Page 50 of Wounded Dance
I nod against his shoulder. If only he had. My life would have played out so differently.
“When did you find out about the baby?” Blitz asks.
“A few weeks later. I was a pretty big wreck. Not eating. Missing school. Feeling sick. I lost a lot of weight. So nothing was obvious for a while.”
“How did you know then?”
“I was throwing up a lot. Mom got worried. She took me to the doctor. Dad was flipping out, and demanded to know when it happened. I think he thought we were still finding a way to see each other.”
“Did Denham ever try to contact you?” Blitz asks.
“No. I didn’t hear from him again until that day he showed up here.”
“You didn’t look for him either?”
“He was my brother. There was no point. And I had no way to do it. Dad pulled me out of school, got a new job here in San Antonio, and then it was house arrest until I met you. No television, no social media, no computer, very little contact with the outside world. He thought he could purify me, make me innocent again. I don’t know.”
“He chose that teeny tiny church on purpose.”
“Yes. It was an elderly church, no young families, sort of dying out. Perfect for a father who wanted to keep his teenaged daughter away from anyone her own age.”
“Jesus, Livia. It must have been so lonely.”
I shift onto my back, watching the silks on the bed flutter lightly. “I got used to it. And eventually Mom wanted us to have some social interaction, so I met my friend Mindy. She was homeschooled too and had a younger brother who could be Andy’s friend.”
“You haven’t seen her since I came along.” Blitz reaches for a long lock of my hair and twirls it around his fingers.
“She got grounded, her phone taken away. I don’t have any way to reach her unless I just storm up to her door.”
“Maybe I’ll pose as a pizza delivery man,” Blitz says. “Steal her away.”
“I do want to see her. But she is only sixteen, and her parents still control her.”
Blitz draws me back to him. “We’re going to make everything right, Livia. All of it.”
I turn in to his body, strong and stalwart beside me. I love that he says this to me, even though I don’t see how it could happen. Denham could do anything in his desperation. In this world where anybody can go viral, we’re just one Tweet away from the whole world knowing what happened to Blitz Craven’s new girl when she was fifteen.
Chapter 19
On Monday Blitz drives us across town to Jenica’s Dancery, a hip contemporary ballet studio.
Blitz is extremely pumped to have found this woman, who was classically trained and performed with the LA Ballet before creating a fusion style all her own.
“She’ll be perfect,” he says. “We can learn lifts and grow in a brand-new style.”
I hug my purple Dreamcatcher Dance Academy bag to my chest and try not to feel nervous. I am barely intopointeshoes, and here we are going to a new dance space to be assessed by an instructor I’ve never met.
We pull up to a boxy, flat-roofed building. Every car in the lot looks like it has seen better days, and a half-dozen bicycles are chained to a rack by the door.
Blitz’s excitement grows as we walk up to the door. “This is perfect,” he says. “Authentic dancers, none of that Hollywood ego.” He takes my hand and pulls on the handle.
“Don’t you have your own trainers?” I ask. I remember the stilted woman on the set ofDance Blitzwho was opposed to me going on the show.
“You’re thinking of Amara, the choreographer of the show,” Blitz says. “I only see her when we have an upcoming season, and right now we don’t. My trainer quit after the shit storm.”
We enter a space that could only be described as rustic. The floor is bare, cracked concrete, and the walls rough-hewn cedar for about eight feet, then the soaring ceiling is corrugated metal. A makeshift desk sits right by the door, built from wood planks and cinder blocks.
Huge photos with curling corners are tacked to the back wall, which is only about ten feet from the entrance, making the room feel smashed. There are doors on either end.
