3. Coen

3

Coen

12 Years Earlier

" G abriel Wash."

"What?" I turn my head to look at Reggie without unfolding from my half-assed seated pike. Unlike me, my friend is actually stretching in preparation for our morning class.

"The freshman you've been staring at for the last half hour? His name's Gabriel Wash. From California."

"Like a movie star." It slips out, and I duck my head, knowing she'll never let it pass.

"Oh my god, Coen. You're adorable since you discovered guys."

"Fuck off. I did not ‘discover' guys." I give her a sideways grin. "Turns out they were always there."

"Yeah, but you never blushed like this when you were only ogling girls." She pokes me in the ribs, and I twitch away, swatting at her hand .

"Maybe because they weren't from California ." I match her teasing tone, but my eyes drift back to the new boy. He doesn't really look like my imagination's blond, blue-eyed vision of a Hollywood star. He's small and slender, with dark eyes and darker ringlets brushing his delicate cheekbones. But in a plain white T-shirt and black joggers that hug the curve of his ass, he still manages to look exotic with one arm wrapped in the scarlet silks across the gym.

"You do know that not everyone from California is a movie star?" Reggie laughs. "It's a big state with a lot of other cities besides Los Angeles."

"So which one's he from, then?" I don't bother to hide my curiosity. Reggie and I have been inseparable since she bounced up to me on the first day of school and made me her official guide to all things Tilburg.

"Los Angeles." She manages to keep a straight face when I give her a reproachful look, but her brown eyes sparkle with amusement.

After two years, I still don't know how Reggie manages to know everyone and everything that's happening at NCC the minute it develops, but she always does. She claims it's because she's observant and a good internet stalker, but I give more credit to the brilliant brain hiding under her wild mop of sun-brown curls. I'm half-convinced she'll be running the school someday, even if she is an American. I didn't even know there was a state called Iowa before I met Reggie, but apparently, it turns out frenetic geniuses with perfect handstands and unruly mouths.

He is from LA, of course, and he laughs, quick and sharp, when Reggie tells him I compared him to a movie star. It delights him, and the sound makes my skin warm and skittish .

His eyes are a deep, cryptic blue, giving nothing away, but he angles the lithe line of his shoulders toward me when he talks, and my fingers itch to explore the pale shadows where his throat disappears into the collar of his T-shirt. Even though I tower over him, the minute I see him up close, I stop thinking of him as a boy ; he radiates all the languid confidence of a man in every studied movement.

Reggie carries the conversation, amusement plain in her arched brows and the twitching corners of her busy mouth. But Gabriel's eyes stay glued to me, flashing every time I look away and dropping to my mouth whenever I'm brave enough to open it.

For all my sideways longing and bold talk in the safety of Reggie's room, I've never actually flirted with another guy, and although I'm fairly certain this one is a dangerous place to start, I'm already falling into his orbit.

I am, of course, not the only one drawn to the darkling diva that is Gabriel Wash. He dominates the first-year class, holding court like a Delphic raven among songbirds. My gaze follows jealously when he's charming, and every wicked arc of his quick temper heats my captive blood until I'm brazen with need.

Reggie begins to lose patience with my obsession, less impressed with the quicksilver shift of Gabriel's moods.

"He's fascinating," I tell her, watching him bite his lower lip in concentration during an acro demonstration by a guest instructor.

"He's demanding," she replies, shaking her head.

"He's so confident," I sigh, staring at the way he tips his head back to laugh while lounging against the wall of the pub.

"He's arrogant," she says, turning back to the bar to call for another pint .

"He's beautiful," I groan, burying my face in one of her pillows while she scrolls Netflix on her laptop for something new to watch.

"He's selfish and fragile, Coen."

He's fragile.

This, we can agree on, and it's the contrast between the daring and the delicate that captivates me. He's so different from Reggie's uninhibited cheer and my own careful patience, and even as his attention baffles me, his layers beg me to unwrap them.

Despite her disapproval, Reggie is stoically supportive and loyally unsurprised when Gabriel actually returns my interest.

" Of course he likes you, Coen," she assures me. "You're incredible." She beams a smile at me, and she means it, so I let it slide when she can't help but add "and you worship him" under her breath. It's not like I could argue with her, anyway.

It's Gabriel who first calls me "Byrd," and though he tosses it out in his usual way, teasing me about my accent and my Dutch surname, I feel the thrill of being marked, claimed by him. Within weeks, the nickname spreads throughout the school, transforming me from steady, unremarkable Coen Baardwijk into something more—someone worthy of watching. Someone wanted .

