that fell past her shoulders in a controlled chaos. She was still undecided on a major and spent most of her free time auditioning for bands and performing at open mic nights to try and launch her singing career. Her style was equal parts edgy and bohemian, and she had absolutely no filter—good for herHidden Tracksshow at the college radio station; bad for business when she eviscerated rude customers with a few well-chosen words. I was terrified she’d get fired and I’d wind up with no source of entertainment at an otherwise routine job.

“Are you okay?” Haley whispered as she poured milk into the steamer.

“Fine.” I retied the strings on my apron, bright white and decorated with yellow buttercups.

“My uncle used to say ‘fine’ when we asked him about his limp, and it turned out he had bone cancer and they had to amputate.”

“My leg is made of titanium,” I reminded her. “It’s got a half-life of sixty years, so it’ll still be around when I’m gone. I’m like my grandpa who had a bad knee and could tell us when a storm was coming.”

“Speaking of storms…” She lifted her chin ever so slightly in the direction of the till. “Look what just blew in. I’d ride that hurricane in a heartbeat.”

I glanced over, my eyes immediately locking on a familiar darkgaze and the breathtaking face of the man whose voice I had been imagining every night before I went to sleep.Dante.He was wearing a vintage Twisted Sister T-shirt tucked into worn jeans cinched by a black belt that had thick silver chains hanging off one side. His hair was artfully disheveled, like he’d just rolled out of bed, and his dark eyes glinted when he grinned at me. Everything about him screamed “bad boy,” and I felt a tingle in my stomach, followed by a thud in my heart.

“Do you know him?”

Haley laughed. “Everyone knows Dante Romano. He DJs the late-night show at WJPK, our independent campus radio station.Dante’s Darknesshas the highest ratings of any late-night show in Chicago.”

“DJDante? I thought he played in a band.”

“He’s all over the music scene,” she said. “And he’s majoring in finance here at Havencrest. I heard he’s graduating this year. What a total loss. I tune in to his show when I can’t sleep. You should hear his voice. I could get off just listening to him read a shopping list.”

“We met on Friday night at Steamworks,” I admitted as I helped her prep the orders, straightening the row of paper cups and checking the coffee bean supply to keep my gaze from drifting across the counter. But it was no use. It was as if the strength of his features and the power rippling beneath his muscular frame had magnified until I couldn’t ignore him.

Haley’s eyes sparkled with interest. “Do tell.”

“Isla dragged me out into the alley so she could vape with the bartender, and Dante was there unloading gear with his band. We were talking music when one of the guys said something about Dante always trying to hook up before their gigs. He thought I was a groupie.” I grimaced at the memory and the reminder that what I thought had been a special conversation between us had, in fact, just been a standard seduction.

“I’m not surprised,” she said. “Dante is a player. My friends at the station say he’s with a different woman every night.”

I could feel Dante’s eyes on me as I added coffee beans to the almost-full dispenser. “Can you take his order? I don’t want to talk to him. It’s too embarrassing.”

“Sorry, babe.” Her curls bounced when she shook her head. “My mouth starts going and doesn’t stop when I have to deal with the tall, strong, silent types. I can’t handle a noise vacuum. I’d chase him away.”

With a sigh, I returned to the till and plastered a fake smile on my face. Dante’s gaze dropped to my apron, where the wordButtercupwas printed in big yellow letters across my chest. He looked up and grinned. “What’s up, buttercup?”

“My name is Skye; not buttercup, as you know,” I said, trying hard not to melt into a puddle at the sound of his voice. “Is this a coincidental meeting? I’ve never seen you here before.”

“I talked to Scott, the Steamworks bartender, after our gig on Friday night,” he said. “I might have asked him if he knew anything about the mysterious woman I’d met in the alley. He might have mentioned that she worked here and that she’d made a coffee-bar playlist. I might have been intrigued—”

“By the woman or the playlist?” I couldn’t believe he’d made the effort to find me, especially if he had women beating down his door like Haley said.

“Both.” He reached over the counter and released a lock of hair that was caught in my collar, sending electricity dancing over my skin.

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