“Uh. No?”
“Good, because you’re about to learn the secret to this sauce. But I have to make you swear to keep it that way.”
“Cross my heart,” I said. “I’ll never tell another soul.”
“Oh, you can tell anyone you want,” Cooper said, turning away from me to reach into a high cupboard. The motion stretched his shirt across his back, showing off his broad shoulders. My stomach swooped again at the memory of him picking me up like I was a bag of feathers. “Except Benji. He’d never eat it again if he knew.”
Cooper turned back to me and held out a small jar with a red lid. Anchovies in olive oil.
I raised an eyebrow.
“Trust me,” Cooper said. “They melt into the sauce, you won’t know they’re even there. But if Benji ever found out there wasfishin it?” He raised his eyebrows as far as they’d go.
“He doesn’t like fish?”
Cooper laughed. “I know, right? We live so close to the sea you cansmellit, but no. He’ll eat more or less anything else, so I can’t complain, but even the smell of fish makes him gag. I figure he might grow out of it, but I don’t think it matters if he doesn’t.”
“It’ll matter if he ends up with a director who insists his only protein should be salmon for the six weeks leading up to a performance.”
Halfway through picking anchovies out of the jar and dropping them into the pan, Cooper turned to look at me, his brows once again communicating his feelings—knit together so they almost touched.
I shrugged. “To cut the few ounces of fat my off-season decadence of having almond milk lattes instead of black coffee caused.”
Cooper wrinkled his nose. The look on his face was so uncomprehending I was reminded again how completely different our worlds were. He was effectively a dance parent now, but he was coming at it from way on the outside.
Something warm bloomed under my ribs as I realized what that would mean for Benji. His career—if he chose to pursue this seriously—wouldn’t have to look anything like mine. Cooper wouldn’t send him to class with the flu, or push him too hard if he hurt himself.
“This hypothetical director is welcome to try,” Cooper said, his face set hard. I’d never seen an expression like that on it—he’d always been half-smiling, I realized. He had whatever the opposite of resting bitch face was. Now, there was a thunderstorm brewing between those expressive brows, and his eyes, which I’d thought were incapable of being anything but bright and inviting, had gone cold and hard as he glared at the pan in front of him.
Protective. Fiercely protective.
The warmth under my ribs unfurled a little further, curling around my heart. I had a vision of Cooper squaring up to Piotr, telling himno, we weren’t doing things his way. Defending Benji.
Defending me?
“You think he could go all the way?” Cooper asked, bringing me back to the kitchen. The look on his face had melted away, back to the kind, warm Cooper I’d gotten to know.
“Benji? Absolutely,” I said. “Do you want to know a secret about ballet? Since you shared your spaghetti sauce one?”
Cooper’s attention turned away from the stove entirely, focusing on me.
“I want any and all wisdom you have to offer,” he said.
“It’s nothing world shattering.” I held my hands up, not wanting to raise his expectations too high. “And it’s not magic. It might even be obvious to you.”
Cooper was still looking at me, stirring the sauce without paying attention to it.
“The secret is that the people who keep showing up, keep practicing, keep working at it are the ones who succeed. You can have natural advantages for sure,” I added. “You have to be a certain height, it helps if you’ve got a particular build. But I’ve seen dozens of physically ideal people flame out within six months of serious, career ballet. The ones who get there are the ones whowantit enough to suffer through what it takes. So… yeah, Benji could go all the way, if he wanted. He’s got the discipline already. If he decides to stick with it, I could be watching him on opening night with a major company in… a little over a decade, maybe.”
Cooper nodded. He was looking at me now as though he’d never seen me before. As though he was seeing something new.
I hadn’tthoughtI was baring my soul while I was talking, but the look on Cooper’s face made me feel like I accidentally had.
“So how old were—shit?—”
The sound of a pot of water boiling over interrupted him, and he whipped around to turn the heat down, cursing under his breath.
“In front of our guest?” he asked the pot, dumping a whole package of spaghetti into it and throwing in a handful of salt. “C’mon, man, don’t embarrass me like that.”
