Chapter 5 #2
She looked at Colt, who looked like he wanted to die due to intense humiliation. “I’ll just go,” he muttered.
Wren gripped his forearm, holding him in place. “I’ve been dancing all my life, and I can promise you that many professional athletes start wilting after just ten minutes practicing one of my routines.”
“That I’d like to see,” Penn retorted, his tone mocking.
“Dancers are incredibly strong,” she said, hoping to convince him.
“He needs to train with the new doc here—”
“I’m not a trainer, neither am I the new doc,” Dane said through gritted teeth. He lifted his hands and shook his head. “Jesus, I thought men had moved on.”
Colt grimaced, and Penn flushed.
Don’t provoke him, Dane!
Wren tried again. “There are quite a few boys in the class—”
Penn’s stubborn expression didn’t shift. “You can dress it up however you like, Miss Dunlop. I know what I see. It’s girly, for God’s sake.”
Lovely. Toxic masculinity on full display.
Dane looked at him, looked at her, and his eyes narrowed. He folded his massive arms across his chest, the cords in his strong neck bunching. “Do you consider me girly?” he growled.
Penn lifted his hands, confused. “No.”
Where was Dane going with this? His smile had absolutely no humor.
“I enlisted, went to college, briefly served, and then joined Humanatus Global Relief. I have seen and done things that would make you shit your pants. I know my way around an M5 and a scalpel, and I can return fire while amputating a leg.”
Colt turned white, and Penn gulped.
“Uh…” Penn murmured, also looking confused. He lifted his hands. “Thank you for your service?”
Dane rolled his eyes, moved toward the door, and opened it. The song had changed, but the kids were still dancing, oblivious to the tension behind the door. “So, I’m going to take my highly non-girly ass, and I’m going to join Wren’s dance class. Are you going to join me, Colt?”
Wait … what? No, hold on, this was a dance group for teenagers, not for hot guys in their mid-thirties and the human equivalent of an icy margarita on a hot day. She could, maybe, cope with a room of teenagers, but Hot Doc? Uh, that would be a solid no.
Penn looked equally flummoxed. “You’re going to dance?” he asked, making it sound like Dane was going to drown puppies. Jerk.
“Yes, and I’d like Colt to join me.”
Penn narrowed his eyes at Dane, thinking. “Okay, here’s the deal. He can continue to attend dance class as long as you do. You bail, he does, too.” The manipulative asshole! Penn’s smile turned nasty. “And I don’t see you lasting more than a session or two.”
Dane tipped his head to the side, and Wren expected him to back down. He might suffer through one class, but a series of them? That was asking too much.
“Deal.”
Penn held out his hand to seal the deal, and Dane shook it. A little shocked and very over Penn and his BS, Wren looked at Colt and caught him mouthing a “Sorry” at Dane. Dane shrugged and smiled. Poor kid, he couldn’t help it if his dad was a dick.
Knowing the kids were waiting, she gave Dane a long up-and-down look, which wasn’t, let’s face it, any hardship. “You can’t dance in flip-flops, and your clothes aren’t suitable for dance class. Loose is a lot better.” She took in Colt’s combat pants and rangy T-shirt. “You’ll do.”
She gave Penn her iciest look, the look that stopped superstars in their tracks. “I am wasting time out here. Let’s move on, shall we?”
Penn’s eyes didn’t move off Dane. “I’ll wait here to see if you return or not.”
Colt straightened his shoulders and managed to meet his father’s eyes. “Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure I’ll still be straight when I get home later, but you never know.”
Penn turned puce, and thinking the man might pop a vein, Wren put her hand on Colt’s back, opened the door to the studio, and forcibly pushed him inside. “You, start dancing.” She turned back to look at Dane. “You, go change and get back as soon as you can. I’m not waiting for you.”
She then slipped into the room without a backwards glance, allowing the door to slam shut, smiling when Colt did a decent bounce and sway. The boy had rhythm.
* * *
What the fuck was he doing?
Had he lost his mind?
He’d raced home, changed at a superfast speed, and raced back, slipping into the dance studio fifteen minutes later. And true to his word, Penn had waited. Without acknowledging him, Dane walked inside the studio to be hit by ear-splitting music and Wren’s surprised look.
So she’d thought he’d leave and not return? To be honest, he could think of ten things he’d rather be doing, but then he remembered how Penn had sneered at his son and the mockery in his eyes. It had hurtled him back to his childhood and teen years.
