The sound of running water fills the room. Maggie comes back out. “Give it a few minutes to fill. I’ll grab clean clothes and fresh bandages for her ankle.”
Once she’s gone, I help Emma out of her jacket, then her shirt, leaving her in just her bra and pants. There’s dirt streaked across her arms and chest, leaves tangled in her hair.
“I’m a mess,” Emma says quietly.
“You’re my mess.” I remove her boot and carefully work her yoga pants off. “And I kind of like cleaning you up.”
Once I get her pants free, I use even more care to remove the compression sock from her ankle. Her foot and ankle are already swelling, angry-red lines tracking up from under the stretch bandage. I press my palm against her skin, feeling the heat underneath. It’s not as bad as I thought, but I don’t like the way her toes already look tight and puffy.
“Sorry for making this your problem,” she mutters, but she’s so out of it now, it’s almost under her breath.
“Not a problem. Said I’d look out for you, didn’t I?” I glance up. “If you want privacy, just say so. Otherwise, I’m staying in the room.”
She gives a weak half-laugh. “I think I lost my modesty somewhere back at the tree.”
“Yeah, you definitely lost something,” I tease, and she laughs again, soft but not so broken now.
The bath is full. I test the water, then help her in, cradling her under the arms while she all-but-collapses into the water. She shivers a little, then sighs and sinks back against the rim of the tub. The change is immediate—her breathing slows, the tension in her shoulders draining out as fast as the dirt melting from her skin.
“Want me to leave, or stay?” I ask, perching on the closed toilet lid.
She looks at me, hair damp and stuck to her forehead, the bathwater already tinted gray. “Stay.”
I stay.
She closes her eyes, and for a long minute the only sound is the water and the distant noise of club life downstairs. After a while, she speaks, eyes still shut. “You ever think about running away?”
“All the time.”
She cracks one eye open at me. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. Not for good. But sometimes I want to get on my bike, pick a direction, just . . . ride. No plan, no route, no club to answer to. Just keep moving until the world feels big and wide again.”
She nods, sinking lower in the bath so only her eyes and nose peek over the edge. “I used to do that in my head. When rehearsal got bad, or I messed up in front of a director, I’d picture myself just running down the street and never looking back. Hitchhiking to the beach, or maybe the desert. Someplace nobody could find me. But then I’d get a callback, or I’d get a better part, and it never seemed so important.”
I run a hand through my hair, pick at a chip in my thumbnail. “Would it help to do it for real? Take off for a day or two?”
She shakes her head, a little smile crinkling at the wet corners of her mouth. “No. I need to stop running away from this place. Away from who I am in my marrow.”
“Who are you in your marrow?” I ask, even though I already know the answer.
She closes her eyes again, and for a moment I think maybe she’ll drift off in the tub, but then she takes a breath and says, “I think I’m the girl who comes home. Even if I don’t want to. Even if I don’t think I belong here.” Her eyes flick open, searching my face. “Even if it kills me to admit it.”
“Stoneheart’s not such a bad place, Em.”
“That’s not what I mean.” She lets a hand drift in the water, surface tension breaking around her fingers. “I mean . . . every time I come back, it’s a confrontation. And I’m not talking about between me and my dad. I’m talking about a confrontation between who I want to be and who I am.”
She looks at me, but I don’t say anything. I want her to keep going, to get it all out.
“When I was little, I always wanted impossible things. Swan Lake, first chair. Total freedom. But when I achieved all of that, even at the height of my career, it didn’t feel as right as I thought it would. Like . . . it wasn’t about the thing. It was about the wanting of it, and once I had it, there was just this emptiness. Like I’d sneaked into a stranger’s house, and even though I was wearing the right costume, I still didn’t belong.” She lets her head roll back, slick hair fanning out on the edge of the tub. “I’ve spent my life trying to run from Stoneheart, from the club, from everything. Thought maybe if I left it all behind, I could want something that fit me better. But even now, after everything that’s happened, after New York, after the warehouse—I still only feel like myself when I’m here. When I’m with you.”
I can’t help it—I reach over and run my thumb along her jaw, smoothing away the water droplets on her cheek. “Then maybe that’s what you were always supposed to want.”
“Maybe.” Her voice is soft, almost a whisper. “But no one ever says that. They say you’re supposed to chase your dreams, not let them chase you back home.”
“Says who? Fuck ‘em,” I say, a little too loud, and she laughs for real this time. “Maybe coming back here is the dream. Maybe that’s why nobody feels happy when they run away, because they’re running from themselves.”
“You know what makes me really sad?” She doesn’t even wait for me to answer. “It’s not that I won’t dance again, or that I can’t go back to New York and pretend like I never lived another life. It’s that I spent all those years—years—trying to want something else, when all I wanted was this. Us.” She flicks the water, sending tiny droplets onto the tile. “I think if I’d just stayed, if I’d been brave enough, we could have had all this time together.Instead of me halfway across the country pretending I didn’t leave half my heart here.”
