Claiming Genevieve

6. Genevieve

6

GENEVIEVE

I don’t even have time to sit back down at my vanity table before the door swings open again. “I told you, Rowan—” I bite out as I spin around… and the words die on my tongue as I see Chris step into the room.

His expression, already irritated, hardens in an instant. “I wondered,” he says silkily as the door swings shut behind him, “if he’d been in here when I passed him walking down the hall. But I thought surely we were past that. That our last argument was enough to put a stop to whatever is going on between the two of you.”

I press my hand to my forehead, exhaustion washing over me as I glance up at the clock. I really don’t have time for this. “There’s nothing going on, Chris.”

His gaze flicks from mine to the garbage can next to my vanity table, and his eyes narrow. “Flowers are nothing ?”

“I threw them away, as you can see,” I say evenly. “So yes, nothing .”

“But enough for him to bring you flowers.”

“For fuck’s sake!” My voice rises, and I see his gaze darken angrily. “ Enough , Chris. Yes, he took an interest in me at the party. He took an interest in the ballet , and in possibly becoming a patron, a word that I’m heartily sick of saying and hearing for the past week, between him, Vincent, and you. And I told him no. I told him I wasn’t interested. And just now, I threw the fucking flowers away , and told him to leave. Is that enough for you?”

Chris strides towards me, quickly enough that I back up, bumping into my vanity table as I do. He sneers down at me, his eyes narrowed in that same glare.

“Oh, don’t act like I’m going to hurt you, Genevieve,” he snaps sarcastically. “Like I’ve ever raised a hand to you. So fucking dramatic.” He reaches up, his fingers curling around my chin, and I try not to look afraid. Not to let him see that right now, I’m not sure of anything, any longer.

“I’ve given you everything you’ve asked for,” he says coolly. “I’ve pampered you and cared for you. I’ve gotten you access to exclusive clubs, bought you a designer wardrobe, given you diamonds and expensive jewelry. I support you in every way you need. So tell me the truth, Genevieve. Has he touched you?”

I breathe out, slowly, trying to calm the frenetic pace of my heart. “We danced, once,” I say softly. “At the party. Like I would have with anyone else who wanted to dance. That’s all , Chris. This has gotten out of hand.”

His fingers tighten on my chin, ever so slightly. “I’m going to choose to believe you,” he murmurs. “But if I find out you’ve lied?—”

I look up at him, anger forming a hard, hot ball behind my ribs. “And what about you?” I ask softly. “Tell me the truth, Chris. Did you fuck the woman whose perfume was on your shirt?”

It’s the wrong thing to say. He lets go of me so abruptly that it’s almost a shove, the vanity table rocking behind me. I know, in that moment, that I shouldn’t go home to him tonight. I should get a hotel, or stay with Evelyn or Dahlia, or one of my other friends. Something has changed in Chris, and I can hear the warning alarms going off in the back of my head, telling me that this has tipped over into dangerous territory.

But, at the same time, a small voice whispers in the back of my head, even as he’s standing there glaring at me, that maybe I am being dramatic. That not going home tonight will cause more trouble than it’s worth; that surely it’s just easier to put up with all of this just a little longer, and break up with him in a few days, when I’ve had time to rest and get my head straight. I won’t be home until late tonight anyway, after the performance and the afterparty?—

My stomach tightens. The afterparty . I don’t want him there at all now, but I don’t think I’m going to get a choice. As a patron of the ballet, Chris is expected to be there, and the way he’s behaving right now, I doubt he’s going to let me out of his sight at a party where Rowan might make an appearance.

Please, God, don’t let that happen. The thought of them both at the party, ruining the night because of Rowan’s persistence and Chris’s unhinged jealousy, makes me feel nauseated. That anger still roils behind my ribs, too, because this is my night. This is what I work for, for months at a time. I want to enjoy it, and instead of being excited, instead of anticipating my performance and the celebration after, I’m fighting a riot of emotions as I try to pacify two different men.

“I already answered that question, Genevieve,” he says icily. “I don’t want to hear about it again.”

It’s not the firm denial that I wanted, not his assurance that he’d never cheat on me, especially not when he’s so violently demanding that I assure him that I haven’t strayed so much as a toe out of line. But I can see from the look on his face that pushing him would be the wrong choice.

And I don’t have time .

