Page 46 of Guarded Hearts
With my index finger, I traced a line down her arm, and she nestled in, her leg thrown over mine. This hotel was one of the nice ones. For the last week, I’d been giving her notes at practice, supposedly from Mia about wedding details. Amy hadn’t questioned the slips of paper dropped into Alyssa’s bag. Each one listed a time and location for us to meet.
Today, we were in a hotel three blocks from the stadium. I wasn’t working the concert, so we’d escaped the minute the show got underway. While I’d never been much for drama, I couldn’t complain about the adrenaline rush from sneaking around. Of course, if we got caught, I might feel differently. I’d overheard a conversation with Mia’s lawyer earlier today that had stopped my heart.
Mia, Taryn, and Rebecca had been on a conference call with the lawyer over Jazz’s firing. The dancer went on a social media spree yesterday, hinting at some discord between her and Mia. A small media outlet had picked up the whiff of a wrongful dismissal claim.
On the phone, the lawyer had been laying out Mia’s options if Jazz escalated the attacks, and he’d used me as an offhand example.It’s not like Jazz is your Russian man there. Can’t just ship her back to her country when she gets out of line.Mia had laughed and said she wasn’t shippingany Russians back either. Without missing a beat, the lawyer had said, “You would be if he broke his contract. He’d lose his visa.”
Although I’d known that reality existed, hearing the threat spoken out loud had caused a cold sweat to break out across my back.
“You’re very quiet.” Alyssa glanced up. The curtains were open, and the lights from the street played across her face.
“How was physio today?”
“Actually, really good. Emika said if I keep improving, I should be able to make Sarah Telling’s tour rehearsals after the wedding.”
“Three more weeks.”
“Yeah,” Alyssa whispered. “Three more weeks.” The air around us grew thick.
Part of me wanted to ask her whether three weeks would be enough. But I didn’t know what I could promise beyond the wedding. My job was following Mia around the world—a slave to her schedule. Alyssa’s job was dancing on tours, in stage productions, music videos, and the like. Yesterday, she’d shown me all the videos she’d been in. So, last night on my break, I’d bookmarked my favorite ones to watch whenever I thought of her.
“Do you think Mia and Tyler will have more kids?” Alyssa eased away to stare at the ceiling.
“Yes. Someday. They’re good parents.” I put my hand behind my head, and she turned on her side to face me. “Do you want kids?”
“Someday, maybe. When my dancing ambitions are done. Kinda hard to do what I do pregnant.” There was silence for a beat before she said, “And you?”
“Someday, yes.” Zoya and I had talked about kids a lot. Names picked out. Her life hadn’t been the only one that had ended.
“What happened to her?” Alyssa’s voice was hushed in the darkness of the room. “If you don’t want to tell me…”
No one in America knew Zoya’s story. Mia and Tyler knew her name and that she’d died suddenly, but they’d never pried for details I hadn’t offered willingly. Therapy had helped to deal with the shock, the blame. Could I tell her all of it without breaking down? If I didn’t try, I’d never know. “She’d never been on a plane.” I cleared my throat. The story felt like it was being dragged up from the depths of my heart. “For her birthday, I bought her a ticket. Small plane. Only two seats. Local pilot. Supposed to fly her over all the places that were special to us.”
I rubbed my temples. The details were easy to remember, but each detail was attached to a memory, to an emotion, and each of those tore at me, like a stitch being stretched a little too much.
“I drove her to the airstrip, kissed her goodbye, watched the plane rise into the sky.” I raised my hand to show the steady ascent of the plane, and my voice cracked. “Two hours later, I got a call from the hospital. A terrible accident. By the time I arrived, she had died.”
“Oh my God.” Alyssa’s voice was hushed. “The plane went down?”
“Yes. In a field. Just outside my town.” I ran a hand down the side of my face and then brushed the back of my hand along my stubble, forcing myself not to get sucked back to the moment I heard, to my time at the hospital, to the words I’d said over and over to everyone who’d cared about her.
“The pilot?” Her hand hovered over my chest before resting, light against my skin, as though she worried the heart concealed beneath was still injured, fragile.
“Heart attack.”
“I can’t even imagine.”
I didn’t know if it was the accident or the heartbreak that followed that she couldn’t imagine. I’d been haunted by the gift I’d given Zoya, by thoughts of what her time in the plane would have been like, by the notion that no matter how well I’d protected her on Earth, there were things no one ever saw coming. For a long time, that sentiment had been a negative one. How did a person prepare for something they couldn’t see coming? I’d spent the years since Zoya died guarding Mia and now her family, but I’d also been guarding my heart. Alyssa was someone I’d never seen coming.
“That whole thing must have been awful.” Her lips brushed against my chest, and she wiggled closer.
If only it were possible for her to bear the brunt of some of my grief, even for a moment, for the weight to leave. But I’d never let her, wouldn’t wish the torment I’d faced on my worst enemy. No one deserved to feel as low as I’d felt, and I planned to do everything in my power never to experience that low again.
“Yes,” I agreed. “Awful. A pain you cannot imagine.”
We laid in silence, and I wrapped my arm around her, drawing her tight. Her body molded so perfectly to mine, as though we’d been cut from the same piece of cloth, our patterns a match. A small comfort that in a world without Zoya, there was an Alyssa.
“I shouldn’t have asked.”
