The floor tilts beneath Petra’s feet, the world rearranging itself around this new, impossible reality. “What does this mean for the performance?”
Kate lets the silence marinate in cruelty before serving the main course. “Well, since the male dancers are out, the company made some revisions to Act II.”
“What revisions?” asks Petra, panic escalating in her voice.
“The ‘Pas de Deux’? Gone,” declares Kate.
Petra’s hands curl into tight fists. Her head starts pounding.
Kate shrugs, indifferent. “And obviously, if the Cavalier solo is cut, the Sugar Plum solo had to go, too.”
“This can’t be true,” Petra says, incredulous.
“I’m afraid it is. I’m sure you’ll still be wonderful though in the other little bits,” says Kate. “And you’ll still come out for the finale I’d assume.”
“I don’t understand. How do you know this is for certain?”
“I heard Volkov even reached out to the American Ballet Theater just now to see if they had available dancers.” Kate delivers this morsel of hope specifically to snatch it away.
Petra clings to the possibility like a life raft in a tsunami. “And?”
Kate’s smile spreads. “They’re on tour in California.”
Kate then collects her water bottle and walks to the exit. At the door, she pauses, glancing back at Petra. “Really, what a pity to spoil your debut.”
She exits, leaving Petra frozen in the middle of the gym, surrounded by exercise equipment that suddenly looks like the skeleton of her career. Her principal debut—the night she’s been building toward her entire life—has vanished.
The costume waiting in her dressing room, purposeless now. The letters from little girls wanting pointe shoes from the Sugar Plum Fairy who won’t dance tonight.
Kate’s footsteps echo down the hallway, each one a small celebration of destruction accomplished with nothing but cruel words and crueler timing.
Petra stands completely still for ten seconds that turn into a minute. Then her legs give out, and she drops to the floor, her body folding in on itself as the first sob breaks free. She presses her palms against the cold gym floor, trying to find something solid in a world that just collapsed.
Her father had lived to see her become a soloist, but not this. Not principal. She’d told herself that tonight would be for him, that somehow he’d know. Now there was nothing to know. Nothing to see. She’d been erased from her own debut, and the most devastating part was that she still had to show up. Still had to put on the costume and smile in the finale as if her debut hadn’t just been stolen by rotten fish.
Chapter Forty-Two
The entire city’s nervous system seems hardwired into Madison Square Garden tonight, twenty thousand hearts preparing to beat in sync or shatter in unison. This is New York’s moment. Mine too, theoretically. If I deliver tonight—if I become the clutch player this city loves to mythologize—I will cement myself as the player who shows up when the lights burn brightest. Not just another guy who had potential once, but someone who comes through when the stakes are highest.
A win tonight followed by a deep playoff run, and suddenly my next contract negotiation shifts from “please give me another chance” to “here’s what I’m worth—pay up.”
The Garden’s back corridors welcome me like they did before injuries derailed my ascent. Tony, the security guard who’s been at the players’ tunnel for over two decades, offers his blessing: “Good luck tonight, Liam. May the good Lord give you the strength to beat the piss out of the Spartans.”
Concession workers, ushers, the invisible army that makes this place run, they all offer nods, fist bumps, quiet prayers to the hockey gods on my behalf. I’ve played hundreds of games in this building, but tonight feels different. Because it is.
Near the players-only area, Bunny Newman materializes. This part of the arena has never seen someone dressed like this as she dons a camelhair coat the color of butterscotch, its wide collar trimmed with mink.
“Liam.” She steps into my path like someone who’s never been denied access to anything.
“Mrs. Newman.”
“How are you feeling tonight?”
Bunny Newman never asks questions she doesn’t already know the answer to.
“Feeling ready,” I keep my voice neutral.
Her smile widens, revealing something calculated. “I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye. But the past is past, isn’t it?”
