CURTAIN CALL: Driven Dance Theater Romance Series Book 1 (Standalone)

by Brianna Stark

  I wake up knowing what those words were. If I only could fall back to sleep and tell her everything. But the sound of a truck reversing in the alley behind my window, a honk, and loud cursing remind me that sleep is a lost cause.

  I wander the streets on an espresso high. After calling Sterling, who doesn’t answer, there is no one else, no one other than my “director.” My eyes have been leaky all morning despite the crisp and sunny Spring day. I’m wearing my big bug-eye sunglasses. I sit in a shop and watch the people bustle by. A golf ball pushes its way up my esophagus when an elegantly dressed woman in a crème-colored coat smiles at the barista and reaches for her daughter’s hand, asking her what she would like. I wonder, if I ever had kids, could I still be a dancer? The answer seems too obvious. That’s when I remember I probably won’t be dancing much longer anyway. But what if I did keep going until my knees gave out? It would be my choice, and a life without dance sometimes seems like a life not worth living. Sadly.

  Ever since my mom passed away, the thought of settling down and having kids makes my guts rot, but when I look into a future which may not include dance, as Sterling would say: it’s like I’m being birthed out of a perpetual dark hole butt first.

  Because I am bored and in a depressive, nostalgic mood, I think of the one person I do owe a call to, even if that person doesn’t want to hear from me. I lift the phone to my ear and dial.

  “We never talk about mom.” It’s the first thing I say, and the voice I hear in return is friendly and much more even in tone than the emotions it’s stirred up in the past.

  “Karen and I have been worried about you. You haven’t called in months. Where are you, Branwen?”

  “New York,” I say casually, even though I know it will shock him. Six months ago I was the longest standing soldier in camp Raina Freehurst on the other side of the continent.

  “I thought you hated New York.”

  I do. Well, at least I did. Karen, worried about me? Please. I scoff.

  I take a deep breath and slide a finger under a large, round lens to swipe at a rebellious tear away from my eye.

  “I keep thinking about mom.” I swallow the thickness in my throat. “Because I can’t picture her face anymore and she was the only one who believed in me. Did you know she used to tell me I was special? She told me all the time, and—I can’t hear her voice anymore.”

  “Your mother loved you,” he sighs. “Very much.”

  “You should come to New York and visit me, come see me dance.” I hold my breath.

  “You know I would, honey, but Michael just moved up in the league and I take him for practice every day. God, it costs a fortune too, you wouldn’t believe how recreational sports eat up every last cent around here. No vacations anymore. Oh, and Abby is still figure skating. She just won a very big competition. I told you that, didn’t I?”

  I suck in a cool breath. “Never mind, I have to run.” I bite down on my lip and hang up. My heart is achy, and my fingers are trembling. I don’t know why I give a shit. I am a grown woman. I have my own life. Driven is my life.

  The weekend is a long, painful chore, and by Monday I can’t wait to get back to work. I miss everything about the studio. E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. No matter what, I have to keep dancing. There is no way I can stop now.

  It’s busier than usual at the studio. Everyone is getting ready for the dreaded fundraiser tonight.

  My name is chicken-scratched on the schedule along with Wendy’s name—Driven’s massage therapist— and the words mental health day. Apparently each dancer gets one a year, and they have the option of missing rehearsal and going for a massage instead. It’s kind of like rehearsal’s version of coffee class. Londyn is eyeing me behind a rack of outfits.

  Cory is intensely pep-talking a small group of apprentice dancers, their hands planted on their hips as they nod. Daniela whispers into her phone, looking over her shoulder. Londyn waves me over.

  “This one was made for you, babe.” She hands me a dress. I change in the washroom, since there are quite a few people around. The washroom is in the same hall as Kent’s office, and I hesitate before I take a deep breath and keep moving. But Kent steps out of his office at the same time, and my heart skips. Then a woman in a suit follows him. She places a French manicured hand on his shoulder and kisses him on the cheek. I turn away, hoping they don’t see me. But it’s too late.

