Luka bumps my shoulder. “You good?”
“No.”
“Good,” he says. “You’ll need that.”
The lights lower, the theater goes still, and then the music starts.
I’ve never seen her perform before. Not in person. Not like this.
She steps into the spotlight as if she’s made of light herself. Long limbs, a line so perfect I physically feel my breath leave me.
She doesn’t look like the woman who told me she didn’t love me in a hallway.
She looks like the woman who whispered “take me to bed, Scottie,”with her mouth against mine.
She looks like the woman I married. The only woman I’ve ever been in love with. The woman who’s breaking right in front of me and too far away to touch.
“Holy shit,” Luka whispers beside me, leaning forward. “I’ve never seen her dance like this.”
I tear my eyes away just long enough to look at him.
He shakes his head. “Look at her face. She’s not performing a role. She’s bleeding on the stage.”
And she is. Every move is raw. She’s not just dancing; she’s feeling it all.
She looks like she’s fighting for something… or mourning something, and the audience has no idea they’re watching her heart break in real time.
I grip the bouquet so hard that some of the stems snap.
Her jump sequence nearly takes me out. The emotion in it is everything she hasn’t let me see since the night she walked out.
She can hide heartbreak from a locker-room hallway and a lawyer’s conference room, but she can’t hide it here. Not tonight and not from me.
When the final curtain lowers, the applause is so loud it rattles the balcony. People are already on their feet, shouting “bravo!”and “encore!”and Luka nudges me again.
“Showtime,” he says.
We push through the crowd, down the stairs, through the lobby, toward the private elevator to the boxes.
Her grandmother steps out before we reach it, two guards flanking her.
She turns her gaze to me, assessing, measuring.
“It’s about time,” she says.
I blink. “What?”
“You came to fight.” She lifts her chin. “I wondered when you would.”
I step closer. “What did you do to her?”
“Nothing,” she says in a tone that makes it clear she’s lying by omission. “Everything she did, she did for you.”
My stomach drops. “Tell me.”
She sighs, as if she’s tired of repeating herself. “I tested you first. With money.”
“The bribe,” I mutter.
