Pointe of Pride

Chapter 29

Carly had always imagined that her final performance with NYB would be a grim, dour night, that she’d spend the day feeling weepy and nostalgic as she prepared to walk the plank, out of the only job she’d ever wanted, and plunge into the depths of the great unknown.

But it didn’t feel like that at all. Okay, she was still weepy and nostalgic, but she didn’t feel grim or afraid at all. She put the final touches on her hair and let another dancer spray it to within an inch of its life, feeling nothing but gratitude for the sisterhood that thrived inside a crowded, nervous dressing room. She lined her false lashes with glue and felt relief that, after tonight, she’d never have to wear lashes again unless she absolutely wanted to, which she couldn’t imagine ever doing. And she danced through her final company preshow warm-up class feeling nostalgic for the days when she could dance with far less pain and fatigue. Her body was telling her that it was time to stop now, and she was going to listen to it.

Because she wasn’t a principal dancer, her retirement performance wasn’t a big public affair. When principals retired, their final shows were hyped up and ticket prices skyrocketed, and when they took their final bows, current and former dancers joined them on stage to applaud their years of service as confetti fell from the ceiling and the audience tossed bouquets onto the stage.

It wasn’t like that for Carly. Catherine gave a short speech after warm-up, and all Carly’s soon-to-be-former colleagues applauded her as she sniffled and tried not to mess up her eye makeup. Then it was upstairs and into the wings, onto the stage for one final performance with her dozens of fellow corps de ballet dancers. Carly took her final bow, not alone at the front of the stage, but in a long line of fellow dancers, shoulder to shoulder with the women she’d worked alongside for the last decade.

When the curtain came down for the last time, the rest of them heaved sighs of relief: the spring season was finally over. Carly watched them filter off the stage and into the wings, all sweaty and tired and eager to begin their two-week break from daily classes and rehearsals. She stayed behind, taking in the stage and the heavy gold curtain one last time. She would be back, but next time she stepped onto this stage, she wouldn’t be a dancer anymore. She glanced up into the rafters, where rows of lights hung below the walkway, thinking about the dozens of ballets she’d danced on this stage, and her chest filled with a sense of fulfillment. She had grown up here, had developed into a person she was becoming proud to be here. And when she returned from her own two-week break, she would keep going.

She’d spent three afternoons a week in Catherine’s office this season, listening and taking notes as Catherine explained her decision-making process for hiring a new choreographer, or walked her through her preparations for the next board meeting. Heather had offered to make Carly a spreadsheet where she could keep track of what she’d learned and what she had questions about, and she had gladly accepted her friend’s help. She wasn’t stuck or flailing. She was moving forward, and she wasn’t afraid.

Back in the dressing room, in between sweaty hugs from the other women, she hung her tutu on the hanger with her name on it and peeled off her lashes for the last time. Makeup free and back in her street clothes, she said goodbye to the last straggling dancers, then started loading the contents of her dressing table and her cubby into a box that she’d addressed to herself earlier in the day. The company would ship it to her later. She pulled a photo of her and Heather, taken during their first season in the company, off the mirror and smiled down at it. A lifetime ago.

She’d just put the photo in the box when someone knocked on the door.

“Yeah, come in,” she said vaguely. Then she glanced up at the mirror in front of her and stared.

Nick Jacobs was standing in the doorway behind her, watching her, a bouquet of pink roses in one hand.

“I thought you were in India,” she said, before she could stop herself. She’d unfollowed him on Instagram, but against her better judgment, she still checked his account a few times a week. He’d been posting images from all over the world, most recently from a magnificent garden in Jaipur, where he’d found prowling peacocks and pink flowers so vivid she could almost smell them through the screen. Hashtag on assignment. Hashtag Vogue.

“I’m not in India,” he stated the very obvious, not taking his eyes off the mirror, off her shocked face. His eyes were bluer than she remembered, his lashes even longer and darker. But the way he looked at her was just as intense, just as all-seeing as she remembered, and it made the hairs stand up on her forearms.

She turned to face him, suddenly furious at him. All these months of silence, and he showed up now? At her retirement performance?

