by Deanna Roy
“Come on,” Jeremy says. “I’ll have my driver pick us up. We can get you away from here until it blows over.”
But as we move forward, Denham lags behind. I stop and turn to him. “Denham, you coming?”
“She’s a cripple?” he asks, his voice still incredulous. “She’s never going to walk?”
My throat constricts. “I had a hard time when I learned about it too,” I say. “But she’s a bright, sweet girl.”
I try to take his arm to lead him with us, but he shakes me off.
“Denham, we have to go,” I say.
He resists. “What am I going to do with a cripple for a kid?”
Now my chest starts to burn. “She’s a perfect little girl.”
Denham continues to stare at the ground, as if he can’t wrap his head around this. “I can’t do anything with that,” he says. “That’s too much responsibility.” He still won’t look me in the eye. “What’ll everybody say when they see me with a kid in a wheelchair?”
We all stop to watch him. I’m so angry I want to hit him, hurt him like he is hurting my heart.
“You don’t deserve her,” I say.
He does glance up at me at that, just for a second. “Yeah,” he finally says. “You’re right about that.”
He digs in his pocket for the keys to his truck. He pulls a silver cross off the ring, banged up but heavy and well made. He tosses it to me.
I trap it against my chest and it falls cold into my palm.
“Give her that,” he says. “It was my gramma’s. Only thing I have of hers. Tell baby girl that her daddy was no good, and her daddy’s momma was no good, but her great-gramma, she was good. Her name was Lucille. It’s engraved on the back.” He points at the cross. “Lucille Young.”
I hold the heavy cross in my hand. “You aren’t going to at least meet her?”
He shakes his head. “I’m gonna move on now. Thanks for getting me out.” He peers up at the building, and the sun, squinting his eyes. “You’ll do right by her. It’s your way.”
And with that, he takes off in long strides across the parking lot, through the cop cars, and turns down the street. We stand there, watching, until he’s out of sight.
“That saves you quite a bit of trouble,” Jeremy says.
I can’t speak. I feel like my breath has been forced from my lungs.
Blitz gathers me up against him. “I’m here, Livia,” he says.
“My driver is pulling up,” Jeremy says. “Let’s head on to the street.”
Blitz holds me tight as we follow the path Denham took through the cars. When we get to the sidewalk, a black Mercedes stops at the curb. I look up the street, trying to get one last glance at Denham, Gabriella’s father, the love I once knew.
But he’s disappeared, the tall buildings cutting off the view.
Just like that, this whole dark period of my life is over.
Chapter 25
By the time we’re all the way back to the hotel, Blitz’s social media team is working the #WhatDidBlitzDo hashtag, explaining how he was helping a hometown criminal get his life back on track. Somehow, they manage to move the activity over to #WhatWillBlitzDoNext and have people suggest nonprofits or causes Blitz could get behind.
By the end of the next day, it’s all blown over. At least the jail part.
Danika calls to say Denham’s truck is gone from the block. That’s over too.
On Thursday morning, I pick at the breakfast Blitz orders up to our room. Normally we would be heading up to Dreamcatcher to have our private lesson with Gabriella. I have no idea where we stand on that.
“We can still go up to the academy,” Blitz says. “Unless you want more punishment from Jenica. She’s asking where we are.”
“No, thank you!” I say, but I can’t even muster a smile.
Blitz comes up behind my chair and lifts my hair to kiss my shoulder. “I think we should dance,” he says.
I’m reluctant to go, sure I’ll feel even more despondent when the hour for our lesson with Gabriella arrives and she isn’t there. I pack my dance bag slowly so that we can get there after we would have danced with her.
We’ve just requested for the car to be brought downstairs when Blitz’s phone buzzes. “It’s Ted,” he says.
“Is he still working as security for Danika?” I ask.
Blitz laughs. “Yes,” he says. “And he sent a picture.”
He holds up his phone. I’m not particularly interested in the shot until I see a familiar black head in a wheelchair, Ted kneeling beside her.
The message reads “My new client is wondering where her dance teachers are.”
“Oh my gosh!” I say. “We have to go!”
I drag Blitz by the shirt to the elevator. He tries to respond as we run down the hall and into the elevator to grab our car. We’re still in the gray one.
Blitz races down the road to Dreamcatcher. I’m so glad we are staying close.
When we pull up, I instinctively look for the green truck, then shake that off. Denham is gone.
But Gwen’s SUV is there. I don’t wait on Blitz but run across the parking lot and burst through the doors.
Suze looks up. “They’re in the studio,” she says. “I think Danika is helping her.”
I hurry down the hall. Blitz still hasn’t caught up.
I slow down as I approach Studio 3. Ted stands outside the door. He nods at me.
“You’re guarding her now?” I ask.
“Danika suggested it,” Ted says. “Since her mother was nervous.”
I glance in the window. Danika is taking Gabriella through the five arm positions. Gwen is inside today, sitting on the bench on the other side of the wall.
