A Baby for the BRATVA Stalker (A Baby for the BRATVA #2)

Emma

Pain blooms halfway through the adagio.

A sharp pain that demands attention and forces a reaction that I’ve learned how to hide. It’s a deep, aching pressure, grinding inside my ankle. A warning flare my body has been sending me for months now, quiet but insistent, like it’s begging me to stop pretending.

I ignore it. Breathe through it. Tell myself that it will go away if I can just get through this solo.

The music swells, strings lifting me into motion, and I let muscle memory take over.

My arms float, soft but controlled, every line precise.

I feel the familiar pull through my calves, the stretch, the balance.

I’ve spent my entire life training myself to dance through discomfort.

Pain has never been enough to stop me before, and I won’t let it be enough now.

The lights are hot against my skin, bleaching the audience into darkness.

From the stage, they’re nothing more than a blur.

Faces swallowed by shadow, bodies reduced to a single presence.

I know they’re watching me. I can feel their attention, hear their breath catch when my body does the impossible and makes it look flawlessly easy.

But it’s not them that makes my skin prickle.

It’s the other feeling. The heavier one. The one that settles low in my spine. A slow drag of awareness that has nothing to do with the choreography and everything to do with the way my body tightens, instinctive and unbidden. Like I’m prey that’s being hunted by something just out of sight.

I miss a beat.

Only just.

I recover fast enough that no one notices, but my heart stutters anyway. I finish the sequence, landing cleanly, holding the final pose with my chin lifted and my expression serene. The audience exhales as one. Applause follows, polite and warm.

I don’t bow right away. I wait, because I know he’s there. Watching me.

I don’t look into the dark. I learned a long time ago that searching out his gaze only makes it worse. Instead, I let my eyes drift over the darkness, unfocused, as if I’m nothing more than another dancer soaking in appreciation.

My body quivers, reminding me it knows better.

When it started eighteen months ago, I thought I was just imagining it.

Besides, ballet attracts a certain kind of devotion.

People who come to every performance, who remember your name and what roles you’ve danced, who watch the way your feet leave the floor instead of your face.

I told myself that was all it was. Admiration, perhaps.

Then the feeling didn’t go away. It intensified.

It followed me beyond the theatre. Into rehearsals. Into quiet moments when I was stretching alone, sweat cooling on my skin, mirrors reflecting a woman I barely recognised anymore. I’d feel it then, too, that sense of being seen too clearly, too deeply, in an otherwise empty room.

Then in my apartment. It stopped feeling entirely empty. It started to feel as though it was closing in on me. And still, I couldn’t bring myself to feel scared or uncomfortable. I learned to live with it, made it as much a part of my life as ballet, or the pain in my swollen ankle.

I step offstage the moment the curtain falls, breath coming harder now that the adrenaline is ebbing. The pain surges in response, sharp enough this time that my vision blurs for a split second. I grit my teeth and keep moving, forcing my body to obey like it always has.

The dressing room smells like the cream that the physio recommended to ease the pain in my ankle and the yellow roses that appear after every one of my performances.

I still don’t know who sends them, they always come without a card and no one ever owns up to placing them in here.

I lower myself onto the bench and begin untying my ribbons with careful fingers.

My ankle is already swelling, skin thick beneath my tights.

“You okay?” one of the girls asks, poking her head around my door.

I nod and offer a bright smile. “Yeah.”

The lie comes easily. Too easily. She doesn’t push. None of them do. They all know better. Ballet teaches you early that weakness is contagious. No one wants to catch it.

I finish changing and leave before anyone can guilt me into joining them for a last show drink.

It’s tradition, they’ll argue. But I just want to go home and rest my ankle before tomorrow comes and we start rehearsing the next show.

We only have two months before opening and it’s an entirely new routine.

Outside, the night air is a cool slap against my flushed skin. The city hums around me with traffic, distant laughter, the thrum of life going on without me. I pull my coat tighter and start down the sidewalk, each step measured and careful.

That’s when it hits me again. The awareness. The knowing that I’m being watched… followed.

It slides over me like a touch I never asked for, heavy and slow. My shoulders tense, breath hitching as I glance at my reflection in a darkened window. I look normal. A little tired maybe. Smaller than I remember being. There’s nothing about me that should draw this kind of attention.

I don’t turn around. I know he won’t be anywhere I can see. He never is. Which is why I feel like I should be afraid. Should report it. But what would I say? I feel like I’m being watched and part of me likes it?

I’d be laughed straight out of the precinct.

He doesn’t follow the way men do when they want to hurt you, take you. There’s no rush of footsteps behind me, no shout or grab. He’s never tried to speak to me as far as I know, never crossed that line from stranger to acquaintance. Which only serves to pique my curiosity.

I reach my apartment building and pause, keys clutched in my palm. For a moment, I let myself imagine turning around. Let myself imagine finally seeing him. Putting a face to the weight that’s been pressing on my life for a year and a half.

The thought sends a shiver of anticipation through me and I close my eyes against the frustration of it all.

This shouldn’t thrill me. I know that. But for some reason, the visceral response it creates in me is completely beyond my control.

I swallow and unlock the door, slipping inside and locking it behind me.

The familiar click echoes too loudly in the quiet hallway.

I stand there for a second, heart racing, ankle throbbing, and let the mask fall away.

I have to tell myself it’s only two flights of stairs to my apartment.

I’ve climbed them a thousand times. I can climb them tonight.

As I take each step one at a time, the truth settles in my chest heavy and unavoidable. Ballet is ending for me in a way I can’t slow down or stop. This isn’t my first injury, but it is the first one that hasn’t healed quickly.

I don’t know when ballet became something I was losing instead of something I loved, but the injury made it impossible to ignore.

Twenty-four isn’t supposed to be old. Not in the real world.

But here in my world, I might as well be ancient.

Every plié feels like borrowed time. Every performance like a goodbye I’m not ready to give.

I sink onto my couch and press my forehead into my hands.

I gave everything for this.

My childhood. My body. My future.

I stayed untouched because I had to. Because an accidental pregnancy would’ve ruined everything, because desire was a distraction I couldn’t afford.

No man ever tempted me enough to make the risk worth it, thankfully.

But now I’m at the end of my career and alone.

I have nothing to show for any of it but a few show programmes and a handful of articles written about me.

I’ve never seen the man behind the gaze that makes my skin heat, but I know something has changed inside me because of it. I know the way his attention makes my blood hum. I know how alive I feel when I sense him watching, like he’s pulled something out of me that ballet never quite could.

Somewhere out there, he knows I’m hurting. He knows I danced through it anyway. I can feel the satisfaction curling low in my belly at the thought, dark and unwelcome. As confusing as it is thrilling.

I tell myself I’m imagining it, that it means nothing. But as I stand and limp toward my bedroom, the certainty settles in my bones. Whatever comes next is already in motion, and I’m not going to be strong enough to fight it even if I want to.