“I’m sorry I didn’t call or text first. I got a last-minute flight here, and then I bought a ticket off a scalper outside. Highway robbery,” he said, with a tentative smile. She kept her face as stony as she could. He had Vogue money now, so he could afford a criminally marked-up ticket to the ballet.

“Okay,” she said stiffly. What the fuck was he doing here? What did he want from her? And why was she so horrifyingly relieved to see him after all this time?

“You’re a beautiful dancer, Carly. I already knew that, but watching you tonight, with the lights, and the music, it’s … you’re a gorgeous dancer.”

“Was. I was a gorgeous dancer. This was my last show. I’m taking a job in the administration next month. I’m moving on.” She glared at him, hoping her meaning was perfectly clear. I don’t think about you. I don’t miss you.

“That’s fantastic, congratulations,” Nick smiled, and she felt her glare waver. How dare his smile still make her pulse flutter like that? How dare he look so happy at her success? “But I’m not.”

“Not what?”

“Not moving on. I mean, work is fine; it’s better than fine. I’m having a good time and taking good pictures, and the response has been really positive for the first two issues. I think Vogue will keep me on for another year, if it keeps up like this.”

“Did you pay a scalper all that money just to rub your success in my face?” Carly interjected. “Because you could have waited at the stage door and done it for free.”

He smiled to himself, as though he’d known exactly how she’d respond to his showing up out of nowhere. The sight of his smile made her stomach swoop with pleasure, which was quickly chased by irritation at how well he knew her. Then an ache. He knew her. He watched her silently and ran a hand over his hair. His hair was a little shorter than it had been in Sydney, and to her irritation, it suited him even better now.

“No, I didn’t. I wanted to see you dance. And I wanted to tell you something, which is that I fucked up and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lied to you, or to everyone. I was insecure and jealous, and I decided that was more important than being honest with people. But I’m not doing that anymore. I’m telling the truth even when it’s frightening, even when I’d rather hide from people. Which is why I’m here.”

Carly crossed her arms and said nothing, so he kept talking.

“I spent all that time in Sydney with you, walking around this place that used to be my home and feeling like I didn’t belong there anymore. And then you left and I realized that home doesn’t have to be one place. It can be two different places, or five. It can be wherever you feel safest or wherever you became the version of yourself you always wanted to be. Or it can be the place it hurts the most to leave. And nothing ever hurt like when you left Sydney. And for a while I couldn’t figure out why, but then I realized it was because I was at home with you.”

Carly had a sudden vision of the lost, confused look on his face the day he’d gone looking for the old photography shop and found a café in its place, and felt her heart squeeze in her chest. She crossed her arms tighter, wishing his words hadn’t moved her at all. She didn’t want to be moved by Nick Jacobs.

“It was just a fling, Nick,” she said firmly.

Except, that wasn’t true, was it? It wasn’t everything, but it wasn’t nothing, either. What she had felt for Nick, what she still felt now, despite all her efforts to move on, it wasn’t nothing.

“And even if we’d had more time,” she barreled on, determined to make her point, “it was never going to last. We had fun, until we didn’t, and if it had lasted any longer …”

She didn’t finish the sentence aloud. If it had lasted any longer, he would have tired of her, would have realized that she wasn’t enough for him. That was the Carly Montgomery story: kind of a lot, but never enough.

“If it had lasted any longer, I only would have fallen deeper in love with you,” he said, taking a few steps into the room, but stopping well short of close to her. He swallowed hard, and she remembered what he’d said about telling the truth even when it was frightening.

Except that he’d had so many chances to tell her the truth, and he’d wasted them all. And now he was back here, just as she was moving on with her life, telling her he still wanted her?

“It was just sex, Nick, okay? And it wasn’t even real sex.” It didn’t even count.

“You know that’s not true. You know what we did was real. It was sex, and it was more than just that. It … it meant something to me. It made me want more of you. All of you.”

“You can’t have all of me. No one can.”

“Not like that. I don’t want you like that. I want you like this. Mad, and stubborn, and making me be better, and making me work to be all the things I want to be. I want you. I want to love you. That’s the truth.”

Carly’s eyes had filled with tears, but she blinked them away, her heart suddenly raw and throbbing like it had been the day she left Sydney. She wanted to believe him—she hated that she wanted to believe him—but she’d believed him before, ignored all her instincts in order to trust him and let him under her skin, into places no one else had seen before. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.

