18. Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Eighteen
Alyssa
I flipped off the light in the bathroom. I tugged down the pale pink slip I slept in. At the edge of the bed, I stared at my brace. Instead of thinking about my throbbing ankle, my mind was stuck on Pasha.
Jealous.
I’d lost count of the number of times I’d tried to inspire jealousy, and he’d been set off by the briefest mention of Ricky.
I got the heating pad out of the drawer and tossed it into the microwave. Emika had told me to get heat on my injury before going to bed. Even if it was two in the morning, I wanted this ankle healed. The job on Sarah Telling’s tour wouldn’t happen if I couldn’t dance.
Despite Mia’s assurances, dancing on the tour was the best way to pay down my debt.
Otherwise, Ricky would have to become an option, or at least convincing Ricky he might have a chance would keep me financially afloat.
He could come back with my things and my money, and then I’d have the satisfaction of kicking him out.
In the car on the way back, Olivia had texted to say she and Kevin had worked out their problems. Olivia had used her vicious fight with Kevin as an example of how I could forgive Ricky if I wanted to.
She’d ended her text with The weak can never forgive.
Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong .
After I’d copied the words into a search engine and found out Gandhi had said them, I barked out a laugh at my sister’s lack of creativity.
A great humanitarian’s words were being wielded like a reason I should forgive a shitty human.
Olivia was unbelievable. Of course, then I’d fallen down a hole of forgiveness quotes online, and my mind tuned to Pasha and not Ricky.
I’d told him we were done. But I didn’t really know if that was what my heart believed.
The words had been a gut instinct—a reaction to him not appearing to give a shit for a week and then giving me a hard time about something, someone , who didn’t even matter.
He’d hurt me, but I understood jealousy.
In other men, I’d encouraged them to feast on it, to let it fuel reckless relationships. Jealousy meant drama, and there was a time when I couldn’t get enough.
Wasn’t that what love was supposed to feel like? Rip each other’s hearts out over and over. Love and passion and rage and jealousy had always been mashed together in a giant emotional casserole during my other relationships.
Even tonight, sitting beside the guy in the booth, talking to him, ignoring Pasha, I’d hoped he’d be jealous, realize what he’d given up.
Like with every other guy, I’d wanted a reaction, any reaction to show I meant something to him.
It had never occurred to me that he was already jealous, had been eaten up by it like a parasite.
Maybe I didn’t want to inspire jealousy anymore, not if the end result was misery. That first night, I’d told him he understood the difference between protective and possessive. Maybe I was the one who didn’t.
My phone buzzed, and I prayed it wasn’t my sister.
One inspirational text message was enough.
When I flipped my phone over on the counter, I saw the message was attached to a phone number instead of a name.
I recognized the number, though. Remembered plugging it into my phone when I’d agreed to give him private dance lessons.
Pasha . I deleted his number and all our conversations in a rage the other day.
I am outside your bus. Are you alone? I owe you an apology.
I stared at the words, and the microwave beeped, letting me know the heating pad was ready. A text with apology accepted would send him on his way without any hard conversations. This was the crossroads.
If I invited him in, we’d have to wade through all the things we hadn’t been saying to each other. If I sent him the two-word text message, we’d probably never work anything out, would go our separate ways in a few weeks. I had to decide which would be worse.
Without giving too much time to the analysis, I pressed the button to open the bus doors. His heavy tread came up the stairs as I wrapped the heating pad in a thin towel. When he appeared at the top of the stairs, my heart stuttered at his disheveled appearance.
The attraction was still there, ran so deep I wasn’t sure he’d ever leave my system.
His sandy blond hair, piercing blue eyes, shoulders so wide they’d shelter me from a hurricane.
He’d been bulky from weight lifting when we’d started dancing together, but now he was leaner, not just strong but fit.
The kind of physique I imagined emerging from the sea, godlike.
I didn’t want to be angry with him anymore, didn’t want to fight about anything. We had a few more weeks, and that would be it. To waste our moments on arguments that didn’t matter felt foolish.
