He tapped the screen a few times, and when he started to put it away, an even better idea struck me. I stepped forward and took the phone from him, holding it out to my friend.
“Albina, do you mind?”
He didn’t understand until I moved beside him. I held down the side of my tutu so I could get close, so I could press into him and use my body to demand he put his arm around me.
He hesitated only for a moment, perhaps deciding whether he should, and then the choice was made. His vest was scratchy, but his strong arm was solid and comforting as it draped around my shoulder, holding me tightly.
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 thecorpsbegan 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. Watchingme, 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.”
Thecorpsfiled past me. Martin and Albina’spas de deuxwas 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 endcloser. Closer to returning to him. Then, the finaljeté, 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.