“It’s too late, Nick. You had your chance. We had our chance, and it didn’t work.”

“Carly, please,” his voice cracked a little.

She tightened her arms across her chest and stared at the floor between his feet, too exhausted to yell or stalk away. Too tired to go through all this pain again.

“Just go, Nick. I need to finish packing.” She turned away and went back to pulling photos and good luck cards off the mirror, arranging them carefully in the box so that she only heard, and didn’t see, when he backed out of the room and turned down the hall.

She kept piling things into the box, trying to ignore the tremble in her hands and the ache in her chest. They would fade. They’d faded last time. She’d come back to New York and begun building herself a new life, something she once thought she didn’t know how to do. But she’d done it, just like Heather had. Just like Nick had. He had a new life full of real glamor and real success. All the things he’d pretended to have. He had Vogue money.

But he’d come here to tell her that none of it was enough if he didn’t have her. That he didn’t want to build his new life without her. Carly looked up and stared at her face in the mirror. Even the warm light from the yellow-gold bulbs couldn’t conceal the pink rimming her eyes. She looked like a mess. She remembered what Nick had told Ivy Page about all the photos he’d taken of her. Even the bad ones are good. Even when she was a mess, when she was angry and hurt and storming out of rooms, he still saw her. Saw who she was trying to be, even when she fell short.

It was just sex, she repeated to herself. But that wasn’t true, was it? In only having the sex with him that she really wanted to have, she’d ended up being far more intimate with him than she’d been with any other partner. He hadn’t had all of her, but he had seen all her. He knew all of her. And he still wanted her.

I want you like this. Mad and stubborn.

She was mad. She was mad at Nick Jacobs for throwing himself in front of her luggage cart and making her question everything she thought she knew. She was mad at him for lying to her. And she was so damn stubborn that she’d just made him leave even though she wanted him to stay. Forever.

“Shit,” she breathed. Shit, shit, shit. She loved Nick Jacobs, and she’d sent him away. Classic fucking Carly.

She dropped the card she was holding and turned, running out of the dressing room and down the corridor as fast as she could. The hallways were almost empty, and as she pelted along the concrete floor, a member of the stage crew flattened herself against the wall in surprise.

“Sorry!” Carly yelled, but the woman was already five feet behind her. She kept going until she reached the stairs to the stage door, and took them two at a time, shoving the door with all her body weight and stumbling out onto the side of Lincoln Center Plaza, her pulse pounding in her ears.

There was no one there. The fans hoping to catch a glimpse of a principal dancer, the little girls clutching programs and waiting for autographs, had all gone home. Carly ran out into the plaza and looked up and down Columbus Avenue, desperate to find him before it was too late.

“Nick!” she yelled at a distant figure. “Nick, wait!”

A second later, the figure slowed, then stopped and turned. Carly ran, faster than she’d ever run toward anything.

She stopped a few feet from him, panting in the middle of the sidewalk. He watched her, a guarded hope on his face and the flowers still in his hand.

“I’m sorry,” she said, when she’d caught her breath. “I’m sorry. I should have heard you out at the wedding. I should have heard you out back there. I have a temper, I don’t know if you’ve noticed.” She paused, chest still heaving, waiting for him to say something, but he didn’t.

“I have a temper, and I’m working on it. I’m working on only getting angry at the people who deserve it. And not getting angry when I’m really just scared. I want to try that again, and hear you out this time.”

Nick stared at her for a long moment, his face unreadable, and as she watched him she felt all the adrenaline of the run drain out of her, leaving her empty. Finally, he spoke.

“You can’t,” he said decisively.

“Can’t what?”

“You can’t hear me out. You once told me that the easiest way to get you to do something was to tell you that someone, somewhere, had made a rule saying you can’t. So, Carly, you can’t.” The side of his mouth lifted in a tiny, cautious smile.

Carly let out half a sob, and she took a step toward him. “Watch me,” she said, with her best attempt at a glower. It was hard to glower when relief and hope were threading through her body, filling her chest like cool water.

Nick stepped closer, and she could smell his cologne, spicy and warm and unmistakably him.

