“Ah, but your biggest challenge is yet to come my dear. What happens after the curtain falls? Once you’re done dancing? You know,” she added, like the thought had onlyjustoccurred to her. “A rich husband could solve that pesky no-skills-to-fall-back-on issue.”
“Okay, that’s enough,” Nate said, his gaze turning icy as he glared across the table at his mother.
Holly’s knee brushed his under the table. Light, accidental, or maybe not. Nate felt it like a promise. Not asking for rescue orreassurance. Just the smallest signal that she was still here, still refusing to crumble.
“I’m sorry, was that wrong?” Helene gave a soft breathy laugh, like she couldn’t believe she had given offense. “Mila Sorenson’s daughter just married up, and is doing very well for herself. And Filippa Jans has practically made a career of it. She’s on husband number three!”
Nate looked at Holly, shocked and embarrassed that his mom would actually cross that line, but Holly hadn’t flinched. She didn’t even blink too hard. She just smiled, small and unfazed, and lifted her fork again like she’d been complimented instead of cut open.
“I don’t plan on fading with the curtain, Mrs. Eriksson,” she shrugged. “I’ve always preferred writing my own finales, but I do know one thing for sure. I won’t need to rely on a man for anything. Ever.” Her gaze darted to him for a second. “No offense,” she added under her breath, in a way that made him want to laugh at how brilliant she was.
Holly’s look switched then, Nate clocking just enough pity in her brown eyes to make it believable as she looked back at his mother. “But I’m so sorry you come from a world where your friends’ worth is determined by who their husbands are.”
He felt the tension in the air like a live electrical current, as Holly managed tonotglance in his father’s direction as though she hadn’t made the same connection there, too. But it seemed the LA firecracker wasn’t done yet.
“Didyougo to college, Mrs. Eriksson?” she asked politely, echoing one of Helene’s questions to her earlier.
Fuck, Nate’s brain exhaled. She’s a god damn machine of mass maternal destruction.
“I had private tutors,” Helene said indulgently with a soft smile, before sipping her wine again and turning to Sigrid to ask about her next semester.
Nate couldn’t help himself then. He found Holly’s hand under the table, wrapping it in his and resting them both in her lap. Her hand tightened in his like she’d been holding herself together with thread, and he was the first solid thing she’d touched all night.
And if his mom didn’t like it? Nate didn’t really give a fuck. He met her eyes across the table with a calm that felt dangerous. Helene’s expression flickered, just the faintest crack in her composure, as if she realized for the first time that this wasn’t some fling he’d grown bored with. This wasn’t an American scandal romance he’d forget when the cameras stopped rolling.
This was Nate, changed at the marrow, sitting at her table with a woman he’d bleed for. And he couldn’t stop thinking, with a fierce ache that nearly split him in two, that Holly didn’t deserve to be cut down for loving him. If anyone in this room should feel unworthy, it wasn’t her.
It was him.
And he was going to make damn sure she never felt that way again.
57
IT’S GIVING WUTHERING HEIGHTS ON PAINKILLERS
Holly
“I just needed air. And possibly a therapist.”
She needed air. Not because she was being dramatic, but because her brain needed a second to line its thoughts back up after that dinner. So she bailed, slipping out the back door on her crutches like a scandalized Brontë heroine who’d just been asked what her five-year plan was and whether it involved teaching children instead of wanting things that were bad for her reputation.
The Danish winter smacked her full in the face. Cold, clean, unforgiving. The kind of cold that didn’t flirt or warn you first, it just took what it wanted. It cut straight through the hoodie Nate had insisted she wear, biting at the strip of bare skin above her ankle wrap. Her eyes stung instantly. Not crying. Absolutelynot crying. Just… aggressively fresh Scandinavian air, heavy with a side of judgment and impeccable taste.
She breathed it in anyway, chest tight, heart louder than the quiet street. Copenhagen was beautiful in that restrained, icy way that made you feel emotionally underdressed. Everything was neat and composed, centuries old and still standing. Andsuddenly she felt how small she was here. How temporary. As if she was borrowing space in a city that’d already decided who belonged, and it wasn’t dancers with healing ankles or emotionally volatile Americans with boundary issues and a carry-on full of delusion.
Helene’s voice echoed in her head, all smiles and sharp edges.
Dancing. Such a… vivid career path…
Hard to maintain as one gets older…
What happens after the curtain falls?
Concern dressed up as superiority. Holly had smiled through it all, graceful and polite, like she always did when she was dealing with someone who just didn’t understand her world. But out here, in the cold, it hit her. What had actually happened in that formal dining room?She’d auditioned, and she hadn’t made the cut.
Apparently she’d failed Advanced Placement: Becoming Palatable to Scandinavian Matriarchs.
The worst part?She loved him.And not in the abstract, rom-com way she’d joked about with friends in the past or waved off with sarcasm. This was the first time she’d actually let the thought settle, heavy and undeniable deeply in her chest.Loved him.Past tense, present tense, all of it.
