BLURB:

Ellise Vance measures her worth in perfect notes and impossible standards. As a scholarship violinist at Belrose Academy, the most elite conservatoire in New York City, she cannot afford to fail.

She cannot afford distractions. She absolutely cannot afford Julian Thorne.

Julian is all black everything. British bad boy. Piano prodigy with tattoos winding up his left arm like the music he carries everywhere and never talks about. He plays the piano like it costs him something every time, and it does. He just never lets anyone close enough to know why.

When Belrose Academy forces them into a duet for the most prestigious showcase of their careers, walking away stops being an option.

What follows is sharp and electric and entirely inevitable. A slow burn rivalry that was never really about the music.

Because Julian sees Ellise in a way nobody ever has.

And Ellise is beginning to understand that the arrogance was never arrogance at all.

It was armour.

She has already seen what is underneath it.

And she is running out of reasons to pretend she hasn't.