“I’ve taken so many photos in the last few months, and people seem to love them,” he said, his voice quiet but steady. “But I can’t stop looking at the photos I took of you. The photos we took together. I have so many photos of you that I’ve memorized your face. Every freckle, every frown. Did you know you have six different kinds of frowns?”

“I do?”

“You do. Six of them.” He held up his hand and started counting on his fingers. “The I need coffee frown. The I don’t understand frown. The I understand but I don’t like it frown. The this guy is being a jerk frown. The I wish I hadn’t yelled quite so loudly at the jerk frown.”

Carly smiled. Why did he have to be like this? So perceptive, so intimately acquainted with all of her, even the worst of her? A few months ago, she would have hated it, but now, she didn’t know how she’d ever lived without it.

“That’s only five frowns,” she pointed out. He chuckled, and the sound demolished any remaining anger. She had missed that sound more than her pride had let her admit.

“Well, the sixth is my favorite, so I saved it for last. It’s the I hate Nick Jacobs but I really want to kiss him frown. I’ve seen that one a lot. You’re wearing it right now,” he said quietly.

She took a step toward him and saw hope flicker across his face as she moved. He had seen the worst of her, and he still wanted more. He still wanted everything. Brow furrowed, she searched his face, drinking in the sharp cheekbones and soft lips and endless blue eyes, and she knew. She wanted everything, too.

“You’re wrong,” she said stubbornly, taking another step and putting a hand on his chest. “You missed a frown. This isn’t the I hate Nick Jacobs but I really want to kiss him frown. It’s my I like Nick Jacobs and I demand to kiss him frown.”

Nick reached out and put a hand on each side of her waist, pulling her to him. “That’s awfully pedantic of you,” he murmured, looking down into her face with a cautious smile.

“Not pedantic, per se, just precise,” she corrected, and before she could say another word, he kissed her. She smiled against his mouth and opened her lips so her tongue could meet his, and he sighed as her fingers found their way into his hair. His lips were just as soft as she remembered, his mouth greeting hers like the last few months had never happened. But they had happened, and they’d taught her that even though she could fend for herself, she wanted Nick in her life. In her arms, in her bed. By her side.

After a few minutes, or possibly an hour, they broke apart and smiled at each other. Nick twisted one of her curls around his finger and pressed his forehead to hers.

“I want you, Nick Jacobs,” she whispered, and the relief at finally saying the words she’d been fighting for months made her want to dance.

“And I want all of you,” he whispered back. “The insecure parts, the scared parts. The parts you think aren’t good enough yet, I want it all. I want to love it all. I want you, Carly Montgomery. You’re the best kind of challenge. And I love a challenge.”

He ducked down and briefly pressed his mouth to hers again, as though he was afraid she would vanish if he didn’t keep kissing her.

“Where are you staying?” she finally asked.

“Not staying, actually. Living,” he said, with a tentative smile. “I can keep traveling if I want to, but I told the magazine I want to come home for a bit. And as long as you’re here, here is home.”

“You got a place here?”

“A short-term corporate rental, near Penn Station. It’s kind of sterile, but it’s convenient.”

“And what about that offer to shoot with me again? Does that still stand?” Carly felt an intoxicating sense of possibility gathering and swelling in her chest. He was here. He was staying here. For her.

“I don’t see why not. Where do you want to go?”

“Anywhere. Everywhere.”

“Then let’s go anywhere and everywhere,” he said, bending down to kiss her again. “But first can we go back to your place?”

She smiled up into his stupid, handsome face, the face she’d memorized and wanted to wake up to tomorrow morning. Every morning.

“Yes, let’s go back to my place. My parents had a bottle of unbelievably expensive champagne delivered, and I can’t drink it alone.” She took the flowers from him and slipped her hand into his. He was watching her avidly, drinking her in. “Well, I can do it alone, but I don’t want to.”

“I’ll pop the champagne—make yourself at home,” Carly said as she led him into the apartment and flicked on the bright entryway light. When he didn’t move, she set her bags down and smiled at him expectantly, waiting for him to step further into the apartment. Instead, he stood a few feet away, cataloging every inch of her. Her flushed cheeks, her strong legs, her lean, freckled arms. Her incredible hair, fiery and unruly, but not nearly as fiery and unruly as she was. His breath was short in his chest, and not only because of the five flights of stairs up to her apartment. He’d felt short of breath the whole ride home, holding her hand in the back seat of the taxi, resisting the urge to release it and run his fingers up her thigh, even when she placed their clasped hands on top of her leg and arched an eyebrow at him invitingly. He’d waited months to see her again, to touch her again, he’d told himself. He could wait a few more minutes.

