Game of Hearts (Stacked Deck Book 3)

by Emilia Finn

  Lucy

  Fail

  “No, can you…” I frown and, instead of trying to explain, move his hand so he can grab me where I want. “Higher. You can get rougher, I’m not gonna break.”

  “This is our first time.” His words are a stammer, due to nerves, but his voice is still silky-smooth, and seductive enough he could probably make money working for phone-sex lines. “I’m trying to be a gentleman,” he chuckles shyly.

  “I don’t need a gentleman. I need results.” I grab his hand and slap it onto my ass so hard that my skin sings. Then I grab his left hand, place it on my bare stomach. We’re both sweaty, both panting, because we’ve been going an hour already, and still, we’ve yet to reach the climax. “Just do it already. If you won’t, then I’ll find someone else who will.”

  “You’re grumpy as hell today.” With a scowl, Rudy waits for the pulse of the music, he waits for the cue we’ve been training for all afternoon, then he lifts me, high, high, high above his head, and lets me tumble down so fast that the g force makes my stomach roll.

  As choreographed, he catches me a mere inch before I slam face-first into the floor, and my breath echoes off the timber, brushing against my lips as it bounces back.

  “Better, grump?”

  “Fucking epic!” Soph walks across the room with a skip to her step and a little booty wiggle just for fun. “Yes, Luce. You’re right. That lift is way better than what we had.”

  “Told you.” I crawl out of my dance partner’s hold and fix my ponytail. “Yours was good too, but this whole number is about drama, right? It’s like thunder and lightning. It’s about power and possession and passion, right?” I walk toward the mirrors, snatch up my water bottle, and take a deep swallow. “It’s about obsession, so we can’t do sweet little sways and smiles. We need the tug and pull. It needs to look almost…” I consider. Shrug. “Nonconsensual, in a way.”

  “Edgy.” Her eyes gleam with approval and a side of what I could swear is pride. “You might get haters for it.”

  “I already have haters.” I slam my bottle closed and toss it to the floor. “I’m at a point now where I don’t give a shit. I’ve watched my family’s social media blow up my whole life. Every time they post something, no matter how innocuous, someone is gonna find something to be offended about. It helped me realize that I don’t care about other people’s opinions.”

  “No one’s?” She lifts a brow. “Really? Twenty years old, and you’re already world-weary?”

  “I care about my family’s opinions,” I admit. “I care about my friends’. I care about yours. But I don’t give a damn about people I don’t even know.”

  “Well, shit.” Grinning, she takes my hand as I move back across the studio, and places me beside Rudy.

  He’s like a puppy dog. The best puppy, because despite his comments today, he never complains. He never bitches about my sporadic hours, or the fact that some days I can only do an hour, and others, six or seven. He answers my calls, turns up when I tell him to, and when I ask about his blind obedience, he only says that he enjoys dancing with me. He likes watching my brain tick while I choreograph, or switch off completely as I dance. He likes watching my process, even if it comes only after I call him in much the same way a guy might call an insecure girl at two in the morning for convenient sex.

  He never says no. He drops what he’s doing, and gets his ass to the studio within minutes of my call, because he knows when I’m feeling it, he has to move fast to harness whatever the hell “it” is before it flitters away on the breeze.

  “Alright.” Soph grabs Rudy’s hand and brings him to me, then places us in our first position.

  I start in third, with my feet a little crossed, one arm poised in front of my hips, the other to my right. And behind me, Rudy’s feet are positioned the same as mine, but he holds my hips, because this dance is about possession. It’s dark and controlling, sexy and fiery. And apparently, might gain haters.

  “I like what you’ve got, right up to the lift.” Soph steps back, studies us while we remain in character. My head is down, my shoulders down, so I see her feet and legs, but not her face. “I like the lift, I like the drop, but before he drops you, before you roll down, can we try a pirouette, then arabesque?”

  My eyes widen. “Both?”

  She nods.

  “In the air?”

