Chapter 23 #2
“He isn’t threatening, and I still have my pride. Sooner or later, he’ll give up.” She hoisted the tote over her shoulder.
“I can’t believe I was ever in love with him. Now he seems like a kid to me.”
“I hope he’s not a dangerous kid.”
Erin hugged her. “He’s not. Don’t worry.”
Dancy walked out to Erin’s car to see her off, then headed for the theater, hoping Erin wasn’t underestimating Shane’s possessiveness.
The few pieces of furniture she needed were stacked onstage in front of the plain gray backdrop. She moved them into position,
then turned her attention to the clothing rack with all her costumes. It, too, was part of the setting and would stay downstage,
where she could change in full view of the audience.
The costumes gave the stage a lively burst of color. Underneath the rack, she lined up the shoes she needed. On the nearby
table were her accessories, including hair clips, scarves, a feather fan, and a linen cap.
One more day until the audience arrived.
She ran her lines for the first time on an actual stage, but even though she had the script down cold, she kept forgetting
where she was and had to start again. She tried to calm herself. Tomorrow night was only a workshop. It meant nothing. Except
it meant everything. An audience would be judging her. Dancy Flynn—bar girl, beach girl, Bond girl—pretending to be a serious
actress.
Stop it! If she didn’t believe in herself, how could she expect anyone else to?
The two high school seniors Erin had enlisted arrived. Erin had promised Dancy that they were capable of running the simple
sound and lights the show would need. Leo, whose head was a little big for his lanky body, and Mia, who sported purple hair
and introduced herself as the head of the high school stage crew, were both familiar with the Shore Theater. They had worked
tech for the summer theater production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. They knew Dancy was some kind of actress, but once they discovered she’d never been in a Marvel movie or voiced a video
game, they lost interest.
Dancy gave each of the kids a marked copy of the script.
For the next few hours, she walked them through various scenes until she was certain that they’d learned their cues and were competent with the lighting and sound boards.
The performance would be at eight the next night.
Show up at seven, she told them. It was only a workshop, but she wanted everything done as professionally as possible.
After the kids left, Dancy continued wrestling with the script. She changed the blocking and second-guessed everything she’d
written until she grew so frustrated that she had to leave. She locked the stage door and stepped into the dark parking lot.
The show was flat. Uninteresting and uninspiring. She should never have come back here to do this.
“Dancy.”
Startled, she spun around and watched the last person she expected to see come toward her from the far edge of the parking
lot. Her car wasn’t the only one here. Clint’s Range Rover was parked in the shadows.
He stopped in front of her, not saying anything, gazing at her as if he were drinking her in. It had been nearly three months
since she’d seen him. His hair was longer, and the shadows from the floodlights made him look older. It was Friday night.
He shouldn’t be here. He should be in Chicago getting ready for Sunday’s game. Then she remembered that the Stars had played
last night, a televised Thursday night game that she hadn’t let herself watch. They weren’t playing this weekend.
She pressed her arms to her sides so she wasn’t tempted to touch him. “What do you want?”
He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “How are you?”
Seeing him again made her heart ache. “How did you know where I was?”
“I talked to Erin. She thought I knew about the show. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“No reason to.” She rubbed her arms against the night chill. She was drained. Hollow. She couldn’t do this. “I’ve had a long day. I’m tired.”
“I understand.” He jerked his head toward his car, where a furry face with tan eye patches and lopsided ears was peeking through
the window. “I went to the caboose looking for you.”
Her teeth were beginning to chatter. “You dognapped Watch again?”
“He was lonely.” He pulled off his jacket and draped it across her shoulders. The jacket, warm from his body heat, smelled
like him, and she wanted to cocoon herself in it. “We can talk at the house,” he said. “Or in the caboose if you still have
your hang-up.”
“I need to focus on the show, not on any lingering drama between us.”
“No drama.”
She didn’t believe that.
“Please, Dance,” he said. “The house or the caboose?”
He wasn’t going to let this go, and prolonging it would only unravel her even more. “The house then.” She couldn’t risk being
confined in the caboose with him where her bed was only a few steps away.
He stayed behind her as she drove home. She could see Watch perched on the seat beside him. As she reached his house, her
phone pinged with a text from Erin: I’m sorry! I thought he already knew you were doing the show.