Blitz approaches. “Ted! You keep showing up like a drunk uncle!”
“Apparently you’re enough trouble for a full-time gig,” Ted shoots back.
“That I am.” He takes my hand. “We going in?”
I nod and flash a smile at Ted as Blitz opens the door.
Gabriella looks up. “Benjamin! I have a special dance for you!” She rolls up to him.
“You do?” he asks.
“Livia taught it to me,” she says. “Do you have the music?”
My throat is too tight to speak. I just nod and head to the audio controls in the corner.
As I plug in my phone to cue the music, I watch Gabriella circle around Blitz. Danika sits next to Gwen, and they say something to each other and nod. They are smiling.
My fingers tremble as I punch the buttons to find the song we chose for Gabriella’s dance. I haven’t lost everything. It’s all here. Right in front of me.
The song begins and Gabriella gasps and rolls away from Blitz.
“The sparkle stick! Livia!” she calls out.
I grab one from the box on the floor and hurry it over to her. She takes it and strikes the opening pose, waiting for the first movement of the dance.
She turns the baton and tosses it into the air, catching it neatly. Gwen and Danika clap as Blitz cheers.
Danika catches my eye and nods. I wonder if she’s figured it out, that Gabriella is my daughter. If that’s why she brought Ted and convinced Gwen to come back to lessons.
I nod at her in return. Maybe we’ll speak of it. Maybe we won’t.
It doesn’t matter right now as Gabriella does her dance.
She beams at Blitz as she turns her chair, spinning the baton. Light flashes off the sparkles that float inside the stick, sending a pattern across the mirror that reflects back into the room.
She’s here.
She’s beautiful.
She’ll never know what happened. That her father rejected her. That her mother once thought she lived and loved in shame. Those things are not worth troubling her innocence and grace.
We’ll have the lawyer add a record to her adoption contract giving my name so she can find me when she is eighteen, if that’s what she wants. I don’t want to get in the way of her life, her potential new father, o
r cast any shadow on how she grows up. I just want to see what I can.
The closing chords sound and Gabriella strikes her final pose. Blitz rushes to lift her from her chair, spinning her around and laughing, delighted at her dance for him.
There is no unhappiness here. Not now. It’s all in my past.
I have been wounded. But I have survived.
And my life goes on, one more time, past the dark and into the light.
I have to believe the best is yet to come.
~*´♥`*~
I hope you enjoyed Wounded Dance! If you would like to follow Blitz and Livia for more of their story, there will be five full-length standalone books as they face the challenges of their life together.
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Sneak Peek
Enjoy a sneak peek at book three in the series, Wicked Dance.
______
I glance around behind the stage. I can’t believe I’m on the set of Dance Blitz again. I swear every prop they ever used is back here. The malt shop. A 50s era convertible. An entire tropical island on rollers.
Then I freeze. Blitz feels me go still. “What is it?” he asks.
In the corner, almost hidden by a volcano, is the red satin bed.
I walk toward it. It’s still made up, as if somebody pushed it over and forgot about it. I smack my hand against the bedding, expecting an explosion of dust, but it’s fine.
“Yeah, that,” Blitz says. He runs a hand nervously through his hair. “They fixed it up again for the finale, in case I picked Giselle, but it just got shoved in the corner when we decided to go with the tropic theme.”
I sit on it. It’s an actual mattress. “This was one of the first Dance Blitz numbers I ever saw,” I tell him.
“Really, that one? It definitely pushed the ratings into the stratosphere, starting off season two with a scandal.”
“I saw the audience photos. She got naked!”
Blitz lets out a rush of air. “She did. I don’t know what she thought she was doing. They didn’t let her back on the show after that.”
“You seemed really…attracted to her in the shots,” I say.
“I couldn’t believe she had done it,” Blitz says.
My hands run along the silky bedspread. “I was super jealous of that girl when I saw it.”
Blitz lies down on his side, his head propped on his hand. “At what point did you go looking up this gem?”
“After the first class with the wheelchair ballerinas. The second day I knew you.”
“Ah. So you were stalking me already?”
I punch him lightly on the chest. “No!” Then, “Okay, maybe.”
He grabs me around the waist and pulls me down on the bed. In a flash, I’m trapped beneath him, his knees on either side of my hips and his face looming over mine in the low light.
“Well guess what,” he says.
“What?”
“I never saw her again, and this bed was never used.”
I laugh. “Poor forgotten bed.”
He reaches between us and unsnaps the top of my jeans. “Oh no, not forgotten at all.”
My eyes go wide and I glance around. “Here?”
He jerks the zipper down. “Oh yes. Right here.”
______
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Deanna is a passionate advocate for women who have miscarried. She founded the web site www.pregnancyloss.info in 1998 after the loss of her first baby and continues to run both online and in-person support groups for women who have endured this impossible loss. Find her on Facebook, Twitter, or Goodreads.
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