  Again, she nods. “Rudy will hold you up. I want to see those legs.” She meanders forward, and though she’s not dancing today, she still points her toes as she moves. “The dance remains as is; one, two, three, one, two, three, then I want the lift. The way you’re doing it, you go up, then come straight down. But I want you to show off those legs first. Left leg support, right leg out.” She claps her hands. “Show me, on the ground first. Rudy, step back a sec.”

  Without a single word, Rudy steps back in black tights, pointed toes, and grinning eyes.

  He loves me the way friends are supposed to love each other, and if someone on the “outside” was picking on me, he’d probably step up in my defense, but when Soph picks on me… I see his metaphorical bucket of popcorn.

  “Start,” Soph commands. “Start in first, work through it. Show it to me so we get the flow, but then I want the extras. Pirouette, strong legs, then arabesque, get it high. If it’s not at least as high as your head, then I’m gonna snap your legs and get a new dancer.”

  “You’re a jerk.” I scowl, but I back up to give myself room to move.

  “Oh, I forgot to ask,” Soph says before I start. “You haven’t confirmed for December. They need to know.”

  “Um… yeah.” My stomach drops. “I can’t do it this year. I’m busy, so…”

  Sparkling, almost black eyes narrow with suspicion. “You’re busy. You’re fucking busy? Are you kidding?”

  “You know Stacked Deck is on, Soph! You were right there when Smalls made the announcement.”

  “So?” She throws a hand out. “Just because she’s fighting, doesn’t mean you have to. You don’t have to be a good little sheep every single day of your life, ya know?”

  “And you don’t have to be so damn abrasive every single day of your life. I can’t make it this year, okay? I already said. I’m busy.”

  “You’re busy building your cousin’s dream. You’re busy building Blair’s dream. But you so easily ignore your own?”

  “It’s not an important showcase, Soph.” I turn away from her, point my toes and prepare to launch into the dance I’ve spent more than a year choreographing in private. “It’s just…” I shake my head. “It’s not important.”

  “They will have representatives from the two leading dance schools in this country.” She grabs my arm when I try to step into my routine. “Lucy!”

  “I don’t wanna go to school! I don’t wanna go to Juilliard. I don’t want to leave this town. Ever.”

  “Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get their attention! You can dance, Kincaid. I have students walk through my doors every single day, and I went to a school full of prima ballerinas. What you have is special. You might not want to join them, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make yourself known.”

  “Why would I?” Forgetting my pose, I slump and look into her eyes. “Why make myself known if I can never go there? It’s teasing them, and it’s teasing me. So what’s the point?”

  “You know,” her tone softens, “you’re allowed to shine for you, and not for your name. You’re an amazing fighter, and you look so beautiful under those lights, but you’re allowed to shine elsewhere too. It’s not a crime to step out of everyone else’s shadows.”

  “I don’t want to.” I turn my gaze away. Elongate my neck. Lift my chin. “My future is already planned. It’s full and beautiful and makes me content.”

  “Getting a degree you don’t want?”

  My fiery eyes snap to hers. “I want to become a nurse.”

  “Oh please.” She laughs so hard that I startle and jump. “You want to be Blair’s nurse. You’re so terrifie
d of something happening to him that you’ve gone to school for years to learn what to do in case something goes wrong. That’s all fine and good, I’d do the same for Jay, but there’s no way in hell you want to work at the hospital. You don’t want twelve-hour shifts on your feet. Not if you could swap those twelve hours in sneakers for ballet slippers instead. We both know where your heart lies, but hey, if you wanna tell fibs to make yourself feel better…”

  Her brow rises. “Or maybe you’re scared. You know yourself when fighting. You know you’re good enough. It’s hardly even fair for the others at this point; that makes you a trophy collector, entering tournaments and divisions you know you’ll win, because you care more about the shiny statue than you do about the lesson.”

  “I’m the opposite of a trophy collector! I have a million already, I don’t want or need more. And I’m not afraid.”

  “Ya know, I think you are.” Taunting, Soph taps her bottom lip and starts walking laps in front of me. “You win in fighting, it’s easy, so you do it, and while you’re doing that, you hope Mac might notice you. But dancing is scary and new. You might not win, and Oh god! How mortifying, someone might count your trophies and know you’re missing one.”