Dancy texted her back: It’s fine. This wasn’t Erin’s fault. Dancy knew how persistent Clint could be.
She opened her car door and, still enfolded in his warm jacket, reluctantly made her way to the house she’d fled three months earlier. She received an enthusiastic greeting from Watch at the door. Clint stood in the great room, silhouetted against the windows as he gazed out at the night lake.
When she’d last been here, the house had smelled like citrus, a summer storm, and sunblock. Now it had that closed-up smell
of a home that had been unoccupied for too long. As she passed the staircase, she remembered the way he’d carried her up to
his bedroom. Her chest tightened painfully. “I don’t know why you’re here,” she said. “It makes everything more difficult.”
“I’m sorry for what I said to you in LA.”
“You should be. I would never accuse you of doing anything so underhanded.”
“That’s because you think straighter than I do. I’ve been around twenty-year-olds so long that I’ve forgotten how to communicate
with an actual grown woman. And one of the most honorable people I know.”
The sharpest edges of her lingering anger began to fade, and she didn’t like it. “That’s on you.”
As he turned to her, he looked like someone who’d lost his best friend. “Dance, we can’t let things end like this between
us. I trust you more than I trust anyone. I really am sorry. You’re not Ashley, and I should have gotten over her lies a long
time ago instead of carrying around all this distrust.”
Ashley Hart. The gold digger who’d taken him for a ride and given him issues with women. But that didn’t excuse him.
“We need to figure things out between us,” he said.
“We already have.”
Dancy was regarding him as coldly as his fourth-grade teacher when he’d brought Pokémon cards to school after she’d expressly
forbidden it. Clint slumped onto the couch. He’d waited too long. He should have set things straight with her months ago.
Splaying his legs, he rested his elbows on his thighs and gazed down at the rug. Words tumbled out of his mouth that he had no intention of saying. “The baby thing . . . Maybe we should talk about it.”
“Talk about what?”
He shot up from the couch. “I don’t know, okay? It’s been a confusing time. A lot has happened.”
She buried her hands in the pockets of his jacket and cocked her head. He wanted to give her something. Something that would
end this coldness between them and make her smile. Make them both feel good again. He thrust his hands through his hair. “If
you . . . if you want a baby so bad . . . we can . . . I don’t know. Maybe we can figure something out.”
“What are you saying?”
“I don’t know what I’m saying!” he exclaimed. “I’m just talking.”
“Well, stop talking,” she said fiercely. “Just stop!”
His words had been impulsive, but now he dug in. “Why shouldn’t we? You want a baby. We could— We could do this together.”
“Have you lost your mind?” She looked appalled instead of happy. “First a pity key and now a pity baby?”
“Forget about the pity key! And I don’t see why not.” Actually, he saw lots of reasons why not.
Her horror switched to concern. “Clint, what’s wrong? This isn’t like you.”
“Nothing’s wrong. Why would you think something’s wrong?”
“Have you had anything to eat?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. This morning. I don’t know. I’m fine.”
She headed for his kitchen. By the time he got there, her head was in his freezer. She pulled out a glass container, took off the lid, and stuck it in the microwave. “Sit down.”
He did what she said. Sat at the counter. He was tired, his shoulder hurt, his knee was sore, and his right ankle ached. Like
any pro player, his body wouldn’t be one hundred percent again until the season was over, but this was a different kind of
tired. A hopeless kind.
She retrieved a beer from the refrigerator, popped the cap, and set it in front of him. He took a long swig. She gave Watch
an ice cube, then rummaged through the cupboard until she found an unopened bag of tortilla chips. She poured some in a bowl.
The microwave dinged. She poked at what was still frozen inside, closed the door, and reset the timer.
He started to say something, but she stopped him. “Not until you’ve had something to eat.”
Everything was turned upside down. He was the one who fed her. It unsettled him to see how comfortable she looked in his kitchen.
Comfortable with everything except him.
Before long, he had a bowl of his homemade chili in front of him. She ladled a little into a smaller bowl for herself but
stayed where she was, standing at the counter dividing them. He crumbled some tortilla chips on top of his chili and began
to eat.
Still standing, she took a few bites of chili, the bowl in her hand. “Here’s what I think,” she finally said. “You’re not