Chapter 7
FELIX
Shoulders squared. Chest out. Tuck in your ass, you’re not a rentboy.
Piotr’s voice was so clear in my head as I watched myself move in the mirror, testing my ideas for the competition choreography. I didn’t need him to be in the room anymore to correct me. Just as well, because he would have been barking something new at me with every step.
It looked wrong. I’d had six-year-olds going through sequences like this yesterday, and they’d looked better doing it than I did. Every time I went to put weight on my right leg, I faltered, I flinched, because I knew it’d hurt.
Pain is good. Pain means you’re working hard enough.
I didn’t need Piotr in the room because I could see him in the mirror, one hand on my shoulder, his hard eyes boring into mine.
Not. Good. Enough.
Again.
Again. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes this time, wanting to feel the movement instead of see it. If I couldn’t see the hesitation, the faltering, or worse, the stumbling, then maybe they’d be a little less real to me.
Lighter, faster. Feet, Felix, your feet!
Again. Again. Again.
With my eyes closed, I could feel the sunlight streaming through the window on my face, hear my own breathing.
Piotr’s voice was still there, but his gaze was gone.
The mirror couldn’t show me the stiffness, the awkwardness.
It still hurt every time I put my weight on my leg—it probably always would—but at least I couldn’t see it on my face, in my body.
Stop scrunching your nose. Effortless, Felix! Effortless.
Effortless.
It had been effortless once. Once, I could have done this for hours without stopping. Hours of practice every day and a performance most nights—sometimes two, for a popular production—for weeks and weeks at a time.
Now, I was biting my lip as I forced myself through each step. It’d only been half an hour, and everything hurt. The pain had travelled from my leg all the way up my body to my neck, shooting to the base of my skull as though I’d been stabbed there every time my heel struck the ground.
It’d always hurt, but it hadn’t hurt like this.
A sound behind me made me open my eyes mid-turn, breaking the first rule I’d been taught back when I was five years old and starting my first ballet class.
When you turn, you pick a spot to focus on and you don’t let your eyes focus again until you’re facing that spot.
Otherwise, you’ll get dizzy and lose your balance.
I just had time to register the shape of a person stepping into the room when I lost mine, stumbling, putting my right foot down hard and wrong, and crying out in pain.
After that I was in freefall, stomach swooping as I lost any chance I might’ve had to save myself.
I was going to hit the polished wood floor, and it was going to hurt.
Amelia was going to hear the thump. She’d know.
She’d know I couldn’t do this, that she was hanging all her hopes on me and I was going to let her down because I was too broken, and—
Something stopped my fall. Something warm and solid, but upright and with some give. Not a patch of hard floor.
“Whoa,” a familiar voice said.
The thing that had stopped my fall turned out to be an equally familiar chest. Making this the second time I’d crashed uncontrolled into Cooper.
His hands—warm and rough as I remembered them—curled around my bare arms. Holding me upright.
“Mmph,” I responded. Since I was already there, and my face was burning hot with embarrassment, I buried it in Cooper’s shoulder. It wasn’t as though I could make this worse.
Besides, I didn’t want him to see the tears stinging at my eyes.
My dancers don’t cry. Don’t you dare cry in my studio.
“Starting to think you’ve got a thing for running into me,” Cooper said. His voice was so warm, so gentle, just a hint of amusement that didn’t at all sound like it was at my expense, that I lost my battle and sobbed against his overalls.
“Whoa,” he repeated, tightening his grip on me. “You okay?”
I nodded without thinking. I had to be okay. Not okay wasn’t an option.
“Bullshit,” Cooper said. Which I deserved for obviously lying to him.
“‘m fine,” I mumbled into his shoulder. Taking a deep breath, I pulled back to look him in the eyes.
Not Piotr’s cold grey eyes. Warm brown, wide and concerned.
I bit my lip to stop myself from sobbing again. My cheeks felt like someone was holding a blowtorch to them.
Cooper wasn’t supposed to see me like this. He was supposed to see me being sexy and elegant and perfect and then he’d want me. Really, really want me, bad enough to beg, and that would make me feel beautiful and worthy again.
Maybe.
For an hour or so, at least. That was better than nothing.
“Again, bullshit,” he responded, brows drawing together. “How do I help?”
I swallowed. Help?
How…
“Umm.” I looked around, trying to figure out what might work, realizing belatedly that Cooper was probably here for a reason. Other than the obvious one, that the universe had it out for me and wanted to humiliate me in front of him.
