Page 90 of Dance with Me
Her hand smoothed over his back, rubbing up and down his spine, but she didn’t speak.
“Then my cousin Alex and I approached some investors. Alex is my partner in all this stuff. He handles the logistics, I do the creative work. Although he’s taught me a lot, so I can handle shit on my own, but anyway, we went in with a pitch. One of the last ones in the binder.Dom Navsegda.”
She nodded, face scrunching as she thought. “The one with the hoops?”
“That’s the one.”
“What does it mean?Dom Navsegda.”
He exhaled. “It meansforever home.”
“It’s a search for home,” she said, her hands stilling on his shoulders. “The person in the story is jumping through all these hoops, into all these different worlds, searching for home.”
She understood. Ukraine would always be the place of his birth. He had memories there, from his most formative years. But it wasn’t somewhere he wanted to return. He wanted to find home where he was, here. She’d seen the book, and she got it. He should have felt relieved, but he didn’t. Instead, his skin itched with the urge to hide.
Was this how she’d felt visiting the club with him? Raw, revealed, exposed?
He’d thought love would make it easier to bare your heart. It was still just as difficult, even when you trusted the other person not to stomp all over it.
When he didn’t answer, she slipped into his lap, and he filled his arms with warm, naked woman, taking solace in the feel of her skin on his. It wasn’t sexual, not like it might have been in the past, when he was desperate to be with her, and treated every second they were together as if it would be the last. Now, holding her steadied him.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” She petted his cheek, smoothing down his beard. “The man in the story, looking for home. It’s you.”
When he nodded, she lowered her hand and pressed it to his chest. “It must have been hard to leave Ukraine.”
“Yes.”The word tore from his throat, expelling all the air in his lungs with it.
Everything inside him tensed, and he closed his eyes and leaned into her, dropping his forehead to her collarbones. Her arms wound around him, holding on tight.
If someone had told him being understood by the person you loved was akin to physical pain, he never would have believed it. But to have her see him so clearly, to have her understand without him explaining, just from seeing the book . . . Either he wasn’t doing a good job of hiding it, or she got him in a way no one else ever had, except maybe his cousin.
Nik didn’t get it. He’d been too young when they moved. Alex did, because they’d been closer in age. His parents did, but in a different way. But no one talked about it.
“We dropped everything to move to America. Start fresh, my mom said. No looking back. We lost everything.Lefteverything.”
“I think you had it right the first time,” she murmured, stroking his hair. “At least, in terms of how you felt about it.”
His breath shuddered out of him, almost painful in its release. “Yeah. And we never talk about it. Everyone wants to forget. I get it, I do, but . . .”
“Were you scared?”
He huffed out a nervous laugh. “Hell yeah, I was scared. No one would tell me what was happening. And then one day, around the holidays, I overheard them talking about leaving. And then my cousins and aunts and uncles weregone.For months. America, they said, but I barely knew what that meant, or what it meant for us that we were going there next. And Nik was so little, always trying to run away, so I was responsible for him a lot of the time.Sledi za svoim bratom,my parents always said. Watch your brother.”
“And you were how old? Ten?”
“Ten when we moved, yes.”
Her voice was quiet, her eyes soft as she ducked her head to look at him. “At least you had each other.”
She hadn’t. She’d been alone, an only child, with only a mother who sounded like a real piece of work.
“I did. And we did have it easier than some. Alex and some of my other relatives were already here. My father spoke some English. It could have been worse.”
“Moving is traumatic.” The corner of her mouth quirked.
“My parents had this attitude about it, like sometimes this just happens.Nichto ne vechno.Nothing lasts forever. Sometimes you just lose everything and have to start over. It’s normal, or even expected.” He shook his head. “Anytime something bad or disappointing happened, like when I had to close my show:Nichto ne vechno.Oh, well. Move on.”
“Is that what you did when you tried to produce . . . let me try it . . .Dom Navsegda?”