I hobbled over to the couch in the common area and propped my foot on a cushion on top of the coffee table. When I struggled to juggle the heating pad and keep my foot on the pillow, he took the pad from me and laid it across my ankle. I sighed as the warmth seeped into my skin.
“An apology?” I prompted. No boyfriend had ever apologized when he was wrong. And I wasn’t even sure I should consider Pasha a boyfriend at all.
“Yes. I was wrong. I’m sorry. I should have talked to you.”
“About your jealousy or…?” I adjusted the heat on my ankle.
“All of it.” He hadn’t sat down but instead stood poised beside the couch as though he considered fleeing.
“So there’s more you haven’t told me?” I patted the spot beside me, hoping he’d sit close enough that I’d be able to touch him or smell him. The week had passed at a snail’s pace, and I just wanted a hint of the security I’d felt budding with him.
He ran his thumb and index finger along his chin and eyed the couch.
He slouched down into it and put his head back, close enough that I could touch him, that his cologne circled around me.
Without thinking, I ran my fingers through the hair on the crown of his head, thoughtful.
His hair was getting longer, and some of the ends were curling.
“Is your hair curly?”
“Wavy,” he said, his head falling to the side so our gazes locked. “I need a haircut.”
“I like it like this—the hint of something more, just out of reach.”
“Mia asked me to cool it with you.” He picked up a strand of my long hair and looped it around his finger.
“She knows about us?” Was there an us?
“She had to fire Jazz. Your accident was because she was high on stage. In the contract—automatic firing. She reminded me of other words in the contract. She doesn’t know. But she suspects. ”
“Ahh.” I tugged on my slip and crossed my good leg over my injured one.
I’d been employed in situations in which dancers had filed lawsuits because they’d been fired without notice or wrongfully or without cause.
Those legal battles could get messy, drag other people into them, weigh down a production.
“You don’t seem mad at me anymore.” Tenderness and affection were back in his gaze, and the softness of his face warmed my heart.
I’d spent a week thinking he was indifferent, had gotten over our fling with a snap of his fingers. “The way you acted this week really hurt me.”
He winced. “I—I thought I was doing the best thing.”
“I get the Mia part—the job part. Neither of us wants to get fired. But I don’t understand why you were jealous of Ricky. And I really don’t understand why you didn’t talk to me.”
He broke eye contact and laced our fingers together, his thumb grazing one of my chipped nails. “I wish I could talk to you in Russian.”
“It’s that complicated?” I couldn’t stop touching him, having been denied the contact for a week. My hand roamed over his torso and his thigh.
“Not complicated. But—” He glanced at me, and it was like I could see him processing. “When something is important to me, I can’t always find the right English words. The Russian ones come easily. I have to search for the good English ones.”
Was he saying I was important to him or that jealousy as a topic was important? “I used to like it when boyfriends got jealous. I thought it meant they loved me.”
“Jealousy equals love? ”
I smiled. “Yeah. You know, all those emotionally distant men I like so much? Jealousy got a reaction out of them. When they were jealous, I mattered.”
He absorbed my words in silence, not meeting my gaze.
“Not you, though. Jealousy shut you down. I had no idea you were jealous. I thought you didn’t care at all.”
“I care. I care very much. Whatever you decided felt out of my control. I don’t think you should go back to him. But even if I say it, it means nothing if that’s what you want.”
“He’s not what I want. You should have asked me instead of assuming.”
We stared at each other, and I tried to read his expression.
Would he make this misunderstanding my fault?
I couldn’t remember what I’d said in the car on the way to the hospital, but I knew I wouldn’t have said I was taking Ricky back.
The idea of having the debt paid off had been tempting.
For sure. The thought had been fleeting. Ricky didn’t deserve my forgiveness.
“I didn’t think I would like the answer.”
The vulnerability written across his face sliced open my heart.
I hadn’t put the heat on my ankle long enough, but the desire to be close to him was more than the ache in my tendons.
The heating pad slid to the floor as I climbed on top of him.
Straddling him, I cradled his face. “Ask me.” Beneath me, he hardened.
