LUKA (The Rhythm Series, Book 2) (35 page)

Yveta raised an eyebrow.

“Who will keep your Judy Garland posters safe?”

And she mimed clawing like a cat, while Gary blanched.

“You wouldn’t!”

“Goodnight, Gary,” she laughed.

He muttered something under his breath, but whatever it was, he wasn’t brave enough to say it out loud.

We all left the pub at the same time, Ash pushing Laney’s wheelchair, so at least he’d have something to hold onto as he weaved his way along the sidewalk, laughing at something she said.

Bitter envy bubbled through me again as Gary and Oliver left hand in hand.

“Come,” Yveta said softly, linking her arm through mine.

She was only a couple of inches shorter than me, and in pumps, she was statuesque, to say the least, but such a beautiful dancer, you didn’t notice her height. Ash said she’d been an amazing Las Vegas showgirl until . . . the evil happened.

For the last eight months, she and Gary had rented a small apartment together, a couple of blocks from Oliver’s new studio. They were good friends, having become close through darkness and despair, and then learning a new way as they joined
Syzygy Dance Theater
. I wondered if Ash truly knew how his vision had given us all hope, a reason for getting out of bed in the morning.

We didn’t talk much as we walked. I kept seeing things that made me think of Beth, although every waking thought was already tuned to what she might need or want or think. I noticed a store that sold baby clothes, and saw a fluffy toy rabbit that I thought she’d like. I decided I’d come back tomorrow when the shop was open.

“It’s going to be okay, Luka,” Yveta said, tugging lightly on my sleeve. “Things seem dark now, but day always follows the night.”

I smiled at her, watching the play of streetlights and shadows on her sharp cheekbones.

“When did you become such a philosopher?”

“Living and working with screw-ups,” she smiled. “It’s my specialty. I started with myself and
voila!
”

A cold breeze whipped off the lake and she shivered. I pulled her in closer to me, wrapping my arm around her shoulder.

“Do you hate Sarah?” she asked suddenly.

Her question should have caught me off balance, but I’d been asking myself that a lot lately.

“Yes. No. Sometimes, yes. But she’s Beth’s mother, so . . .”

Yveta nodded, understanding.

And there was something else.

“I’ve been thinking of pulling out of the show,” I said carefully, trying to measure her reaction.

She inclined her head toward me.

“Why would you do that?”

“So I can be in London. For Beth. My lawyer said I don’t need to be there for the paperwork to be approved, but . . .”

“But?”

“If I’m here, I’ll see her twice a year. Arlene, my old boss, she said she’d always find work for me. It wouldn’t be this . . .” and I waved my hand around, vaguely indicating the show, Chicago, my friends.

“You think you have to choose: one or the other, so you don’t look for solutions. Your expensive lawyer makes you panic.”

“No, you’re wrong,” I said roughly. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“Luka, this isn’t a race. Beth is forever.”

I rubbed my face with my free hand.

“You don’t get it! I’m missing so much every day that I don’t see her! I know you don’t like kids . . .”

Yveta looked offended. “Why do you say that?”

“I just thought . . . um . . . well, you never seem interested when I talk about Beth.”

“Babies aren’t interesting to talk about,” she shrugged. “They eat and poop and sleep. Every parent thinks that their child is the most beautiful, the most talented, the most amazing pooping-machine that ever existed. It’s boring, listening to all that.”

“That’s my point,” I said drily.

“
My
point is that it’s the parents who are boring, not the children.” Her face softened. “Children are honest. Brutally honest. Like animals. Animals don’t pretend to like you.”

“Um . . .”

“Yes, if they take you into the pack, you are accepted, part of them. They fight among themselves, but still protect the pack, you know?”

“You have a unique way of viewing the world,” I grinned at her.

She nodded, smiling to herself. “I know.”

We walked in silence, lost in our separate thoughts.

“I hate the men who raped me,” she said suddenly. “But I also know that hatred is a pointless, wasteful emotion. I don’t forgive them, but I try to make them irrelevant to me.”

“Is it working?”

“Yes. No. Sometimes,” she said, smiling as she echoed my words. “I have another question for you: do you hate Seth?”

His name froze my breath. I tried so hard not to think about him at all.

“Ah,” Yveta said, her voice soft. “I see.”

“What do you see?”

“You love him.”

I shook my head. “No. No, I don’t. I despise him!”

She shrugged. “One coin, two sides.”

We didn’t speak again after that. Yveta seemed completely relaxed, but I was pissed. At myself, mostly, but also at her, for making me face my most secret thoughts.

God, she was ruthless, wielding the sword of truth like a fucking Cossack.

When we reached her apartment, I looked up and was surprised to see it blazing with lights.

She raised one shoulder at my questioning gaze.

“Gary leaves the lights on for me. I’m afraid of the dark.”

My anger crumbled at her stark admission.

“Do you want me to come in with you?”

“
Spasibo,
Luka,” she said gratefully.

I had to smile when I walked into the living room. Hardly a square inch of wall could be seen behind Judy Garland posters.

Yveta smiled. “They’re cheerful, yes? Even though her story was sad. Gary likes the colors. I don’t mind.”

“I think I’d get a headache looking at these all day.”

She turned to the iPod on the corner table, and the soft notes of Dami Im’s
Sound of Silence
floated from hidden speakers. It was one of the songs we were using in the show, the story of a relationship breaking down.

“Dance with me, Luka.”

“This song . . . it hurts.”

“I know.”

She held out her hand, and I reached for her. She spun in toward me, then leaned back in a graceful backbend. It was contemporary, a rumba, beautiful in its simplicity and severity.

