BETWEEN FIRE🔥🔥AND FROST❄️❄️

Chapter Two: Broken Strings

Leo’s POV

She was back.

Leo had told himself it didn’t matter. He’d told himself a hundred times that Isla Renner returning to Ardent wouldn’t change anything. That he was over it. Over her.

But the moment he saw her on the train platform, snow clinging to her coat like frostbite, everything unraveled. Just like the last time—just like every time—she entered the room and the air forgot how to breathe.

He watched her slip past him in the corridor with that guarded grace. Cold. Controlled. Beautiful in the way avalanches were beautiful—silent until they crushed you.

She hadn’t even looked back.

---

He dragged the bow across his violin like he meant to start a fire. The practice room shuddered with sound—sharp, fast, furious.

It wasn’t working.

He flung the bow aside, paced the room. Her voice echoed in his head: I didn’t think you’d care.

God, if only she knew.

He’d cared too much. Enough to kiss her when they shouldn’t. Enough to let her walk away when she needed to. Enough to never speak of it again, even when it hollowed him out like rot.

Leo ran a hand through his hair and sat on the windowsill, the Alps rising jagged in the distance. His fingers ached. His chest ached more.

He wasn’t angry she came back.

He was angry she’d left in the first place—and taken pieces of him he hadn’t realized he’d given.

---

Rehearsal was a mess.

Isla sat straight-backed at the piano, her expression unreadable. Mira tuned her cello in silence, eyes never meeting his. Leo stood between them, violin steady, heart anything but.

“Let’s start from the second movement,” Isla said quietly.

He nodded.

They began.

At first, it worked—technical, sharp, clean. But the music lacked breath. Mira’s cello was tender, Isla’s piano precise. And Leo? He didn’t know what he was playing for anymore. The piece swelled, but there was no soul. Just tension.

Halfway through, Mira stopped.

“This isn’t working.”

Leo dropped his hands. “Because we’re not playing together. We’re just… surviving.”

Isla looked at him, eyes cool. “And whose fault is that?”

Mira stood. “You two need to work out whatever this is before we can perform like a trio.”

She left, closing the door behind her a little too hard.

Leo turned to Isla. “She’s right, you know.”

Isla folded her arms. “About what? That you can’t separate your emotions from your bow?”

He stepped closer. “About us. About what we never said.”

Her jaw tightened. “There is no ‘us.’ There was a moment. You ruined it.”

He laughed bitterly. “Right. I ruined it. Because I kissed you.”

“You kissed me,” she said softly, “while I was still trying to figure out what I felt for someone else.”

Mira.

She didn’t have to say it. He knew.

Leo stepped back. The space between them stretched again, full of things left unspoken.

“I loved you,” he said finally, voice low.

Isla flinched.

“I still do,” he added, almost like a curse.

She didn’t answer. Just turned to the piano and played a single note.

It rang like regret.