And when he finally lets me inside him, a mess of tangled curls and satin limbs and greedy heat, something unfurls inside me that tastes like taking flight, and the whole world breaks open at my feet.

"He looks like a spider."

"It's a character , Reggie. It's sexy."

"A constipated spider."

"Oh my god, shut up." I squint at the stage where Gabriel has convinced the administration to let him practice his piece for the Circolo auditions next month. "He does not look constipated."

Reggie snorts, unimpressed by my loyal declaration. "When are you going to start working on your own act? I know Fleming's been bugging you about it." When I don't answer, she elbows me, hard enough to nudge a sliver of discomfort loose from its carefully constructed cage. "It's our senior year, Coen. You know if I was an aerialist and met the brief, I'd be gunning for the chance. A show like this could launch your career."

"I know." I keep my eyes on the twisting limbs and rippling silks above the stage. My tempestuous boyfriend will want to squeeze every nuance from my reaction later so I can soothe his manic self-doubts with praise. It would be so much easier if he could see himself the way I see him.

"Please tell me you're not passing it up because of him ."

Even if she didn't know me as well as she does, my guilty shift would've given me away. "I can't audition against him, Reg."

"That's stupid. He's here for two more years. He'll have plenty of other chances. "

"You don't get it."

For almost a year and a half, I've been basking in the reflected glory of being Gabriel Wash's boyfriend, and it's everything my starving heart craved. Reggie can roll her eyes and try to mask her impatience behind well-meaning advice, but if he's jealous and possessive of my attention while being careless with his own, it only keeps me chasing his high.

" You don't get it. If he loved you as much as you love him, he'd want you to go for it. And if he had any balls, he wouldn't be threatened by you going up against him anyway."

"He has plenty of balls," I mutter. "I've seen them, remember?"

"Ha-ha. I know you've heard the rumors."

"The ones Dolph has been spreading? He's just jealous."

"You don't think it's at all weird that the only other silks guy in Gabriel's class sprained his ankle right before RPP selection?"

"Students get hurt all the time. It doesn't mean anything."

"It means your boyfriend got to be the only sophomore with a solo act in their showcase."

"So he obviously pushed a kid down the stairs? This isn't one of your Netflix teen dramas. That shit doesn't happen in real life."

"What doesn't happen in real life?"

I jump to my feet with a wide-eyed warning for Reggie and take Gabriel in my arms, pressing a kiss to his neck and licking the salt from my lips. "That was the best one yet, babe."

He ducks his head, pushing me away.

"You weren't even watching."

Reggie studies her nails, pointedly ignoring his narrowed gaze.

"I was just asking Coen about his own audition piece. Coach Fleming has been hounding him. He's being annoyingly secretive, but I'm sure you've been helping him come up with ideas?" Her blithely feigned innocence fools exactly no one.

"You want to audition?" Gabriel rounds on me. "I thought you decided against it."

"I did." My fingers skate over his jaw before he bats my hand away, and I swallow the dull sting of rejection. Rebellion flickers in its wake. "But I am getting a lot of pressure to change my mind. Not just from Reggie."

I shift awkwardly in the silent standoff that follows, the futile hope that the two of them might someday stop tugging me apart beating against the mounting pressure in my ears. With his uncanny knack for knowing when I'm approaching critical, Gabriel breaks the tension with one of his electric smiles.

"I guess you should do it, then." His arms snake around my waist. "But let's talk about it later. Right now I need a shower. Wanna come help me get all nice and clean ?" His tone promises scandal and sin, and my ears heat as blood rushes to all the inconvenient places.

"I'll let Fleming know to add you to the list," Reggie calls as he drags me away, but I barely notice through the eager thrill hijacking my limbs. My brain is already drowning in images of wet, naked Gabriel.

I win the spot.

Gabriel is understandably furious, raging against my selfishness and accusing me of putting my fledgling career before our relationship. Only the withering disappointment in Reggie's eyes when I dare to broach the subject keeps me from turning the Circolo showrunners down.

The weeks leading up to the performance are a torment of casual cruelty and sullen withdrawal, chipping away at my precarious pride. My act becomes a liturgy of heartbreak, every move wrought to the cadence of lonely desperation that fuels my hours.

My rehearsals leave Reggie in tears, but the coaches and the audience eat it up, and my parents are beamingly proud on opening night. Even my teenage sister manages to attend without adding any heedless drama.

But the one person I needed to show up is conspicuously absent, and none of the accolades can protect me from the fallout.

I spend my last six months at school nursing a shattered heart and graduate with only the merciless final lesson etched beneath the pieces:

Holding on to love means giving up the spotlight for a brighter flame.