  “I grew up in a home full of egotistical men who taunt each other with the express intention to get a reaction.” I drop my posture completely, and shake my head. “I will not bite at your third-grade mockery. You’re insane if you think I’m stupid enough to fall for what you’re doing.”

  “Fine.” She flattens her lips and turns away. “You’re right. I was being juvenile.”

  “Yes, you were.”

  “Forget I said anything. Show me the pirouette, then the arabesque. My threats remain; get that leg up high. Impress me.”

  I hate that she makes me question myself. That she’s probably right about everything, that I really don’t want to work shifts at the hospital, and that I’ll always prefer ballet slippers over sneakers. I hate that she so easily sees through me, when I’m not sure even I could see those flaws.

  Soph turns toward the stereo without saying anything else. She picks up the remote, and presses play. With nothing more than a flick of her wrists – a flick that makes my stomach hurt, because I’m certain my denials just cost me the respect and approval of one of the few on my short list of people whose opinions I care about – I time my moves, wait for my chance to fly, then dart forward with the pirouette playing in my mind.

  Three hours after I walked into Soph’s studio, I lay back on the timber floor, and pant from exhaustion. Rudy lays out beside me, chest heaving, sweat and bottled water dribbling along his face and chest, while Soph merely whistles on her breath and leaves the room with a smug grin.

  She worked me until Rudy supported my arabesque, and because I wanted so much to earn back the respect I’m certain I lost, I tried extra hard. I damn near tore my groin muscle to get my leg as high as she wanted it, but when I got it there, her high-five was enough to erase the cramps from my stomach.

  “She’s gonna ride you until the showcase,” Rudy pants. We lay head to head, so I only have to turn my face to see his right there. “She wants to show you off.”

  “I can’t do it.” I shrug and take another sip of water. “I can’t ditch Stacked Deck. Not now that it’s so close.”

  “You said you don’t care about the trophies. So why fight?”

  “It’s not my fight.” Guilt. Desperation. Perhaps a dash of betrayal swirls in my blood. “I can’t ditch Mac. He works so hard for it, I train him. That would be like Soph getting me ready for this thing, then ditching on the day of and telling me to figure it out on my own. Mac needs me.”

  Even if, I think to myself, he won’t admit it.

  Or maybe he does admit it. He just doesn’t indulge in it.

  “It’s impossible. If he wins this year,” I add hopefully, “then maybe next year, I can do the thing Soph wants.”

  “You’re putting your own dreams on hold for others…”

  “Am not,” I growl. “It’s called compromise. It’s called not being a selfish jerk.”

  I push up to sit on my butt, only to nearly hurl when Mac dashes through the studio doors with none of the rage or denial he wore yesterday. He looks like the old Mac, the younger, freer, crazier version, which somehow makes me happy and panic at the same time.

  “Mac?”

  He was smiling, but when his eyes lock onto me and another man lying on the floor, they change. Rage, jealousy, suspicion. In jeans that frame his legs in the most annoyingly delicious way, and heavy boots that always make my knees shake, he starts walking toward me again, but it’s different. Gone is the boy that I fell in love with, and back is the man that is always bitter and angry.

  Sighing, I push off the floor, because I refuse to meet him when I’m all the way down here, and he’s up there, looking down his nose at the pathetic girl that throws herself at him.

  When Rudy, who’s carried and lifted me constantly for hours today, grunts, I turn with a smile and extend a hand to pull him up.

  Mac stops two feet away in the same breath that Rudy’s chest hits my back. And maybe Rudy is teasing, or maybe the universe compels him to do so – or hell, maybe he’s lost his damn mind – but just like in practice, his hands go to my hips.

  As do Mac’s eyes.

  Rudy pulls me close enough that his breath tickles my ear.

  And Mac’s eyes go to the fluttering strands by my face.

  “Who are you?” His voice is like the crack of a whip. Dangerous, loud, and as possessive as I want Rudy to be during our dance. “Who the fuck are you, G, hanging out in here with no shirt, but with your hands on her hips?”

