Rosie stood at the front of the small rehearsal room like she owned the air itself.
The music department at Westbridge Conservatory was never crowded at this hour.
External adult learners came in after work, after family dinners, after the regular degree students had already packed up their instruments and gone home.
Tonight there were only five of them: two older women clutching folders of sight-reading exercises, a quiet man in his fifties who never spoke unless spoken to, Majid, and Milan.
“Milan.”
She said his name the way a conductor snaps a baton. Loud enough that the two women looked up from their scores and Majid’s eyebrows climbed toward his hairline.
Milan felt heat crawl up the back of his neck. He hated the way it sounded in this room.
He hated that she used the same
