You'd been here for hours. The music had stopped playing twenty minutes ago, but you hadn't moved from your place on the floor, your back pressed against the mirrored wall, legs stretched out in front of you. Your reflection stared back, hollow-eyed and blurred at the edges.

The building was quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that made you notice the way your heart was still pounding from the last routine, the way your throat was raw from singing the same line over and over until it meant nothing.

He stopped a few feet away from you, not sitting, just standing there. Looking down at you with that expression—the one he got when he was trying to figure out what was wrong before he asked about it.

Outside the window, the sky was starting to lighten, a deep navy bleeding into gray. Another day. Another schedule starting in a few hours.