Page 25 of One Last Encore

The way his eyes sparkled, all cocky and playful, had her frozen on the spot like a deer in the headlights of a very attractive oncoming disaster. She had to remind herself that she didn’t like him, no matter how stupidly pretty he was.

She sat frozen, watching him stroll toward the exit like he hadn’t just casually reprogrammed her brain.

"What the hell was that?" Sylvia demanded, eyes wide. "You’ve been holding out on me!"

"He's my partner in the collaborative class," Ingrid replied in her most neutral,this is not a thingtone, trying to suppress the entirely unwelcome tingling sensation running rampant in her system.

Sylvia’s jaw practically hit the floor. "Wait. You’re partners withhim? You’ve been avoiding your dance partner this wholetime, and it’s been him?" She clutched her chest like she’d been personally betrayed. "I cannot believe you’ve been working in close quarters withDrum Daddyand said nothing."

Ingrid choked so violently she saw the afterlife. "Drumwhat?! Sylvia, absolutely not. Erase that. Wipe it from history."

"What? That’s his nickname. Everyone calls him that."

"Everyone?!" Ingrid sputtered, horrified. "Who is everyone? I demand a list!"

Sylvia ignored her completely. "You do realize he’s the obsession of, like, half the school, right? He’s hot. Not to mentionveryflirty with you."

Her grin turned downright predatory.

"Is he?" She aimed for indifference but missed so hard she landed somewhere in delusional fantasyland.

"Now I know you’re full of shit. I’m pretty sure they had to move him to the shadow realm of the orchestra pit because he was too distracting to the general population."

"He’s bad news," Ingrid said. "I told you I caught him trying to sabotage Eden’s equipment at Battle of the Bands this summer."

Instead of reacting with appropriate concern, Sylvia fanned herself like a woman in a period drama about to faint onto a chaise lounge. "And he’s in a band? Oh, this just keeps getting better."

"You're missing the point! He’s trouble."

"I’d like to get into some trouble with him," Sylvia mused, waggling her eyebrows so aggressively they practically did the cha-cha.

"Sylvia!" Ingrid gasped. "I’m telling Jessica!"

"Go ahead, she’ll agree with me," Sylvia said, utterly unfazed. "I might not be interested sexually, but I can appreciate. And I am appreciating hard right now." She leaned back, arms crossed. "But back to the sabotage thing. Explain."

"I found him holding the cut cable of her amplifier, but when I went back to show Eden, it was mysteriously fixed."

"So… it sounds like he fixed it, not destroyed it?" Sylvia remarked, her dark skin pinching between her eyebrows in confusion.

"I don’t know," Ingrid admitted, chewing her lip. "Eden's amp was tampered with last year, and guess who won?"

Sylvia smirked. "Wild guess... it was the band that tall glass of bad decisions is in?"

"Exactly."

"Or, and stay with me here, you could just ask him. I know, wild concept."

Ingrid could just ask him. But that would be far too easy, and if there was one thing she excelled at, besides ballet and repressing emotions, it was making her own life unnecessarily difficult.

Because deep down, she wanted a reason to dislike him. Sheneededa reason. Because if she didn’t… well. That left her with something far more dangerous: the horrifying, nauseating, and frankly unacceptable possibility that she might actually be attracted to him.

Her love life had always been blissfully drama-free, by choice. She brushed off crushes like lint on a black sweater. A quick flick, a little roll of tape, and gone. Ballet was her focus. Romance was just a subplot in other people’s lives.

But ignoring this man? This problematic, infuriating, smugly talented man? It was getting harder by the day. And this ridiculous tug-of-war between loathing and lust was starting to feel less like a battle and more like foreplay, which was deeply,deeplyconcerning.

CHAPTER 8

BECK. MID SEPTEMBER, FIVE YEARS AGO

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