“What do you want?” His voice was rough, his eyes filled with a mix of desire and pain, a combination I wanted to both lap up and soothe.
“I want to enjoy the time I have left with you.” I rocked against him, and he gripped my hips.
“I want you buried inside me every day.” I kissed the edge of his lips and bore down on his erection.
He groaned against my ear, his breath skimming my earlobe.
“I want to watch you dance with Amy and know that you’re mine. Just mine.”
“Amy said she’d keep our secret.” His voice was a rasp, his fingers digging into my ass.
I went still and closed my eyes. He tugged me along his body, his lips seeking mine. I met his mouth, but when he went to deepen the kiss, I resisted.
He drew back and stared into my eyes. “What?”
“You told Amy? You might have faith that Mia won’t fire us, but I am not a believer.”
“I didn’t tell Amy. She thinks something was going on. Not anymore. But before.”
“Did you confirm anything?”
“No, no, no.”
I searched his face. I didn’t think he’d lie. Not about this. But if Amy suspected, we had to be discreet. Two weeks. Fourteen days.
“We can’t tell her. It’s too dangerous to confirm anything.” I glanced at the clock on the far wall. “They’ll be coming back soon. You should go.”
His hands cupped my ass, and he stood up. I clung to him, laughing.
“What are you doing?”
“Putting you to bed.”
“You can’t stay. Amy and Maria will be back soon.” Jazz was gone from this bus, but Maria and Jazz had gotten along well. If they’d been good friends, ratting me out would only strengthen their bond.
He walked me toward my bunk and threw back the covers with one hand, keeping me secured with the other. “Just you. I’ll get the heat for your ankle.” He slid me down his body before depositing me on the bed .
I watched him navigate the bus as though he’d been there, in my life, all along.
When he came back to the bed with the reheated pack, which was wrapped loosely in a towel, my heart contracted at his tenderness.
In all my other relationships, I’d been the caretaker.
None of my partners had ever taken care of me. “Thank you,” I murmured.
He pressed a kiss to my forehead and then a brief one on my lips. “You need to get better. Amy is okay, but I learned to love dancing with you.”
Warmth spread across my chest and then raced down to my core. After a week of minimal contact, I was in withdrawal. “I wish you could stay.”
“Hotels,” he said. “We’ll go to hotels. It’s only two weeks.”
“Once the wedding is over—”
“I know. You go with Sarah Telling. I stay with Mia. We get what we get.” He kissed my temple. His voice was matter-of-fact, as though there was no point in arguing or discussing a future.
The words long distance were on the tip of my tongue.
A ridiculous suggestion, given the hours he worked for Mia.
I wouldn’t be able to leave the tour at any point to meet him somewhere.
Maybe pressing the pause button was a more accurate way to broach the subject.
Would he really want to wait ten months to be with me again? Did I want to wait ten months?
“Tomorrow?” I asked as he headed for the stairs.
“Yes. I will make a plan and give you a note at practice.”
“Are we going to pretend we aren’t getting along?” I didn’t want to assume anything when we were trying to keep things secret.
Pasha paused at the top of the stairs and sighed. “No, no, no. We are just us. Coach.” He pointed at me. “Dancer.” His gaze traveled over me. “I’ll try not to look at you like I want to rip off your clothes. That’s all I can do. ”
“I got you.” I gave him a serious look. “No need to wear clothes to rehearsal tomorrow.” I grinned.
He groaned. “You tease me. The rest of the night, I’m going to—”
“Let that highlight reel play. Don’t worry,” I said, slipping my hand under the covers in a suggestive way. “I’m right there with you.”
His gaze followed my hand, and he adjusted himself. “If I don’t go, I won’t go.”
I opened my mouth to speak, and both our phones buzzed. Taking it out of my pocket, I saw Amy’s name. “Amy just—”
“Entered the stadium gates with everyone else. Tomorrow. We’ll finish this tomorrow.”
“I’m counting on it.”
After he’d clomped down the stairs and exited the bus, a smile rose to my lips. Tomorrow . For the first time in a week, I was looking forward to what tomorrow would bring.