The regret in her voice pulled at Jack. “You could still teach, as long as you move often to keep people from noticing your lack of aging.”
“Sounds like a great life for Dylan,” she murmured.
“So they took you right off the street?” Jack asked when he sensed her melancholy.
“Yeah, but it was a quiet back road.”
“Were you in Canada?”
“No, New York. Looking back, I curse myself as an idiot for walking when we could have driven, but it was a nice night, and we only lived a mile from the school. I believed a walk would be refreshing, so, even though we’d have to walk back in the morning, I left my car at the school.”
“What about Dylan’s dad? Was he with you when they captured you?”
Charlie snorted with laughter. “He’s never been with us. I told him I was pregnant, and he was so eager to get away from me that his car left a giant cloud of smoke as he burned rubber down the street.”
Charlie would never forget the image of that beautiful, black Corvette spinning tires in the middle of her postcard-perfect neighborhood. It was probably the most exciting thing to happen since Mrs. Bowers cat got stuck in a tree. And there she’d been, standing like a fool in the middle of the street, unable to understand what happened.
During the five months they spent together, Chad endlessly professed his love for her. She’d known they would one day marry and he would rescue her from her parents. He’d never said anything about marriage, but his proclamations of love couldonlyend in marriage. No one could love someonesomuch and not want to share their lives with them.
She had been so excited to tell him she was pregnant that images of eloping to Niagara Falls danced like the Sugar Plum Fairy through her head. She would get her GED afterward and raise their baby while Chad taught ballet.
That was how they met; he’d been a judge at a ballet competition she attended. Before a knee injury ended his career, he danced for five years with a professional ballet company. Afterward, he opened his own studio; with his charisma and good looks, he became popular amongst the parents and students.
After first meeting Chad, her mother talked about transferring Charlie to his studio as he was rumored to bethebest in the area. Charlie refused to tell her mother she preferred to stay with Miss Dodd, who was the only person in her life to show any caring toward Charlie, even if their relationship didn’t extend beyond the dance studio.
Charlie didn’t express her preference for Miss Dodd because she knew if she did, she would find herself in Chad’s class the next day. She was hoping her silence would end the discussion.
In those early days, Chad was friendly, unfailingly polite, and incredibly handsome, but something about the way he looked at her disturbed her. She hadn’t been able to put her finger on it then; now, she knew her instincts were trying to warn her away, and she failed to listen.
But her silence hadn’t mattered as Chad approached her mother about recruiting Charlie, and her parents, never the ones to ask Charlie what she would like to do, pulled her away from Miss Dodd and placed her under Chad’s training. Convinced it was the next step toward Charlie dancing onstage with a professional ballet company, her parents werethrilledwith the arrangement. Instead, it was the step that led to their daughter being knocked up five months later.
Though she was initially wary of him, it only took Chad a couple of weeks to break through her defenses. With his sandy blond hair and eyes as blue as the sky, all the girls whispered and giggled and tripped over themselves around Chad. All the girls, except for her.
And for some reason, he focused on her overallthose other girls. She hadn’t understood why at the time, but she’d been so flattered and starved for attention that she lapped it up like a puppy receiving belly rubs.
As Charlie grew older, she realized some predators had an uncanny knack for picking out the weakest prey. Chad was one of those predators, and she’d been so unhappy, unloved, and lost that she was easy pickings.
At twenty-seven, Chad had no business pursuing a sixteen-year-old, too-sheltered girl who’d endured more mental abuse than anyone should ever experience. She was prime picking for someone like Chad, and he’d homed in on her like a cat on a Christmas tree.
Despite her instincts telling her to be careful, his good looks and dimpled grin seduced her. She blushed, murmured, and bumbled her way through his flirtations. When he told her parents he believed Charlie could make it far in ballet and suggested private lessons for her, her parents were ecstatic.
They would have keeled over if they’d known Charlie was deflowered in his office after their third private lesson together. She’d been such anidiotat sixteen. A stupid, confused, looking for love fromanyonewho gave her one second of attentionidiot!
When, three months later, she went to her lesson with her positive pregnancy test tucked proudly in her bag, she was practically floating on air. Not only would she finally escape the clutches of her parents, but she was already madly in love with the tiny human growing inside her. No matter what it took, she would ensure this baby had afarbetter life than hers.
She would do much better with her child than her parents did with her. She wouldneverallow them to go hungry or make them do something they hated. Chad would be an amazing dad, and she would be a good mom.
After class, she followed Chad into his office where they had sex before dressing. She’d been bursting at the seams to tell him, yet she found her tongue glued to the roof of her mouth once the time came. He constantly told her how much he loved her, yet an uneasy feeling churned in her belly.
She had to tell him soon. He was having dinner with them tonight, a weekly affair her mother insisted on while her father ate in silence. But then, her father did almost everything in silence.
In those earlier days, Charlie blamed her mom for everything, but they were her father’s laws her mother carried out. He required his house run a certain way, and he expected the perfect little dancer girl, but he wouldn’t do the dirty work necessary to see his rules carried out.
Over the years, Charlie’s hatred and resentment toward her parents lessened. However, she’d come to see that household for what it was—her father’s sick version of what he believed the happy, perfect family should be. Someone should have told him families were never perfect, and that laughter and love were what made them happy, not strict order.
She often wondered what her father’s childhood was like to make him such a man. Charlie knew the answer for her mother; raised in a strict, religious family, she was taught to never go against her husband and to be a dutiful wife. She excelled in her role.
So that night when Chad finished with her and they were standing by his desk, waiting to go to her house for dinner, she finally gathered the courage to dip her hand into her bag and pull out her pregnancy test.