But he couldn’t wait now. Not when he’d spent all those weeks wishing for her. For the silk of her inner thighs, the sharp catch of her gasp. The way she kissed and came like she did everything else—with her whole body and without restraint.

Nick stepped towards her until their bodies met, and kept moving until he felt her lower back hit the wall gently and Carly’s surprised intake of breath melted into a moan.

“What are you doing?” she asked coyly, as if she wasn’t already arching against him, tipping her head up until her lips were mere inches from his.

“Making myself at home,” he murmured, and before he could say another word, she captured his mouth, kissing him slow and deep. As if they had all night, and even longer than that. And Nick let her take him, let her kiss him and pull him harder against her. Let her welcome him home.

He’d thought he’d missed her before. He had felt the ache in his gut every morning and had dragged it around with him every day. That was why he’d told the creative director he needed to stay put for a while, and he’d bought a ticket to New York, and then a ticket to tonight’s NYB performance. Even though he didn’t know if Carly would ever talk to him again, he just needed to be near her. He’d thought he’d missed her, but as she kissed him now, as she pressed her lips against his neck and he heard her breathe him in, he realized that it had been far more than mere missing. He had not truly felt like himself in his skin when she was so far away, and when he hadn’t known if she felt the same way about him. He had needed her. He was going to need her for a long, long time.

Eventually, Carly broke the kiss and leant her head against the wall, looking up at him with sparkling, mischievous eyes. “Feeling at home yet?”

“I should probably see the bedroom.”

She raised her eyebrows, then reached up to nip at his lower lip, and she might as well have run her hand over his crotch.

“It’s through there,” she tipped her head slightly, and a second later he’d scooped her up and was striding down the narrow hallway as Carly giggled and clung to his neck. He shouldered the door open and dropped her unceremoniously on the bed, relief and joy and need thundering through him.

Carly kicked her shoes off and scooted back, and Nick removed his shoes as fast as he could without falling over. A second later, he had joined her on the bed and covered her body with his, relishing the gasp she let out as he rolled his weight on top of her. She felt perfect beneath him, her muscles tightly coiled and her skin soft, and he felt himself get almost painfully hard as she wrapped one powerful leg around his lower back and pinned his hips against hers.

He propped himself up on one hand, freeing the other to snake lightly up her bare leg, loving the tiny whimpers that escaped her when his fingers brushed the satiny skin of her inner thigh. Forget champagne. He wanted to get drunk on that sound. He wanted to devour it, drown in it. He let his hand continue, pushing the hem of her shirt away and tracing the lines of muscle around her hip bones, feeling her squirm and arch beneath his teasing fingers. As his hand climbed higher, playing with the band of her bra, he lowered his face to the place where her neck met her shoulder, caressing the long slope of straining muscle with gentle presses of his lips, swirling swipes of his tongue, and tender nips with his teeth. The whimpers were louder now, more insistent, and with every one he felt his cock harden and press against the front of his briefs.

“Please,” she gasped, and he smiled against her skin. So impatient, his tiny American cyclone.

He lifted his head so he could look into her face. “Please what?” he asked, with a teasing smile.

She met his eyes, her lips parted and her breath quick.

“Please touch me before I die.”

He smiled, tracing his fingers up over the swell of her breast, tracing them lightly, slowly, over her hardened nipple, feeling it bead even tighter through the thin fabric. She gasped and then groaned, and pressed her head into the pillow until her ribs flared and her flesh pressed into his hand.

“You’re not going to die,” he murmured, repeating the movement with more pressure this time.

“Fuck,” she groaned, arching into his hand again, one hand clutching at the bed sheet and the other grabbing a fistful of his shirt. “Then please touch me before I kill you,” she growled, and he grinned. So impatient. So passionate. So imperfect, and so perfectly Carly. How could he refuse?

