Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 104185 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 521(@200wpm)___ 417(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104185 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 521(@200wpm)___ 417(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
She didn’t have time to consider if the request was weird. She snapped the pictures and passed the phone back quickly so she could return to her prep.
He showed me the resulting picture, and it stole my breath. He was all Kevlar, badge, and menacing gun, while I was in delicate lace, tulle, and glittering rhinestones.
What a pair we made.
All too soon, it was time to make our way to the stage. He ascended the steps in the dark, and I came up just behind him with my heart in my throat. We stood beside each other in the wings, nestled between endless layers and folds of thick, red fabric.
There was another marshal across the way who nodded an acknowledgment to Jason. The last few minutes before leaving, he’d been focused on whatever discussion was going on in his earpiece, and it continued now as I tried to prepare myself for the curtain’s rise.
The strings in the orchestra sounded haunting, the brass section loud and foreboding. Perhaps it had always sounded like that, and tonight I was hyperaware. The curtain went up on its cue, bathing the stage in front of us in glowing light, and the corps began its movement.
Once again, I rolled my ankles and tested the ribbons, my breath held tightly in my lungs.
He leaned in and whispered it, although no one in the audience would hear him over the orchestra. “How long until you go on?”
“Two minutes,” I said. My eyelids fell closed as I visualized my routine.
“Am I supposed to tell you to break a leg or something?”
“No.” He interrupted my concentration and I opened my eyes. He looked . . . weird. Nervous. Maybe even scared. My stomach bottomed out, seeing him like that.
“Before you go out there, you need to know,” he said, his breath uneven, “. . . that I might love you.”
My heart ground to a stop.
Then it lurched forward at twice the speed as I gazed at him with disbelief. He’d said it softer than a whisper, so surely I hadn’t heard him right.
“I love you,” he repeated, this time steady. Louder.
I’d hoped it was true, but hearing him confirm it shattered everything.
All I wanted to do was throw my arms around him, but . . . I couldn’t. The marshal on the other side of the stage was watching us. Watching me, really, and if Frey didn’t come, we’d have to keep up the guise that there was nothing between us.
“I love you, too.” My voice was strong and sure. “And I’ll be back in three and a half minutes.”
The corps filed past me. Martin and Albina’s pas de deux was coming to an end. My heart continued to hammer in my chest. No matter what happened, no one could take this moment from me.
Martin and Albina made their exit, floating past me and Jason, but it was the roar of the audience’s applause that brought me back to Earth. My gaze left his rich brown eyes and settled on center stage.
Like last time, the audience grew quiet as I glided across the floor and took my position under the heat of the stage lights. The solo flute was eerie and hypnotic. Had it always sounded like that? My body took control, and I surrendered to it completely, giving myself over to the work as the orchestra swelled.
I danced as if possessed.
The focus in my mind wasn’t on the choreography, or the concern for my life, it was on the man waiting in the wings for me. Each completed turn and leap brought my routine’s end closer. Closer to returning to him. Then, the final jeté, the one where last time Frey’s bullet had changed the course of my life.
But there was nothing tonight.
I finished the pirouette into fourth position, my legs burning from the activity, my heart still pounding. The nearly full audience broke out into thunderous applause, filling my ears so loudly it drowned out thought.
The dark line of worry between Jason’s eyebrows was no longer there, but concern still lingered in his expression when I returned to him.
“I have to hurry and change before the next ensemble number,” I said.
He led the way down the stairs, back behind the stage to the closet-like room I shared with Albina. He faced the wall as I changed into the green costume that had been left on a hook on the front of my dressing room door by the costuming department.
I stared at the hulking shoulders of his back.
“You can turn around,” I said. I’d crept impossibly close so when he did. We were just inches away, my hands tucking the tutu down flat, so it lifted high in the back.
“Kiss me,” I pleaded.
How many moments did we have left together?
His lips were soft, his tongue softer as it caressed mine, asking for more. He shifted the angle of my body against his so we were as close as we could get. Over the speaker system, I could hear the movement was in coda and knew I’d have to get going.