We danced together, our bodies telling a story of love and loss, burning hearts and breaking hearts, music reaching out through the silence of despair.

Then the song came to an end, and we held each other, our hearts racing.

I felt selfish holding onto Yveta, but I wasn’t ready to be alone again.

“You don’t have to go,” she said, as if she’d heard my thoughts. “You can sleep in Gary’s room. Better than Ash and Laney’s couch, I think.”

“Can I stay with you? Just to sleep?”

She smiled and nodded.

“Yes.”

We got ready for bed in silence. Yveta handed me a new toothbrush and we brushed our teeth, standing side-by-side in the bathroom, our eyes meeting in the mirror.

Her bedroom was a cool, white space. There were no posters or decorations, just one small photograph of Yveta dressed in a leotard, standing next to another girl who had a dancer’s body and long, brown hair.

“Who’s that?”

She didn’t even glance at the picture.

“Galina.”

“Your friend.”

I’d never seen a picture of her before. She was beautiful.

“Yes. More like my sister. Family. Like you and Ash, I think.”

Galina had been murdered in Las Vegas. Every night when we danced
Slave
,
we told her story.
No one had ever been charged.

I stripped down to my briefs, and turned my back while Yveta changed into a long, baggy t-shirt.

Then she climbed into bed and flipped back the sheet for me, an invitation.

I slid in, carefully keeping my body away from her as she turned off the light, a soft glow from the hallway pushing back complete darkness.

I heard the sheets rustling, and she laid her hand on my arm.

“Hold me?”

I rolled onto my side and pulled her gently to my chest.

She snuggled into me, her hands clasped in front of her, her head on my shoulder as my arms wrapped around her waist.

She sighed with contentment, and I let my body relax.

We were two lonely people who recognized each other’s loneliness, a mirror image that showed the empty ache inside.

I held her through the darkness.

I held her all night.

“ARE YOU SURE
you’re ready for this?”

Was I? Yes and no.

When something means so much to you, it becomes all consuming: all you can think about, talk about. You dream about it and it haunts each waking moment. But it was the
after
that haunted me.

I nodded briefly as the music began.

The Viennese Waltz has a simple structure. The rhythm is
1
23,
1
23, with the accent on the one. The Natural Turn is a basic figure consisting of six steps where dancers turn to the right and progress down the line of dance. Closed Changes are a series of steps to transition between Natural Turns and Reverse Turns. There’s the Fleckerl, where dancers rotate on the spot, and the Contra Check. And that’s it.

Except it’s not.

You have to
feel
the Viennese Waltz. It has the fewest steps, but the most emotion. And I know that’s a contradiction, but it’s true. And at this moment, I feel the same.

The ache inside me is so deep and so painful, it’s almost the only thing I can feel. It’s simple, and it’s dark.
I miss my princesa
—because she is the light.

I fell in love with her the day she was born. I never could have imagined how this tiny human being took over every waking breath in my body, but she did.

So this dance, here and now . . . for me it expresses everything that I have lost.

The piano introduction begins for Steven Curtis Chapman’s beautiful song
Cinderella
, and I step onto the stage, facing Chloe, my partner for this dance.

She’s small, almost childlike, tiny. Only five feet tall. She has a lightness and joyousness about the way she dances. But she’s not a child: she’s a woman of 23, hard-working, gifted and graceful. It was a lucky day when she auditioned for us.

But it’s not Chloe that I’m seeing. In my mind, I’m staring at my daughter, my beautiful Beth.

She smiles at me and I take her hand, pulling her gently into my arms as I gaze into the warmth of her eyes.

And I feel it, that incredible weight of responsibility that I’m powerless to claim. I feel it in every bone in my body as we glide across the stage.
I should be with her.

The aching beauty of the music, the depth of feeling in the lyrics slay me.

I need this innocent love in my life. I need my daughter to know that she has a father who loves her. A world where I can be the first man she loves, the one who holds her and teaches her and shows her how amazing the world can be. A father who protects her and keeps her safe, because the world can be dark and dangerous, and bad things can happen to princesses.

And she won’t be a child forever. She’s already growing so fast. I don’t want to miss her first word, her first step, her first day at school, her first love, her first broken heart. I want to hold her and comfort her, and let her believe that her father can do anything, fight anyone.

Even her mother.

And the emotion is overpowering, and I can’t see because tears are clouding my eyes. Chloe senses my faltering steps, and with the lightest of touches, she guides me gently across the stage.

And I don’t have much, but I have this. I want to be the one to teach her the joy of dance. I want to be there for all her firsts. I want it to be me. I can’t fail in this.

And in that moment, with the motif of the clock striking midnight, I decide. I’ll fight for my right to be fully involved in my daughter’s life. Not some part-time parent who visits twice a year, sending expensive presents from across the ocean. To hell with her mother! To hell with her grandmother! I’ll fight them all! I
am
a fit father. I took care of Beth when no one else could or would, and they took her away from me. Because of a promise I made to someone who betrayed me.

To hell with her uncle.

I will fight!

Faster and faster, we spin around the floor, lost in the music, lost in the dance, the burn of passion heating us from our hearts, blood pumping through our veins.

More than my own life
. I love my daughter more than anything in this cold, hard world.

I didn’t remember finishing the dance or leaving the stage.

Ash pulled me into a fierce hug.

“I love you, brother.”

I nodded blindly, wiping the tears from my eyes, a new determination in my heart.

“Listen to that!” he said gruffly, turning me toward the stage. “Listen to them cheering! Go take your bow!”

Chloe grabbed my hand and towed me onto the stage. I presented her, then bowed low, the blood rushing in my head as I heard the yells and cheers.