Instead, he stood up and held out his hand. When Wren put her hand in his, he easily lifted her to her feet.
“Are you done punishing yourself?” he calmly asked.
She wanted to bat his words away, to make a joke, but his eyes demanded honesty, and she found herself unable to lie to him.
“I could carry on a little longer,” she admitted. Because this is what she did: when her emotions became bigger than she could handle, she retreated into the music and danced her frustrations away. Most of the time it worked, but some days needed more time and energy expenditure.
He looked down at her ankle and shook his head. “I wouldn’t recommend testing that anymore tonight.”
She rotated her foot and felt the sharp pain, the twinge that said she’d done enough. Pulling a face, she lifted her shirt and wiped her sweaty forehead. Raking her hands through her hair, she pulled it into a ponytail, happy to have it off her hot neck.
She looked at Dane and took in his calm demeanor, his relaxed stance. “How did you know I was here?” she asked, placing her foot on her calf.
“I saw your friend leaving, then watched you head out like your ass was on fire. Followed you here,” he stated, his tone holding neither curiosity nor judgment. Just calm, steady, and unwavering. She waited for his question, certain it was coming, but Dane walked to the bench and picked up her shoes and phone. When he reached her again, he crouched and slipped her foot into her sandal, then gently eased the hurt one in, too, loosening the straps to accommodate the slight swelling. His simple, sweet gesture tightened her throat, and she blinked away the moisture in her eyes.
Quiet support, no harsh intrusion, just steady acceptance. Whenever Alex’d caught her trying to dance away her pain, he’d read her the riot act about trying such risky moves on her own, demanding to know what she’d do if she was hurt, if she knocked herself out, who would know? Dane didn’t comment on what could’ve happened…
She liked that he didn’t question her being alone in a studio late on a Saturday night, didn’t judge her need to fling her body around like a contestant onWorld of Dance.
He stood and looked around. “Are you done?”
Wren rolled her shoulders, felt the tightness within them, and nodded. She hadn’t pushed herself like that for a while now and knew she’d feel it in her muscles in the morning. Her stiffness wouldn’t last, but her body would remind her that she wasn’t eighteen anymore.
“Yeah, I’m done.”
Dane placed his hand on her back, lightly, and she walked to the door. He flipped off the lights and pulled the door shut behind him.
“So, did you manage to dance away some of your demons, Wren?”
She looked at him, taken aback by his perceptiveness. She nodded. “Some,” she replied, aiming for as much honesty as she could muster. “Not all.”
Instead of pushing for more, he nodded at her foot. “Can you walk on that? Or do you need a hand?”
Her foot was throbbing, but she’d danced and performed through worse. She could definitely make it back to Luna’s place. And all she wanted was a hot bath, a couple of aspirin, and to sleep for ten or twelve hours. “I can walk.”
Dane nodded. “Tell me if that changes,” he replied, taking her answer at face value. And then he slowly and silently walked her home.
* * *
Dane had gone to the studio to check on her, but the second he opened the door his words evaporated.
Wren was in motion.
The music throbbed through the walls, but what he felt wasn’t the bass—it washer.She wasn’t dancing for an audience; she was exorcising something. Every movement looked like it hurt. Sharp turns, hard landings, that reckless leap that made his heart stop when she caught herself just before she went down. And then that moment—the stumble, the way her ankle rolled and her face twisted, not in fear, but fury. She didn’t stop. He suspected she never did.
When the music finally died, the silence was soup-thick. She lay there, eyes closed, arms akimbo, hair loose and wild. He just waited until she looked at him, her brittle half-smile telling him not to ask.
So he didn’t.
But her explosion of movement, her working it out through dance, made him realize he’d been avoiding his own shit. His sleep quality had improved, marginally, but he’d quietly shoved any thoughts about his PTSD into a mental, unopened drawer. It was far easier to focus on Wren—on their heat and chemistry—than to work on his, God,issues.
Ignoring burnout, and the low, continuous hum of PTSD, was easier. Safer. Less work.
But watching Wren dance—watching her work through her frustration from her earlier conversation—hit him hard. Whatever she’d talked about with that guy, it had obviously been a tough conversation for her, and it made something inside him shift.
If she could face her stuff head-on, then maybe he had to stop pretending he was fine, too. Maybe it was time to follow her lead and dig into the mess in his head, the stuff he’d ignored for too long. He needed to find the cause of his burnout, put names to the ghosts visiting him at three in the morning—a couple of nights ago he’d woken up, drenched in sweat, thinking that there was a Civil War soldier standing at the end of his bed—and face the things he preferred to ignore.
Up until earlier, he thought he was fine with being alone, that solitude—interrupted by little bursts of companionship—meant peace. But he was starting to acknowledge that his quest for calm might actually be, as his psychologist said, burnout that went so deep it rendered him numb. Sure, maybe he was haunted by the devastation he’d witnessed and the damage it did to the human body, but the quiet of his current life unsettled him. Nobody needed him, and the silence was crushing.
