Chapter 4
COOPER
My heart sank as I saw familiar faces leaving the dance studio—kids and their parents, holding hands, laughing and talking.
I was late. Again.
I wove my way around the crowd, fighting to get to the studio door. Amelia had a strict policy of not letting kids out of the studio until a responsible adult had come to pick them up. With the number of times I’d been late, I was grateful that Benji hadn’t been left to stand outside on his own.
It was just that, as I rushed past all the other responsible adults picking their kids up, still covered in grease and shop floor grit, all their eyes seemed to be on me.
I was trying so hard to do my best for Benji, but I was never sure I was succeeding. He didn’t deserve for me to be late.
By the time I got to the top of the stairs that led up to the studio with its wide view of the beach, I was out of breath as well as late and filthy.
I pushed the door open with an involuntary grunt of effort, heart dropping to somewhere around my stomach in anticipation of seeing Benji’s little eyes light up when he saw me.
It wasn’t the lighting up I minded, but the fact that it clearly came as such a relief.
He’d been left at school for hours without being picked up when his mom died without anyone to realize he was all alone. I didn’t want him to ever feel that way again—but I couldn’t seem to pick him up on time, either.
“Sorry I’m late, kidd—”
I cut myself off as I took in the scene in the studio.
Benji wasn’t alone. Nor was he sitting with Amelia. No, that would have been way too easy.
Mr. Blue Eyes was sitting next to him on the long bench that spanned the wall opposite the mirrors. Benji was beaming up at him, kicking his feet, huge grin on his face.
Mr. Blue Eyes looked over at the door. The broad smile on his face faltered as he saw me.
I wasn’t nearly as cute as Benji, so I couldn’t exactly blame him.
“Hi,” I said, looking between this morning’s disaster and Benji.
Mr. Blue Eyes tilted his head. It was less like a confused dog, and more like one of the big black crows we got around here that I always thought were silently judging me.
“Hello,” he said.
“Coop!” Benji called out, racing over to me. He flung his little arms around my legs like always, as though I hadn’t let him down again. That might’ve been thanks to his new friend.
His new friend who was standing up and approaching. I hadn’t noticed this morning, but as he took the first step, he faltered and winced. Had I hurt him?
“I’m so sorry, I was—”
Mr. Blue Eyes held a hand up to stop me, eyeing my chest. Right. Where I was still wearing the coffee stain from earlier on my overalls.
“I’d say we’re even, but I’ve made my first friend here, so I still owe you one,” Mr. Blue Eyes said.
Benji beamed up at me when I looked down at him. “This is Felix,” he enthused, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “He’s a real ballet dancer.”
Well. Given the context, that made a lot of sense. I looked at him again, gaze sweeping from sculpted calves up strong thighs, all on display in the workout tights he was wearing. He must’ve had an ass you could bounce a penny off.
I should not have been thinking that.
Was he familiar? Now that I was really paying attention, I got the feeling I’d seen him before. Although—and I knew better than to tell anyone this—I had trouble telling ballet dancers apart. I’d never been great with faces.
I turned my attention back to his face and found those blue, blue eyes looking at me just as intently as I must’ve been looking at him. They flicked down from the stain on my chest to somewhere below my waist—Benji’s head, maybe—and back up again.
The prettiest bubblegum-pink tongue darted out between bow-shaped lips, the blue of his eyes hidden under long, dark lashes for a spilt second before he focused on my face again.
Was he…
No, there was no way he was checking me out. He was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. I was… me.
“Uh, Cooper. Cooper Richards,” I said, offering my hand.
Felix glanced at it. So did I.
Right. It was covered in motor oil and grit and who knew what else. I wiped it on my overalls. If anything, that made matters worse.
Felix was spotlessly clean from head to toe. Not a single stray speck of dust on him.
I took my hand away, wiping it self-consciously again. I didn’t blame him for not wanting to shake it.
“I gathered,” he said. “Felix Bennet. Nice to meet you.”
Felix Bennet.
Felix Bennet. I did recognize him. I knew that name. He was a principle dancer for one of the big companies. My favorite person in the whole world was obsessed with ballet. I’d heard—or read—his name a hundred times.
I’d also heard he’d been injured. The kind of injury ballet dancers didn’t come back from, according to the online article I’d glimpsed the headline of but not actually read.
What did you say about that kind of thing? Did you say anything at all? Would it be weird if I let him know I knew?
That explained the limp, at least.
“Your son is very dedicated,” Felix continued. “You must be proud.”
“Oh, uh. He’s my nephew, actually,” I said, putting a hand on Benji’s shoulder so he’d know I didn’t mean that made him less important to me than a son.
I’d never planned to have kids, but I had one now, and no one was ever going to make him feel less than completely, wholly, unconditionally loved from the tips of his toenails to the ends of his hair. “I’m proud of anything he does.”
Felix’s perfectly manicured eyebrow arched a fraction of a degree. Something about the way he looked at me this time was different, though I couldn’t have said exactly how.
