Page 7 of Wounded Dance
“Dad brought us here so no one would know about the baby. He was so shamed. So angry. No one would talk to me. I was hidden from everyone.”
Blitz leans over the center console and takes me in his arms. “That must have been incredibly lonely.”
I shake my head against his shoulder. “But it wasn’t. I wasn’t alone, you know? I had the baby with me. I could feel her moving. It was like a miracle. I would talk to her and sing.”
“Then you gave her up.”
I pull away just enough to look into Blitz’s face. “I didnotwant to. But I had no choice. My parents just did it. I had no way to take care of her. I didn’t know anything. If I could do it all over again, I would have refused. Run away. Found a shelter. At least tried. But I didn’t then. I was too scared.”
“I told you, I can call my lawyer. You were underage. Coerced.”
“No,” I say. “I could never do that to Gwen. She already lost her husband. I couldn’t take Gabriella from her.”
He holds on to me again and we sit listening to the wind howl outside the car. I can still hear Denham’s shout, “WHERE IS OUR BABY?”
And fear slices through me.
“Do you think he can find Gabriella?” I ask. “He didn’t sign anything giving her up.”
“Who did you list as the father?” Blitz asks. “On the birth certificate.”
“My father wrote down a name. I think he made it up. It wasn’t Denham.”
“Then we’re okay for now,” Blitz says, but he looks behind us, out the back window to the front of Dreamcatcher Dance Academy.
I know what he’s thinking.
All he has to do is see Gabriella, and he’ll know. We’ve led him right to her.
Chapter 5
When we get to the hotel, I stand in the shower spray for a long, long time. I have to get ready for this dinner with Blitz’s parents, but I’m totally knotted up over Denham.
I remember the day he arrived. Mom and Dad obviously knew about it ahead of time, as they weren’t caught off guard when the car pulled up in front of our house in Houston.
It was the summer before I would start high school, and life was still pretty normal for us. My friends from middle school were like me, giggly and obsessed with boys and fingernail polish and whether or not our mothers would ever let us wear makeup.
I knew all the singers on the new showThe Voiceand had a super-serious crush on Adam Levine. If he was behind a singer, so was I.
Then came that knock at the door. I remember sitting in Dad’s ratty navy blue recliner, pretending to read the book on my summer list for freshman English class.
The woman came in first. They introduced her as Aunt Didi, but I had certainly never met her and she wasn’t a sister of either Mom or Dad. She looked to be in a lot of pain, walking with a cane and taking small mincing steps in her creased old-lady shoes. Her white hair was thin and lay flat against her head.
My little brother Andy was only three and seemed scared of her, hiding behind Mom’s leg. Mom seemed to be taking a lot of deep breaths as the woman came in, and had on her biggest, fakest smile.
Then came Denham.
He looked like a young rock god. His jeans were ripped, and he had on a black jacket over a charcoal shirt, even though it was ninety degrees.
He had his hair gelled so it shot off to one side, like he’d just flipped it. He saw me and lifted his eyebrows, then shook his head and looked away, like I was something he shouldn’t gawk at.
We were introduced and Aunt Didi stayed around for dinner. Then she left, leaving a beat-up suitcase and a couple duffel bags on the porch. I was shocked but Dad just said Denham had no place to live and would be crashing with us for a while.
Dad didn’t seem to know quite what to do with this rebellious-looking teen. He slept in Andy’s room on a mattress on the floor. Andy was instantly starstruck and could be found most mornings curled up next to the mattress. The two bonded pretty fast, and it’s probably the way Denham treated Andy that made me like him.
Because otherwise, he was kind of a jerk.
Our first conversation came on his second day. Dad was at work. Mom was inside with Andy. She had me outside pulling weeds around the rosebushes. Denham stepped out the back door and lit up a cigarette.