  Kent stops. The girl looks at me and looks back at him.

  “Branwen?” He addresses me.

  “See you tonight,” the woman says to him. She leaves in the direction of the elevator while straightening her skirt. I keep walking away, even though my director called me over.

  “Branwen.” Kent says my name again, and I walk faster in the opposite direction. I keep moving. But he catches up.

  “Branwen,” he says again. “What’s wrong?”

  I turn around with a rush of air and cross my arms over my chest. He looks down at the dress, clears his throat, and pauses.

  “You look incredible.” His eyes flicker with warmth, and it sizzles through me at the thought of our last exchange. There’s a visceral thing that happens between us. It’s seeing me like a blind person all over again, and this time we aren’t even touching. Though I still haven’t answered his question.

  “Who else have you taken to Cayman?”

  The open look on his face turns to hurt. And he reaches for my wrist and pulls me back down the hall into his office. He is watching me as I watch him; it’s a stare-down. He lets out a harsh exhale.

  “I have never taken anyone else to Cayman. Why would you think that?” He pulls away to pace the room. He can’t be much older than thirty. The stress of this company has to be killing him. Then I let out a chuckle. I can’t believe I let myself fall for anything that Daniela says when I know what she is like. Of course no one else has been to Cayman.

  I reach for the back of his arm, and he turns toward me and scoops me up under the butt, forcing us right back against the white wall where his mouth closes down over mine. His full lips push mine apart, and his hands hold my cheeks steady in his palms. I slide my fingers through his hair to the back of his head, holding his face close to mine. We skip through all the hesitant steps that got us here.

  The kiss is hot and hungry and roaming into places I have never been before as little moans slip from the backs of our throats and our breath becomes lost for air. I let my fingers slide down across his prickly jaw to his chin as the kiss becomes all tasting each other. And it’s glorious, but burdened by the weight of everything hanging over our shoulders.

  I can see my fate written all over the white walls.

  He’s your director. How does this look?

  The first strike of that lead ball to my solar plexus:

  Boom.

  You should really think about curbing the dance.

  Boom.

  Your mother loved you.

  Boom.

  Knee replacement.

  Boom.

  This is your last shot at a leading role in the city that banished you, and the company is going into default because of you.

  I try to drown myself in his mouth so I don’t have to think. I could get lost in here, really get lost and forget about everything, at least in my mind, because that lead ball keeps coming. Dark, warm, wet, as juicy as fresh fruit—there could never be enough.

  Boom. Boom.

  I wrap my legs around his waist and shut my eyelids harder, trying never to be found.

  From where his thumbs are hooked over my hips, his hands slide up my sides. His mouth is covering mine as I push back, tasting every corner. He is every corner.

  “I want this off.” His lips murmur out his ragged breath under mine. His eyes fall on my dress. H-o-l-y shit, did he just say that?

  Our lips meet and pull apart—only so we can breathe—our chests pulse, in and out, as our lungs race, and I look into his eyes. They are dark, and it seems that he wants to become lost inside of me just as badly as I want to
get lost inside of him. I reach for the zipper behind my back, which is just low enough to find with my fingers. Then I stop.

  “There’s just one thing I have to ask you.” I try to breathe, and his molton focus forces itself off of my body and into my raw eyes.

  “Who was that woman, and did you know about my past—about Daniela and my… mom—when you hired me?” There’s a burning pressure taking residence behind my eye sockets. “I guess that’s two questions.”

  His eyes turn five shades darker and tension spreads through every muscle in his body. He stares at me with a doom-filled look. “She’s a friend.” His nostrils flare, and my arms drop to my sides.

  My eyes slice into his, and he doesn’t fight me. He doesn’t say a thing. “I should go. I don’t want to ruin you for your date.” I pull in a shallow inhale. Dizzy.

  He swallows, his Adam’s apple dipping low in his throat and coming back up for air. The back of his neck tenses as our eyes lock, and I wrap my fingers over the knob of the steel door.

