ZOE'S POV
The plane touched down at JFK, and I felt like I was waking up from a dream. Or maybe a nightmare. I couldn't tell which anymore.
The entire five-hour flight had been torture. Leo sat in the window seat beside me, but he might as well have been on another planet. He'd pulled out a book the moment we boarded and hadn't looked at me once.
Not once.
I kept replaying his words in my head. "What happened last night never happened." The way he'd said it, cold and final, like he was discussing the weather.
But it had happened. The kiss on the beach had been real. The way he'd held my face in his hands had been real. The way he'd whispered my name like it was something precious had been real.
Hadn't it?
As we stood up to deplane, the aisle was crowded with passengers grabbing their carry-on bags from the overhead compartments. I reached up for my backpack at the same time Leo reached for his briefcase, and our hands brushed against each other.
The contact was brief, just a second, but it sent electricity shooting up my arm. I turned to look at him, hoping to see some flicker of recognition in his eyes. Some sign that he felt it too.
But he didn't even glance at me. He just grabbed his bag and moved forward with the crowd like nothing had happened.
Like I was invisible.
My heart cracked a little more.
We walked through the airport in silence, the only sounds our footsteps and the rolling of our suitcase wheels on the linoleum. I kept waiting for him to say something, anything. Even if it was just about the competition or my performance or the weather.
But he said nothing.
When we reached the taxi stand outside, he finally spoke.
"I'm going to give you a week off from lessons," he said, his voice professional and distant.
"A week off? Why?"
"I have a conference to attend. Music education symposium in Chicago. I'll be gone until next Friday."
"Oh. Okay."
I wanted to ask if this was really about the conference or if he just needed time away from me. But the words stuck in my throat.
"Use the time to practice," he continued. "Work on the Chopin pieces we discussed. And the Bach inventions need more attention."
"Right. Of course."
A taxi pulled up to the curb, and the driver got out to help with luggage.
"This one's mine," Leo said, loading his suitcase into the trunk.
"Leo," I started, but he was already getting into the backseat.
"See you next week, Miss Washington," he said through the open door.
Miss Washington. Not Zoe. Not even her first name.
The taxi pulled away, and I stood there on the sidewalk watching it disappear into the New York traffic. The man who had kissed me on a beach in Los Angeles was gone, replaced by the cold, distant professor I'd first met months ago.
Maybe that's all he'd ever been.
My phone started ringing, and I fumbled for it in my purse, grateful for the distraction.
"Hello?"
"Zoe!" Kai's voice was sharp with panic. "What the hell did you do?"
"What? Kai, what are you talking about?"
"Check the news. Check it right now."
"What news? I just got off a plane—"
"Zoe, I'm serious. This is bad. This is really bad."
Something in his tone made my stomach drop. "Kai, you're scaring me. What happened?"
"Just check your phone. I'm sending you a link."
My phone buzzed with a text message from Kai. It was a link to some entertainment blog I'd never heard of.
"Kai, I don't understand—"
"Just open it, Zoe. Please."
With shaking fingers, I tapped on the link. The page loaded slowly, and at first I couldn't make sense of what I was seeing.
Then the headline came into focus: "SCANDALOUS FORBIDDEN ROMANCE: Music Professor Caught in Steamy Beach Kiss with Student."
Below the headline was a video. A grainy, clearly shot-from-a-distance video of two people on a beach at night.
Two people kissing.
Leo and me.
"Oh my God," I whispered.
"Zoe? Are you there?"
I couldn't speak. I just stared at the screen, watching myself wrap my arms around Leo's neck, watching him cup my face in his hands, watching us kiss like we were the only two people in the world.
Someone had been watching us. Someone had filmed us. Someone had sold the video to a gossip website.
"Zoe, talk to me," Kai said, his voice urgent.
"I can see it," I managed to say. "I can see the video."
"How did this happen? How did someone get this footage?"
"I don't know. We were alone. It was three in the morning. There was no one else on the beach."
"Well, obviously there was someone. Someone with a camera."
I scrolled down to read the article, my hands shaking so badly I could barely hold my phone.
"The video appears to show Professor Leonard Mercer of the prestigious Conservatory in an intimate embrace with an unidentified female student during a recent trip to Los Angeles..."
"They don't know it's me," I said suddenly. "The article says 'unidentified student.'"
"Yet," Kai said grimly. "They don't know it's you yet. But Zoe, you competed in LA yesterday. There are programs with your name in them. Photos of you performing. It's only a matter of time before someone connects the dots."
My legs felt weak. I sat down heavily on a bench outside the airport terminal.
I hung up and stared at my phone screen, at the video that was going to ruin both our lives. The kiss that had been the most beautiful moment of my life was now evidence of our destruction.