“Nephew,” Felix repeated, as though he was testing out the word for the first time. He looked at Benji, who beamed up at him again. “Well, he’s obviously working hard.”
“He does,” I agreed. Benji loved ballet. Other kids watched Disney movies, Benji watched any production of any ballet he could find—or get me or his grandma to—on YouTube. It was all he ever talked about.
I loved him, and I wanted him to be happy, so I’d also watched more ballet in the past eight months than I thought most people did in their entire lives.
I was even starting to get what Benji liked about it.
I’d never be able to move like that—I was a big guy, and I’d always been on the clumsy side—but I could see the magic of watching other people do it.
I could see the magic of it sparkling in Benji’s eyes as he watched.
If I regularly caught myself humming the Nutcracker suite or one of the themes from Swan Lake while I worked in the shop, that was a small price to pay for his happiness.
“So I’ll see him next class…?” Felix asked.
“Right, yeah!” I shook myself out of my distraction. “Uh. See you round, I guess?”
See you round, I guess?
What was wrong with me?
Felix nodded, lips twitching into an expression that might have aspired to be a smile when it grew up. “I guess you will.”
I took Benji’s hand before I could embarrass myself any further and guided him out of the studio.
“Burger time?” I asked once we were out in the street, the sun sinking over the bay and casting everything in orange light. It’d been a beautiful day, at least. Spring was definitely well on the way.
“Burger time!” Benji enthused, squeezing my hand.
Who needed to know how to talk to unbelievably beautiful men when I had him?
“Felix was the prince in Swan Lake,” Benji said, making one of his fries do what I thought was maybe a pirouette.
Swan Lake was his favorite ballet. I’d seen it so many times that I almost could have danced it myself, lack of coordination aside. Benji wanted to play Prince Siegfried one day, too.
“For a whole season. He says if I keep working hard, I could be, too.”
“Gotta eat your fries first,” I said, pointing at the one in his hand. “So you’ll be tall enough.”
Not that he’d have to worry about that, if he took after me and dad in height as well as looks. If anything, he might end up too tall for ballet, which my research had told me was a thing. There was a sweet spot, apparently, between five-nine and six feet even.
Felix must’ve been five-ten, five-eleven or so. Five or six inches shorter than me. Tall under any other circumstances but standing next to me.
Benji shoved the fry in his mouth obediently.
He was a good kid. I wasn’t surprised Felix liked him—as far as I was concerned, it was impossible not to.
I hadn’t really understood what love was supposed to be like until he’d come into my life full time.
Until he was my first thought every morning and my last one at night—what I could do to make his tiny life easier, how I could be there for him, what he needed.
“He hurt his leg,” Benji continued between fries. “So now he’s taking a break.”
“Felix?” I asked. I’d already figured that out, but Benji talking to me still felt precious. For the first three months after my sister—his mom—died, he’d barely said a word to anyone. Hearing him talk made me feel like maybe he’d be okay, eventually. Like I wasn’t completely screwing this up.
Benji nodded. “I think he’s sad about it,” he continued. “But maybe being here will make him happy?”
“You think?”
Benji shrugged, grabbing his last fry and swiping it through the remains of his ketchup. “It made me happy.”
I swallowed past the sudden lump in my throat. “Yeah?”
Benji nodded, looking up at me with those big, earnest eyes as he licked ketchup off his fingers.
Tears pricked at my eyes as I smiled at him.
It was all worth it—moving back to Otter Bay after a decade away, coming to Dad with my tail between my legs after leaving the family business to go my own way, the collapse of a four-year relationship with a man I’d thought I’d be with forever.
None of that mattered when Benji looked at me like that.
“Glad to hear it, kiddo,” I said, sitting back to look at him. My whole world, sitting right across the table from me. “You like Felix, huh?”
Benji shrugged again. “He’s cool. Do you like him?”
“Uh…”
Yes, but not in a way I can explain to you.
Damn. Did I like him like that? Maybe. Okay, yes, but not desperately or anything. I’d just… noticed him. He was the first person I’d noticed in a while. And he would have been kind of hard to miss, crashing into me like he did. That was all there was to it.
“He seems cool,” I said.
Benji grinned at me. “Maybe you could make him happy, too.”
I had to bite down on my tongue to hold back a snort.
No. No, I did not think I could improve the happiness of Felix Bennet, the most beautiful man I’d ever seen, who I couldn’t even bring myself to touch earlier.
People like him were not made happier by people like me.
I was limited to being an okayish uncle to a six-year-old who hadn’t had time to develop more refined taste.
Which was fine. Benji was more than enough to fill my whole life, and it wasn’t as though I had time for anything else around it. That’d been Aaron’s problem.
I like you but I didn’t sign up for a kid.
Benji was my life now, my whole world. No one else would ever come close to being as important as this little boy.
Which was why I said, “maybe I could.” Just to get Benji to grin at me again.
I didn’t have to believe it.