This was the one I’d written as I got to know Connor, the one that described him, or at least the Connor I knew at the time: angry and stubborn, intimidating…and deeply hot. As he played the harmonies with me, it hit me how much he’d changed. Not just the obvious stuff—rehearsing instead of goofing off, writing essays instead of getting drunk. But opening up to me, sharing how scared he was inside, how he doubted his own skill. The Connor I’d unwittingly described in the music, all swagger and attitude, had only ever existed as a shell—but it was the shell that everyone had seen the whole time he’d been at Fenbrook. Every girl he’d slept with, every guy he’d got drunk with…they’d never known the real Connor. Only I did.
We flowed smoothly into the fourth section, the one Connor had written—the one I’d eventually realized was about me. Just as I had, he’d based it on the person he thought he knew. Only he’d got a lot closer than I had, capturing not just my nerves and my shyness but what lay underneath…he’d portrayed it with a slow rhythm that built and built—the mousy librarian with powerful, hidden passions—and I flushed at the idea that he’d thought of me like that, even back then.
We stopped again, a brief pause before the final pair. When I glanced at the judges, Harman had sat back in his chair and Geisler was tapping his pencil on his teeth. I had no idea whether that was good or bad.
This was it, then. A handful of minutes that would decide our future. I looked down at the front row to see Natasha give me a reassuring nod.
I took a deep breath and touched my bow to my strings. There was absolute silence.
It was the section I’d composed after we’d first had sex, the one that was about sex, and I knew that I should be embarrassed to be sharing it with everyone…to be sharing us. The old Karen would have been, but sitting there on stage with Connor just a few feet from me, our music blending together…all I felt was proud. Do they know? I wondered, do they know I can feel his hands on me, every time I play this part? Do they know this is him licking my breasts? That this, right here, is where he thrust into me for the very first time? We’d played it so many times that we didn’t need to look at the music. We could gaze into each other’s eyes as my hand moved, as his fingers worked the strings. Never let this end, I prayed. Even if we don’t graduate, I want to always be able to play like this with him.
We moved straight into the final section, the one he’d written. His version of sex, written up on the roof after our second time. Urgent and hard and building and building, those blue-gray eyes sparkling as he stared at me, coaxing me, dragging me with him, higher and higher until our rhythms locked together perfectly, the cello and the guitar becoming one, until there was no melody and no harmony, until we were two equals, playing together.
Forever.
The final flurry of notes came in a rush, the last few bars leaving me breathless. In the seconds of silence that followed, I could hear my own heartbeat very loudly, and then I couldn’t hear anything at all. I’d gone deaf.
I looked across at the judges and Harman was smiling. And then he stood up. Why was he standing up?
I looked around at the audience, and they were all rising to their feet, too. What the—
And then my brain got around to processing the sound, and I realized I hadn’t gone deaf. They were applauding.
A hand clasped mine, our fingers entwining, and Connor drew me to my feet. The applause was like a physical force, pressing in around us as my panic attacks used to. Only this felt nothing but good, like a warm wave you could bathe in. We bowed, and the applause got louder. And then, halfway back on the left-hand side, someone stepped out of their aisle seat so that I could see him better, his hands pounding together so hard they must have hurt.
My father.
Harman spoke briefly to the other judges and they all nodded. Then he said something to us and Connor pulled me close.
“What?” I said stupidly.
Harman grinned. “I said that’s an A for both of you. Well done.”
In my mind, the scales that represented my future suddenly lurched from one side to the other as Harman heaved a breezeblock-sized weight onto the positive side. I’d just graduated. I’d just graduated well.
The applause finally started to die away. Connor squeezed my hand and I smiled at him, blinking back tears. And then, after a second, I squeezed back, harder.
It wasn’t over. We’d saved me, but now we needed to save him.
Chapter 35
There was only one other group crazy enough to enter the improvisation challenge—a harpist named Lucita, who was as placid and spiritual as her instrument suggested, and her partner on the violin, a very serious guy named Cho. Both of them already had more than enough credit to graduate, and I suspected the challenge meant different things to them. Pure fun, for Lucita, and a chance to impress his parents, for Cho. From the few times I’d spoken to him, I got the impression that his folks were even pushier than my father.