“Should you sit?” Cooper asked, ducking his head to catch my gaze.
I nodded, unwilling to trust myself not to sob again if I tried to speak.
Cooper nodded back. “Lemme know if I hurt you.”
Then he lifted me clear off the ground into a bridal carry like I was a delicate princess and he was the handsome knight who’d come to rescue me. I grabbed two fistfuls of his overalls to keep my balance, but it was so obviously easy for him to pick me up that I probably didn’t need to.
As suddenly as he’d picked me up, Cooper set me down again on the studio bench, crouching in front of me.
I stared at him.
As a ballet dancer, I was used to doing lifts. But I was used to lifting women who were much smaller than me and also cooperating and doing at least some of the work.
I hadn’t been doing any of the work. I wasn’t as big as Cooper but I was five-eleven in bare feet, and I hadn’t had a chance to cooperate. He hadn’t needed me to.
Post-accident I’d lost a lot of muscle mass, but not that much.
“What now?” Cooper asked, concerned and earnest and offensively handsome, actually. With the sunlight catching his eyes, they seemed as though they were glowing from the inside.
It was too late now to hide how much pain I was in from him, and I needed help. Even knowing that, I hesitated.
“Glass of water, painkillers…?” he suggested.
“Can you lift my leg up and push it back toward my chest like you’re trying to hurt me?
” I asked. The cold pain of my leg cramping where the muscle had knotted up was unbearable, and it was the only way I’d found to ease it.
Normally I would’ve shoved it against a wall, or the head of my bed, or the bathtub—whatever was handy wherever I was—but from this position, I couldn’t.
Cooper was here. He was looking at me like he gave a damn that I was in pain and wanted to do something about it.
No one else had done that, aside from Avery.
Cooper raised an eyebrow, but obediently picked my foot up. He propped it against his shoulder and held my gaze. “Sure about this?”
“Positive,” I gritted out, voice tight with pain.
“On three,” Cooper said. “One, two—”
He leaned forward with his whole weight, pushing my knee right up to my shoulder in one smooth, swift movement.
I cried out and grabbed for him, tears welling up in my eyes again.
My hand fisted in his overalls as the cramping stopped and one clean streak of pain shot up my leg and into my hip.
A few heartbeats of breathing through it and the sudden pain faded back to a low ache.
I let go of Cooper’s overalls as though my bones had turned to liquid, melting into how good the stretch felt now that the initial agony was over.
“Okay?” Cooper asked.
I nodded, biting my lip again, afraid that anything I said would come out shaky and pathetic. Not that I could save myself from looking pathetic now, but I still had about a half-ounce of dignity left. I wasn’t planning on giving it up for nothing.
“Keep holding it?” he asked, putting his hand over the top of my bare foot.
It felt even rougher against the sensitive skin and the warmth seeping from it made me realize how much my feet hurt, but I didn’t want him to take it away.
I nodded, wriggling my toes against him, hoping he wouldn’t look too closely at my gross ballet dancer’s feet.
They’d healed up a little post-injury, but they still weren’t nice feet.
I took a deep, shuddering breath, keeping my eyes on my own toes so I wouldn’t have to meet Cooper’s gaze. He’d be looking at me with pity in his eyes, and I couldn’t handle that. I might have been pitiful, but I didn’t need anyone else to tell me so.
“Thank you,” I said when I thought I could trust my voice. It came out shakier than I would have liked, but not as bad as it could have been.
When I risked meeting Cooper’s eyes, he was smiling. That was much better than pity. He had the most gorgeous smile, broad and lopsided. It made his eyes glitter.
“Want me to let go?” Cooper asked, nodding to my foot.
No.
I nodded. My thigh had stopped cramping, and I couldn’t exactly ask Cooper to kneel on the floor indefinitely. Even if I was enjoying what I now realized was the first non-medical, non-Avery human contact I’d had in six months.
Cooper set my leg down gently. Now that my entire focus wasn’t on how much pain I was in, I remembered again that he was probably here for a reason.
“Did you need Amelia? Because she’s downstairs.”
Doing the accounts. My stomach twinged at the thought. What if I couldn’t help? What if I just wasn’t good enough? What if I’d never really been good enough for anything and sleeping with the director had been the only reason my career had progressed like it had?
It wasn’t as though no one had ever said that behind my back. Maybe it was true.
“I know,” Cooper said, interrupting my spiral before it could really pick up steam. “She directed me up here. To you.”