  “Mac,” I sigh. “Quit trying to be a thug. What do you want?”

  “I want you to not be standing against him, for starters. After that, I want you to step the fuck aside so he and I can chat.”

  “You’re going to need to stop speaking that way in front of her,” Rudy snaps back. “Mind your manners, guy, or there’ll be trouble.”

  “Are you bringing that trouble?” Mac steps forward so fast that Rudy bounces back.

  It’s not about being a coward, or being weaker. It’s a natural survival instinct when someone like Mac, with that unfettered rage bubbling over, steps forward.

  But I skipped that survival gene when I was born. Or perhaps I worked it out of my system in all of these years of knowing him. Sweating with him, training, bleeding, and crying with him.

  I step forward so we clash with a slam, but with fisted hands, I press them to his stomach and hold him back. “Mac Blair, I swear to Christ, if you bring your bullshit to this place, I’m going to disown you. Dance is my thing, remember?” I stare up at the underside of his jaw, wait for his eyes. “This is my thing. If you ruin it…”

  He stares at me. Clenched jaw grinding back and forth so hard that I wonder why I can’t hear it. There are no dimples today, because those are reserved for smiles.

  “I want to talk to you,” he grits through clenched teeth. “Alone. You and me. Tell your friend to leave.”

  My heart throbs. Swells. “Do you wanna talk about yesterday?” Hope surges in my blood. “Are you willing to discuss that?”

  He shakes his head long before the word passes his lips. “No. That’s not up for discussion.”

  “And your word is final?” I work so hard to mask the pain in my voice. The smile he wore in here, before he saw Rudy. The bounce to his step. The hope he gave me without words. “My opinion isn’t considered in this?”

  “No. Because your opinion is flat-fucking-wrong.”

  “Man!” Rudy steps forward, slamming his chest to my back, and wrapping his arm around my stomach to pull me back. “You’re a fucking douchebag.”

  “And you’re inserting yourself in something that’s none of your damn business. Leave, dancing boy. Put a fucking shirt on, and never come around here again, or I’ll break your fuckin’ leg and make it so you never dance again.”

 
“You’re Mac,” Rudy growls. “You’re him.”

  Mac looks to me. Smug. Grins. “Told him about me?”

  “She told me you were a prick,” Rudy jabs. “That you don’t see what’s right in front of you, and that you can’t fight unless she holds your hand, because you’re too much of a damn coward to stand on your own two feet.”

  Mac jumps. Like a tiger, he leaps over me and slams Rudy to the floor with a boom.

  I spin with the intention to wade between them and end it, but a cocking gun makes all three of us freeze.

  I look to the door. To Soph, standing with wide legs, with what appears to be a fully automatic assault rifle poised at her eye. It looks terrifying, though I know for a fact it holds paintballs, not bullets. But beside her, Eric watches with folded arms and a lifted brow. He wears a real gun on his thigh, another on his hip, and for the hell of it, I bet he has another in the back of his jeans.

  “Get off him, Macallistar. Now.”

  “Soph!” Mac’s voice is loud, roaring even. He looks to Eric in search of an ally. “He was talking shit.”

  “I heard him.” Eric’s forearms flex and swell with adrenaline. “I’ve been standing here since you told Bean her opinion is universally wrong. Shitty move, by the way. Every smart man knows that’s not how you de-escalate a tricky situation.”

  “She is wrong!” Mac snaps. “She’s fuckin’ wrong.”

  “Well, seein’ as I don’t know what she’s wrong about, but I do know her, I know she’s smart as a whip and has stolen thousands of dollars from me because she’s never wrong in a bet, I’m gonna go out on a limb and suggest you’re mistaken. Back the fuck up, Blair. Give the dancer dude some space. If you hit him, I’m gonna be forced to take you out. After that, I’ll tell your mom you were being a dick to Bean.”

  “Cap! Fuck. She’s wrong, he’s touchin’ her, and I’m the one getting your bullshit. I just came here to speak with her!”