  “Branwen, there’s no date.” His muscular chest sinks. “And what are you talking about you and Daniela? What’s wrong with your mom?”

  “She died. Cancer.”

  His whole being fills with remorse. “I’m so sorry, Branwen.” He looks sick.

  “It was years ago.” I let go of the knob.

  “Still,” he says, and then pauses, deep in thought, before he speaks his mind again. “I have not been the most professional with you.” There’s that tension in his eyes that’s been there since the day we first met.

  “But I have feelings for you. I mean, you are not the one who pursued me, and anything that has happened has been completely mutual,” I negotiate. Anything to pull us back on track and from the doomed topic of professionalism, but he is slipping from me.

  He lets out a sigh. There’s heaviness in his eyes. But there is no answer. “I scheduled you for a session with Wendy today.” He scrubs the back of his neck.

  “I saw that,” I say, and there’s a silence as though we have both run out of things to say or there is nothing to say. When his desk phone rings, he gives me one last penetrating look as he answers it.

  The buzzing in the foyer has taken on a tone of subtle madness. It’s not just the constant low vibration of Patrick Moss’s atmospheric electronica. It’s the buzz of bodies shifting, running, rolling, trying on, purring, and gliding; the constant hum of idle chatter, and then there’s the buzz of all the things that can’t be seen. There’s a blur of activity in the room. My weight falls into my hands as I sit down on a concrete block.

  “Dress.” Londyn reaches out her hand to me as she races by in her striped Bally sneakers and vintage eyeglasses.

  I look up, half-dazed. She slides a pen out from between her teeth and eyes me. “This dress is wrinkled.” She gives me a knowing look, which I ignore.

  “Nina Ricci. Hello, people,” Sterling mouths in Londyn’s shadow as he struts by, strumming on an air guitar. Though I highly doubt this dress is designer.

  All I can think about is… all I can… ok, haaa… I am losing my train of thought. It’s just so noisy in here… Where was I? Right.

  The heaviness, the achiness that has been growing behind my ribs and hanging over me like a boulder has nothing to do with dance at all. Yet, the only thing that is in my control is my performance, if my knees don’t give out before I make it there. And what the hell am I going to do with my life?

  Boom.

  After stepping into my tight black suit, I sit down on the concrete floor in the corner because the couch in the dancers’ lounge is taken as always and the floor is closer.

  My back hits the wall as I slide down onto my bum and press my forehead into my knees. Maybe I do need a mental health day—either that or earplugs. It would be nice to go home, and I don’t mean the beat-up, tiny apartment I share with Liz in Chinatown. I want to forget about everything in this building altogether, to have no dreams, desires, or expectations, to curl up and close my eyes and surrender to nothingness, to a future that isn’t dependent on painkillers and therapy and being forced to stillness. Stillness. I think of the beach, the waves crashing in the Pacific, my mom swinging me by the arms as I throw my head back in laughter. Nothing has ever been carefree in my life after that. I think of Kent wearing his shoes on the beach, and the look on his face when he finally took them off and let his toes sink into the sand.

  Then I remember the massage with Wendy I had been scheduled for today. The dancers are collecting themselves by the doorway to the studio, adjusting their tight black suits around their thighs and their hips. It’s that time again. My guts churn.

  I could still go home, or to that massage. Kent issued me a mental health day. The steel door swings open as Cory peers his head through from the other side into the lobby. One by one the dancers file in, flirting and mingling. I could go for that massage, but like a tsunami, Kent paces through the lobby and into the studio, his eyes piercing the ground and his mind already five steps ahead.

  I could go for that massage, but… I can’t miss one single frigging rehearsal.

  I just can’t.

  18

  “Looking sloppy, people,” Katherine shouts over the music. Robert’s fingers slam down on the white keys.

  Knees pulled UP.

  Tailbone down.

  Chin pointing to a forty-five degree angle—eyes straight ahead into the mirror.

  Front, side, back, side.

  Higher. Higher. Higher.

  Sterling hangs out in the air before running off the floor.

  Katherine waves me on.