I look up at the clock again. I’m supposed to be going out to lace up my pointe shoes right now, getting ready behind the curtain with the other dancers. I should be one of the first ones to arrive backstage. I’m the prima , the one who sets an example for others, who all of the other dancers look up to and want to emulate.

And here I am, still in my dressing room, arguing with my boyfriend.

“I need to go,” I say as firmly and calmly as I can. “I can’t be late, Chris. I have a performance to get to.”

He holds my gaze, and for a moment, I think he’s not going to back down, that there’s something else he wants from me. But he finally takes a step back, his expression clearing as if nothing ever happened between us.

“I’ll be out in the audience,” he says finally, his voice cool and calm. And then, a smile spreads across his face. “Break a leg, Genevieve.”

A chill runs down my spine. It’s a common enough sentiment. A normal thing to say, on its face. And that small voice whispers once again that I’m overreacting, even as I feel my stomach cramp with an uneasy foreboding as Chris stalks out of my dressing room.

I sink down onto my chair again, trying to calm my racing heart and trembling fingers. I smooth my hair back, focusing on making sure my bun is perfect, my makeup flawless, that everything about my appearance and my costume is exactly as it should be. I need to put both Rowan and Chris out of my head. Starting now, until the performance is over, there should be nothing else on my mind.

I have to focus .

Taking a slow breath, I try to meditate for a few moments, to clear my head of everything except the routine that I’ve rehearsed over and over. I try to push all of the unease and foreboding and anger out of my body, replacing it with the joy and anticipation that I usually feel before a performance. But today, those negative feelings seem impossible to shake, and that just brings the anger back, because I want to enjoy this. I want to feel all the rush of emotion and the joy of performing that I usually do.

My entire life is devoted to this. No one should be able to take it away from me.

Taking another deep breath, I open my eyes and look at my reflection in the mirror. A ballerina gazes back at me, her stage makeup perfect, her dark hair smoothed back without a hair out of place, her body lean and lithe and ready for the challenge ahead.

I stand up slowly, take one more slow breath, and reach for my pointe shoes.

Backstage, I’m able to focus a little better. The dancers gathering brings an energy that feeds me, that makes me feel more alive, and it pushes the arguments with Rowan and Chris to the back of my mind. Marie is sitting on the floor, lacing up her pointe shoes, and I sink down on the chair next to her, checking my shoes to make sure that they’re perfect before slipping the first one onto my foot.

“You’re later than usual,” Marie says, glancing up at me as she secures the ribbons around one ankle. “Are you okay?”

My stomach tightens, the reminder bringing back all of the emotion that I’ve been trying to banish. “Fine,” I say quickly, a little more curtly than I mean to. “Chris just stopped by to talk. He held me up for a few minutes.”

“Oooh.” Marie waggles her eyebrows in a way that makes it clear that she’s imagining something that definitely did not happen. “Lucky,” she whispers, and I force a smile that makes it seem as if I’m playing along. Better that than her figuring out we had an argument—gossip moves through the ballet company with the speed of sound, and the dancers love a good drama.

The orchestra is warming up, and I feel a flutter of nerves rush through my stomach. These feel different from my usual pre-performance nerves, less like excited butterflies and more like anxiety. I bite my lip, trying to focus on tying the ribbons of my pointe shoes, to find comfort in the familiar routine. But my pre-show routine has been completely thrown off, and my thoughts keep drifting back to Rowan and Chris…but Rowan most of all. Particularly the look of real hurt on his face when I threw his flowers into the trash.

Calm down. Focus. Don’t think about him. Either of them. I repeat it over and over in my head like a mantra, focusing on loosening my muscles, on calming my breathing, on running my steps through my head. On what’s just ahead of me, not what’s behind.

Usually, when I step out onto the stage, everything else disappears. The lights make it impossible to see anything but blackness if I look out toward the audience, except for maybe the very first couple of rows, so it’s easy to let them disappear, to lose myself in the character and the dance and become who I’m meant to be portraying. But tonight, I catch myself glancing out toward that black, cavernous void, and I know Chris is out there.

I used to love the idea of him watching me. I’ve always loved performing, and I can think of nothing better than performing for someone who loves you. My relationship with Chris has never been about love, but it was the closest I thought I would get to that feeling. With no family to sit in the audience and watch me, his presence was the one that made me feel as if I was dancing for someone who valued me for everything I had worked so hard for.

Now, I wonder if he’s watching me not with pride, but with a critical eye, determining if I’m still enough. If I’m worth what he’s paying to own me. Everything that’s happened since the night of the party has colored our relationship differently, and now I feel a sliver of nausea in my stomach at the thought.

