Chapter Eighteen
KATERINA
It’s opening night, and though I’m disappointed that Luka and Scottie won’t be here, I am so grateful for this opportunity and privilege to be dancing here tonight.
Backstage is a living, breathing thing. Bodies are rushing in all directions, voices echoing all around me, stage managers with headsets and clipboards barking cues like they’re conducting air traffic control in London-Heathrow Airport.
Costume racks line the walls along with pointe shoes. The orchestra is warming up in the pit.
And in the middle of it, I’m trying to remember how to breathe.
My stomach swoops—the usual stage jitters, nothing I’m not used to, no matter how many times I do it.
There’s a knock at my dressing room door.
“Delivery for Katerina Easton,” someone calls out.
I open the door to find a drink holder from a delivery service.
“This is for me?” I ask.
“It’s what the delivery guy said,” the backstage coordinator's intern says and then runs off to put out the next fire.
I take it over to my makeup mirror and glance down. It’s a hot tea to-go cup and a bottle of seltzer water.
The top of the to-go cup says. “Don’t break a leg, KitKat.”
My heart about bust through my rib cage. Scottie… it has to be him. No one else calls me KitKat.
He sent me a delivery even though he’s about to go on the ice in another city, in another state.
“Five minutes to places,” someone calls, breaking me from falling a little harder for my husband.
I smell the hot beverage already starts to calm my nerves. Chamomile tea, and just the way I take it with a little honey.
I’m in full hair and makeup, costume fitted and pinned, ribbons tied. My feet are already taped within an inch of their life, toes padded, new pointe shoes broken in just enough to carry me through tonight without betraying me… hopefully.
My phone buzzes on the tiny dressing table in front of me.
Irina: I can’t believe it’s opening night. How’s my star?
I exhale through my nose and pick it up.
Me: Trying not to throw up.
It takes her two seconds.
Irina: Vomiting is for amateurs. You are a professional. You will plié your fear into submission.
A laugh escapes me, shaky but real.
Me: That’s not a thing.
Irina: It is now. Seriously, Kat. Go break their hearts. You’ve got this.
Me: I’ll try.
Irina: No trying. Do it. And then text me after. I love you.
Me: Love you too.
I set the phone down and look at myself in the mirror.
Heavy stage makeup. Sharp liner, red lips, hair scraped back into a bun so tight I can feel my pulse in my scalp, which means it’s perfect.
The costume is a glittering dream, all tulle and jewels and movement.
On the surface, I look exactly like what I am: principal dancer, opening night, center of the stage.
But underneath?
Underneath, I’m the girl who ran away from an arranged marriage to a Russian politician. The girl whose father sees her as a bargaining chip. The girl who married a hockey player she barely knew and somehow fell in love with him, anyway.
My heart squeezes. I wish Scottie were here.
I knew he wouldn’t be. I knew the Hawkeyes had a road game in Salt Lake City.
He has playoffs to make this season, and I would never stand in the way of his dreams, just like he’d never stand in the way of mine.
We’ve talked about it for a week. But still…
when I walked into the theater tonight, some stupid, soft part of me looked for him in the lobby, in the aisles, backstage—just in case.
But of course he’s not here. Not that it will keep me from looking for him in the audience… I absolutely will. But knowing that he thought of me and had my pre-show beverages delivered was just like him. Wanting me to know that he’s thinking about me.
“Places,” the stage manager barks again, sticking her head into the dressing room. “Curtain in two.”
I stand.
Whatever is happening with my life, with my family, with my marriage, none of it matters for the next two hours.
For the next two hours, all that exists is the stage.
I roll my shoulders back, slip my feet into my shoes, and walk toward the wings.
Time to dance.
The performance is a blur and yet agonizingly, vividly clear.
The first entrance is all bright lights like a wall of heat. The orchestra vibrates under my feet and through my skin. The first sequence of turns, my body settling into the choreography like it’s been waiting for this moment for years.
There are tiny things I’ll pick apart later: an arabesque that was a breath too low, a landing that wasn’t as silent as I wanted, but overall?
Overall, it goes well for opening night. I’m proud of it.