  Front, side, back, side, lift, lift, lift.

  The hard floor thunders under my feet, pounding in my knees.

  Open, close, open, close.

  She claps her hands in the air as I push off the ground.

  Push. Push. Push.

  Higher. Higher. Higher.

  My name is chicken-scratched next to Kent’s in a square box on the schedule. My heart squeezes and—shit—I am supposed to be there now.

  Kent is leaning against the barre, typing on his phone in a black jacket with Buddy Holly glasses tucked in the collar.

  He looks up from his texting and draws in a deep inhale. I try to conceal my excitement about our private rehearsal, because if nothing else, it’s the dance that really connects us. When words fail. Then I think about the way his face lifted when he sank his toes into the sand, and a few times after that when I saw a glimpse of the real him. Cayman wasn’t all bad. There’s true Kent and director Kent. One I could melt into, and the other, so fierce, I have the utmost respect for. Although I’m confused by the combination, he is the one who has to live in that head.

  “Rehearsal’s canceled.” He clears his throat and slips his phone into his pocket. His face lights up, just a bit. “You and I need a bit of normal.”

  I take a second look to make sure I heard him right.

  He pushes himself off the barre, clears his throat, and opens the steel door with one strong arm. There’s a twinkle through the half-open doorway in his eyes as he brushes a stubborn strand of brown hair behind his ear.

  Normal, huh? I look at him funny while exiting the studio with raised eyebrows, and the corner of his lips curl up into a lopsided smile. I’m digging the tone already when he adds, “As in, we live in the burbs, have two-and-a-half kids, a cat and a dog, and work nine-to-five jobs.”

  “My worst nightmare.” My eyebrows waggle in disbelief, still not really following the insanity. He smiles again, and I realize that in this vision, we’re married. Holy shit.

  “Oh, and I’m not your director,” he adds.

  “No way. That would be weird.” I wrinkle my nose, and he laughs.

  After I change into a pair of boyfriend jeans and a cropped black tank, smudge black liner around my eyes, and shake my hair out of the knot in the change room, we meet downstairs. Normal? I shake my head in disbelief as I quickly check myself out in the mirror.

 
We drive for an hour and a half to New Jersey. I look out the window admiring the trees in full bloom and the bustle of New Yorkers who have shed their winter clothes as I ponder Kent’s words.

  “If we have a house and two-and-a-half kids, does this mean you’ve made an honest woman out of me?” I try to hide my smile when Kent’s eyes tense and his knuckles whiten on the wheel. I could have fun with this, and playing a game might be what puts me at ease.

  “Of course.” He flashes me a look, and as his hands grip the wheel, the corner of his lip lifts up lazily before he returns his gaze to the road. Holy crap. I swallow.

  When we arrive at our destination, Kent opens the door for me and takes my hand. I give him another funny look in response, biting down on my lip.

  We walk through the crowd, where no one knows us. I can’t help but stare at Kent. He looks so much younger when he is relaxed, and I would have never imagined this side of him existed. Between that and the uncharacteristic ball cap he’s wearing with the Ray-Bans he traded in for the Buddy Holly’s and a white T-shirt, he’s hard to get used to.

  “You are so much crazier than I thought.” I shake my head. A few locks of hair are poking out the sides of the red and blue cap, and he gives no indication that he knows what I’m talking about. He walks up to a vendor, and we make small talk in the line-up. I’m playing along, not that I think this is normal at all.

  He cocks a mischievous brow, and I zip my lips together, trying not to laugh. It’s just that, well… he said we were doing normal, but he looks anything but normal to me right now. What if he is doing this for me? How flattering would that be?

  He nods at this freaky-looking horror house ride and arches a brow, asking me if I want to give it a go, and I steer him in the opposite direction, shaking my head. But all the rides are the type that will make me sick, suctioning me to the wall and spinning me in a fast circle, the kind that will drop me out of the sky and leave my stomach behind. Maybe the super high merry-go-round, but not likely. I am afraid of heights—not that I would tell Kent, considering how he pushes my buttons.