Page 17 of Guarded Hearts
I did five more reps before Tyler helped guide the bar back to its resting place. My arms were jelly, and the ache made me happy. Whether I picked up steps or stepped on toes in the next half an hour, I wouldn’t care at all.
I stumbled again and cursed under my breath. Mia frowned and pursed her lips. She was clearly holding back some sort of comment. Pushing past my limits in the gym right before coming to dance was a terrible plan. Unsustainable. My body was wobbly from exhaustion and strained muscles. I was looser than I’d been the other day but far from precise.
“Uh.” Alyssa turned away from us. “That was close, Pasha. Just like, a bit more of a shift in the hips.” Unlike yesterday, there was no demonstration. Her tone wasn’t even convincing.
She hadn’t met my gaze since I arrived almost thirty minutes ago. Mia, a good reader of body language, picked up on our vibes and had made more than onewhat the hellgesture.
Next practice would be better. Every practice, we’d get more used to being around each other. Maybe my problem was because I wasn’t around herenough. Could that be the solution? Spend more time with her, not less, and my desire would decrease with familiarity. Any sexual attraction I felt toward Mia when I first started working for her was long gone. She was my little sister now. Perhaps that was the ticket with Alyssa as well.
I missed a step, and a string of Russian curse words flew out of my mouth. I’d taught most of them to Mia, and she burst out laughing at my colorful choices.
“Okay,” Mia said, pretending to wave a flag. “We’re done for today. I’m waving the white flag for you, big guy.”
I grimaced. We were leaving North Carolina tonight, and I had to rearrange the guarding schedule for the next few legs of the tour. Some of the guys on the team had family in the next state and wanted time to see them. A reasonable request.
Normally, I didn’t mind taking on extra shifts and quite often worked more than I needed to. But I was going to need every spare moment to master these steps in three months. Basic footwork was still an issue after three sessions, and I wasn’t any closer to nailing anything with confidence. Without the basics, I couldn’t progress to any of the other steps Alyssa had choreographed.
“Yes, yes,” I said. “You have to go.” Our schedules were synced on my watch, so I always knew where Tyler, Mia, and Victoria were or were supposed to be.
“I gotta go,” Mia agreed, grabbing her towel and water bottle. “But I’ll catch up with you later. You’re on duty during the concert, right?”
I gave a curt nod and began packing my things. Mia thanked Alyssa for her time on the way out the door. When the latch clicked into place, the air grew thick with tension.
Did I mention yesterday? Apologize? Tell her I couldn’t decide if I should be spending a lot more time with her or never see her again? This was the in-between, and I didn’t like the tension, the longing, the constant awareness of her presence in a room. I had to push us in one direction or another—never together again or all the time, like family.
Which direction was the best?
Alyssa sucked in an audible breath. “So, um, Jazz has some swing dance background. I haven’t asked her yet, but I’m sure she’ll be okay with spending some time with you.” Her words came out in a rush.
I raised my head and examined her. Of all the people she could have suggested on the tour, she picked the one person I could not stand spending any time with. I barely tolerated her now, and I made sure to hardly see her. “No one else?”
Her shoulders rose, palms splayed toward the ceiling. Her brown eyes, a sucker punch to my gut, were filled with unease. “I—I don’t know. I can ask around. But I wasn’t sure how Mia would feel about me potentially giving away details.”
Mia was in top-secret mode. Every person she talked to was given an NDA before Mia opened her mouth to utter the wordwedding. The engagement had been splashed all over social media, and her fans clamored for details about when they’d seal the deal. She’d hired the same wedding planner as Ellie Cooper-Burgess, a famous actress. Mia had watched a million clips of her wedding to Wyatt on YouTube. According to Mia, they’d achieved the perfect balance between romance and spectacle. If that was the aim, I supposed it was good to have a mentor.
I also realized Alyssa was right.
“No, no, no.” I rubbed the top of my head. Mia wouldn’t want more people knowing details of the wedding, even something as trivial as her dance routine. Not that Mia would see any detail as trivial.
Never being alone with Alyssa again wasn’t going to solve my dancing problem. So I supposed I had to suggest the alternative. “Will you still help me? Every day? For a long time, every day?”
Her eyebrows shot up, and her lips formed anOof surprise. “Me? Every day? For a long time?”
“Yes.” More words were on the tip of my tongue, but they were being muddled with Russian ones, as though I didn’t know my own mind. “Maybe you don’t have so much time.” Hope rose in my chest, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted her to say “yes” or turn me down. I needed her to say “yes,” but I couldn’t decide if I wanted her to.
“Oh, um.” She bit her lip and twisted her ponytail around her finger. “Every day?”
I nodded. “Yes, if you will.”
A complex interplay of emotions ran across her face and settled on something that resembled annoyance. “But yesterday, you asked me to find you someone else. You acted like—like you didn’t want what happened between us, and I mean, it was pretty clear you did.”
I puffed out my cheeks and wished I could think faster in English. The words were there in Russian, and I could find the equivalent in English eventually, but when I was flustered, the search was painstaking. “I’m sorry. Not again. Won’t happen again.”
Her lips twisted. She picked up her water bottle and squirted it into her mouth. “Yeah, well, I’m sorry too. Maybe I read that whole thing wrong. I shouldn’t have read anything into the episode at all.” She kept her eyes averted. “My ex-boyfriend told me he didn’t have any control over the things his dick wanted. His brain wasn’t in control.” She grimaced and threw her bottle in her bag. “I’ll help you whenever I can, and you know, I’ll behave professionally, okay? I won’t jump you again without your consent.” She laughed. “Now that’s a sentence I never thought I’d utter—heard it a few times, though.” She held up a finger asshe slung her bag over her shoulder and opened the practice-room door. “See you tomorrow.”
I watched her go with a sinking sensation. I wanted to stop her, to call after her, to tell her I had wanted her, still wanted her, and she had no reason to be sorry. But I shouldn’t stir the hot coals between us. Best to let the fire be smothered with the monotony of routine, of familiarity. Only a matter of time before the sight of her didn’t cause this sharp twist in my gut. Time was all I needed.
Chapter Eight