It’s joined by a different kind of slithering heat as I wonder if Rowan is out there, too. If he left after our argument, or if he stayed to watch me dance—really dance—for the first time. That heat blooms through me at the thought of those emerald eyes on me, taking me in, wanting me, and for the first time since my first class at Juilliard, I miss a step.

It’s a small mistake. Something so tiny that even the most discerning audience member wouldn’t notice—and even the other dancers might not, though I know Mme. Allard certainly will. I force myself to refocus, to slip back into the choreography, but I know I’m thrown off. This is far from my best performance, and even if I can recover, it will be a disappointment.

A disappointment. All these years, all this work, and a man is your undoing. The needling, nagging voice in my head digs in, teeth sinking into my brain, chewing at me with an anxiety that worms under my skin and through my body. Even before I lift off my feet into the grand jeté, I know that something is wrong. That I haven’t executed it perfectly.

Some part of me knows what’s about to happen even before I land, and my foot crumples beneath me.

I hear the audience gasp as I fall to the stage floor, a ripple of sound passing through that blackness just beyond me. I hear the discordant sound of a violin as a player misses their note, distracted by what’s happening from just above the pit. I hear the orchestra slowly come to a stop, stuttering as instrument after instrument ceases, until there’s nothing but silence—and the low hum of the audience whispering.

And there’s pain. Shooting up my ankle into my calf, leaving me breathless as I lie there dizzy on the floor, my forehead pressed to the cool wood. The pain throbs through me, and I know I should move, ask for help, try to get up—but I can’t. The pain in my ankle is nothing compared to the greater pain in my chest, my heart fissuring and cracking as I try to fight back reality.

I have no idea how bad the injury really is, but I don’t need to know specifics to know that this is devastating. This is every ballerina’s worst nightmare. And it’s happening to me, right now.

I feel hands on my arms, helping me up. Mme. Allard’s sharp voice, directing the other dancers. As I’m helped up, I see the worried face of a paramedic—two paramedics, helping me onto a stretcher. I should make this easier on them , I think—I’m not so badly hurt that I couldn’t take some burden off of them getting me out of here, but I can’t seem to make any part of my body move. Not in a way that makes me think that I’m paralyzed, or anything so terrible as that, but I can feel that I’m numb with shock, frozen by it. The signals that my brain needs to send to my muscles to tell them to move don’t seem to be able to catch up.

“We’re going to get you to a hospital, ma’am,” one of the paramedics says, quickly shining a light in my eyes. “We’ll get that injury looked at, I promise.”

The woman next to me says something else, something that I think is meant to be soothing—about how the injury doesn’t look as bad as it probably feels, but it does nothing to ease the panic in my chest. Any leg injury could be a career-ending one for me, particularly at the point in my career that I’ve reached.

I close my eyes, feeling tears dampening my lashes and leaking down my cheeks. I don’t know when I started crying, but it seems to have happened passively, as if my body can no longer contain the riot of emotion inside of me. The tears drip down to my chin, streaking down my neck and soaking the edge of my leotard, and I feel the stretcher start to move, wheeling me out of the theater to the waiting ambulance.

I’ve become a spectacle—for all the wrong reasons. Tomorrow, when people whisper about what they saw at the ballet last night, it won’t be about my stunning performance, or my grace or the enviable way I portrayed Giselle. It won’t be about the emotion I evoked or the art I created. It will be whispers about my fall, about my disgrace—pity and sorrow and oh, it’s so sad, isn’t it? I can’t imagine. I feel so terrible for her.

I hear the click of the back door to the theater opening, feel the warm summer night air against my face as I’m taken outside. More tears flood down my cheeks, my eyes squeezed tightly shut, until I hear someone call out my name.

“Genevieve!”

I open my eyes, and see Rowan rushing toward me.

“Are you okay?” His eyes are wide with shock, his face a little pale as he looks at me. For once, there’s no smirk, no humor on his face—nothing but fear and worry that surprises me as much as it angers me. Because, as far as I’m concerned, both he and Chris are part of the reason that I’m on this stretcher right now.

“Leave me alone.” I turn my face to the other side, my chest aching, even the sight of him right now too much to bear. “I don’t want to see you, do you understand me? I never want to fucking see you again!”

There’s silence. When I turn my face back, as the ambulance doors open, Rowan is gone.