By the third scene, my muscles stop screaming and start singing. Every lift lands, every turn finds its spot, every breath lines up with the music. When the curtain comes down for intermission, I’m shaking, sweat slicking down my spine, chest heaving, but I’m smiling.
By the final curtain, when we go out for bows, my name gets its own burst of applause. It’s not New York-level yet, but for a first night with a new company, it’s strong, and that’s the best feeling I can ask for because it’s mine.
And more importantly, it feels like the beginning of something. Something tangible… something grounding me here, in this city.
Back in my dressing room, I peel off my costume with numb fingers, every muscle screaming now that the adrenaline is wearing off.
I sit for a moment in my camisole and tights, staring at my feet.
Blood on the tape. Blisters are blooming under the skin.
It’s totally worth it. Battle scars that remind me I’m doing what I love.
What my mother loved, and I can feel her tonight.
There’s a soft knock at the door.
“Come in,” I call, expecting a stage manager, maybe another dancer.
The door cracks open. One of the interns peeks in, eyes bright. “There’s someone here to see you,” she says. “He’s… uh… gorgeous, by the way.”
My heart lurches.
Scottie.
It’s ridiculous, logistically impossible, unless he somehow managed a helicopter and left in the third period of the game, but I wouldn’t put it past him, and that makes my pulse spike at the thought.
He’s one for grand gestures. Maybe the game ended early, and since he thought about the drinks, maybe he has another surprise up his sleeve.
I stand quickly out of my seat, ready to pounce on my husband the moment he comes through that door.
“Oh, and he has roses,” she adds.
And just like that, my fantasy shatters.
Roses.
Scottie’s never brought me roses. He listens when I talk. He knows I hate them.
My stomach goes cold.
“Send him in,” I say, anyway.
A moment later, the door opens wider.
And Maxim Volkov walks in.
Every bit as handsome as I remember him from when we were younger.
Maybe even more so with that look of confidence that comes with age and success.
The pictures of him online still do him justice.
Dark hair perfectly styled, sharp cheekbones, a custom-tailored suit that probably costs more than my yearly dance salary, and eight years since the last time I saw him in person at my mother’s funeral, where I remember explicitly telling him that I hate roses.
He wears his privilege like another layer of clothing—expensive, effortless, utterly assumed—but I know what he’s trying to cover up with it.
A long line of mobsters just like my own that started the transition into the political circle a couple of generations earlier.
His grandfather saw the writing on the wall when mine thought he could buy enough people to have the “writing” pressure-washed off. Unfortunately, politics is the wave of the future.
“Katerina.” He smiles, slow and practiced. “You look well.”
“Maxim, I’m surprised to see you here. Are you in town for business?”
He nods. “I guess you could consider it a little of both, but mostly this visit is for personal reasons. Something I should have done a while ago. You were magnificent tonight.”
All the breath leaves my lungs.
“Maxim.” My voice comes out flatter than I intended it to. “What are you doing here?”
He steps inside, closing the door behind him with a soft click.
In one hand, he holds a massive bouquet of deep red roses.
In the other, a sleek black box, too big to be an engagement ring…
thank God. It would be awkward to have to turn him down…
this time in person. He certainly didn’t need to come all this way to be rejected for my hand.
Besides, my finger already has a ring on it.
A ring I intend to keep if Scottie wants a life with me.
He hands me the roses, the scent of the flowers hits me, heavy and suffocating.
Funeral home and church, and fake condolences from strangers, and the day I buried my mother.
I hate roses–despise them, though it’s not their fault that our mansion was covered in them for months after her passing.
Everyone wanted to suck up to my father by sending a bigger boutique than the last person.
Men of power or of no power, who never even knew my mother.
Not that my father noticed any of their “contributions”.
He was a walking zombie in a sharp suit for a week after her passing—didn’t eat, didn’t sleep.
As if he never considered that his willpower and money alone weren’t enough to keep her alive.
We never discussed it, but Russian men in his line of work aren’t supposed to show emotions, so he never did.
Something died in my father the day we buried her, and he buried that part of him with her.
My fingers curl into my palms.
Instead, I prefer tulips. The kind my mother used to grow in her garden. Even in the harsh Russian winters, the spring would bring their happy faces, and my mother was always so elated when the first one would break through the tough terrain.