He ran his hand over her ribcage, feeling her muscles shift under his palm as he slid it downward until he reached the waistband of her shorts. His hand trembled slightly as he worked the button out of its hole and got hold of the zipper, and he’d just pulled it all the way down when Carly put both hands on his chest, pushed him onto his side, and kissed him hungrily. For a moment, her hand was buried in his hair, her nails scraping lightly, maddeningly, against the suddenly tight and sensitive skin of his scalp. Then it ran down his body and mimicked the motion he’d made a moment ago, unbuttoning his fly and sliding his zipper down. He moaned into her mouth as his cock throbbed and strained, desperate for her inches-away touch.

For a moment, they stayed like that, lips playing and tongues searching, his fingertips brushing against the top of her panties and hers trapped gently under the waistband of his briefs. Her skin was smooth and warm, but her breath was ragged and hot, and she broke the kiss and pulled her head back on the pillow, meeting his eyes as she slid her hand past his waistband and wrapped it around his cock. He hissed with relief and need, and he saw triumph flicker in her warm brown eyes as she began to stroke him slowly. Two can play that game, he wanted to say, but all that came out was a moan, and besides, actions were better than words. He slid his hand into her dampened panties and ran a careful finger up between her drenched folds, and she answered with another intoxicating whimper and a wobbling, distracted stroke of his cock.

He repeated the motion, pulling even more wetness into his fingers and towards her clit, so that when he drew a slow, light circle around the tender bud, it was slick and slippery, the most arousing thing he’d ever touched. She gasped and pressed her forehead against his, tightening her grip on his cock and stroking him firmly from base to tip, sending electric pleasure rocketing up his spine. He answered by pressing the heel of his hand on her clit, freeing his fingers to gently stroke her folds as he gave her circles of pressure and she ground a slow, insistent rhythm against him.

Nick closed his eyes against the sensation, overwhelmed by the feeling of her hand on his cock, her breath on his cheek, her drenched pussy in his hand, her forehead on his. He heard nothing but her moans and sighs mingling with his own as she stroked him, smelled nothing but her arousal and the smoky rose scent of her skin. Nothing but Carly, the impatient, exhausting, unpredictable human hurricane who made him want to scream and laugh and come all in the same breath.

“Shit, Nick, don’t stop,” she gasped, rolling her hips against his hand and stroking him faster. He wasn’t going to stop. He didn’t ever want to stop, he thought, as his breath quickened and he felt his release gathering at the base of his spine. He never wanted to stop taking photos of her, never wanted to stop waking up with her, or kissing her, or making her gasp and moan like this. He leant forward and kissed her, sweeping his tongue into her mouth, knowing that it was too soon to say all that, not when they were starting fresh here in New York. But one day, he’d tell her. He’d show her every day until she believed it in her bones. Carly whimpered against his lips, and at last he felt her whole body tense and then tremble as her orgasm broke over her. Her hips bucked against his hand, but he followed their motion, making sure his hand never left her as she rode her climax, gasping and shaking against him. A second later, he came so hard that he saw white spots, emptying himself into her hand as he kissed her clumsily, desperately.

Her hand stilled against him, and they lay facing each other, their panting the only sound in the dimly lit room. Legs loose and exhausted, they slowly came back to their own bodies. Nick looked across the pillow at Carly, whose eyes were closed and whose chest was still rising and falling deeply as her breath steadied. He studied her face, tracing the constellations of freckles on her cheeks and nose, and the firm, expressive lines of her brows, and the full, flushed pink pillows of her lips. He leaned forward and pressed a careful kiss against them, and she sighed contentedly. Nick extricated his feet from hers so he could stand up, and returned a few seconds later with a handful of tissues. She watched as he wiped her hand down and tossed the damp wad into a bin in the corner of the room. When he climbed back into bed, she whispered her thanks and scooted towards him until her face was nuzzled into his neck.

Nick held her for a long time, feeling her breath on his collarbone, her ribs expanding against the side of his body. He listened to the sounds of the city beyond her window, the honking cars, the distant rumble of the subway, the occasional shrieks of Saturday night revellers. It sounded nothing like Springwood or Sydney, nothing like Munich or Paris. It sounded nothing like any home he’d known. But then Carly breathed another happy, sated sigh against his skin, and hummed quietly as he pulled her closer, held her tighter. And he knew he was home.