Besides, there was the whole pesky issue of keeping his word…
Dane rubbed the back of his neck and, ignoring the kids’ curious glances and sniggers, he took his place at the back of the room between a girl with pale blonde hair and Colt, both of whom looked like they knew what they were doing.
“Have you … up … doc?”
Fifteen plus pairs of eyes turned to look at him, and Dane realized that Wren was speaking to him. He pointed to his ear, silently telling her he hadn’t heard a thing she’d said. Could she not lower the volume a little? So that he could think?
Colt shuffled closer to him. “She wants to know if you warmed up!” Colt shouted in his ear. Dane nodded, although it was a lie. Yes, he heard her comment about dance being athletic, but he was fit; he’d be fine. How hard could it be?
Wren’s narrowed eyes suggested she knew he was lying, but she shrugged and moved from side to side and bounced at the same time. She made it look so easy, but his feet refused to cooperate. And because he dipped when everyone else rose, he knew he wasn’t on the beat.
“We’re doing some basic hip-hop moves,” Colt said, dipping and rising with absolutely no thought or effort. “She’s trying to get a baseline of our skill levels.”
He had none. He knew this. The last time he’d danced—if you counted the slight swaying he did with Clare—was at their wedding years ago.
Clare had wanted them to go to an instructor to practice their wedding dance, but he’d thought he’d rather do basic training twice over. Somehow, he’d been spared that torture.
Their marriage had been as good as his dancing, and it only took a year for her to have an affair. Soon after their divorce, he joined Humanatus and left for his first disaster in Haiti.
Shaking off the memory, Dane stopped, waited for the beat, and tried to shuffle and dip at the same time.
God, his father would laugh his ass off if he could see him now.
Actually, that wasn’t accurate; he’d lose his shit.
He’d ask him what the hell he thought he was doing, that he was an embarrassment, and was he suffering from an overdose of estrogen.
To be fair, a part of him was questioning what he was doing.
Yeah, he’d made the impulsive suggestion to join Wren’s dance class because Penn was being an old-fashioned dick, but this wasn’t who he was, what he did.
He was on a forced break, and he’d promised his boss and the Humanatus shrink that he’d work through his mild PTSD on his own and that he’d recover from burnout from spending time in nature.
His father, judging by the email he’d received from him two days before—Dane had blocked his number years ago—had heard about his forced vacation.
The email was so short, he could recall it verbatim.
From the report in front of me, I’m told you’ve been ordered off duty due to PTSD. I don’t get it. You were never under sustained fire. Never close enough for explosions to rattle your eardrums. Some discomfort? Maybe. But danger? No.
Pull yourself together. Trafford men are not this fragile.
Trafford men are not this fragile. Maybe he was, but there was also a good chance the General was built out of titanium. Dane shook off his father’s words—he was an unempathetic asshole—and tried to make his arms sync with his feet. Impossible.
The truth was that his lack of structure and having too much time were killing him.
He had nothing to propel himself out of bed every morning, no adrenaline, no role to make him feel useful.
Without his work, he felt irrelevant. He worked out, morning and evening, because at least he could say he’d done something, achieved something, made good use of his time.
Disaster zones made sense to him: outside was chaos, but inside his theater, he could compartmentalize, perform, and stay composed.
The quiet terrified him because it allowed space for emotions to bubble and rise.
And also because it focused the spotlight on him.
He could handle blood, gore, and grotesque injuries, but not stillness.
So how had he, being emotionally distant, let himself become involved in a kid’s life, committing himself to a dance class? And why was he fascinated by that curly-haired dynamo at the front of the room?
He looked over the heads of the kids at their fearless leader, who looked, as she should, entirely in her element, like she was born to dance.
She twisted her feet in and out as she travelled sideways, and the rest of the room followed instinctively, most of them immediately nailing what he knew was a simple dance step.
He crashed into the girl on his left, his big size-thirteen trainer squishing her much smaller foot. She grabbed her foot and hopped around.
“Oh, shit, are you okay?” he asked, bending his knees to look into her face. “I’m so sorry.”
Her shoulders were shaking. Was she crying? Oh, God, he’d made a kid cry. He thought about placing a hand on her shoulder, thought better of it, and sent Wren a help me look. Luckily, she was looking in his direction. Unluckily, she cut the music, and everyone in the room turned to look at them.