by JJ Knight
Ted stands up from the stool. “No prob.” He shakes Blitz’s hand. “Let me know if you need me again.”
“Will do.” Blitz’s face flashes dark for a moment. “Will definitely do.”
Ted heads to the elevator, and Blitz and I walk toward our suite.
“Something’s wrong,” I say. “Why do you think you’ll need Ted again? Do you have to go back to LA?”
Blitz opens our door. “We’re going to be doing some publicity stuff for the DVD release,” he says. “I just think a few extra eyes will be good.”
“You said ‘we’ just now,” I say. “You mean both of us?” My belly quakes. I can’t imagine being out in public with reporters or even strangers with cell phones, recording an outburst with Denham. I was lucky today. It was still relatively secret.
“I’m trying to work things out still,” Blitz says. “The lawyers can sort it.” He perches against the back of the sofa and draws me to him. “Meanwhile, I haven’t seen you in two whole days.”
His lips press into the sensitive skin below my ear, and my anxiety begins to drift away. By the time he has his mouth fully on mine, I’ve let go of the afternoon. I’ve missed him, desperately, and now I can sink back into his attention.
“I love you in pale blue,” Blitz whispers into my ear, tugging the neckline of the stretchy leotard until it bares my shoulder. “Although I think I like you out of it even better.”
My body warms to his hot kisses along my collarbone. He pulls both shoulders of the leotard down and pulls my arms out, first one, then the other.
“I’m going to kiss every part of you,” he says, baring my body, inch by inch. The leotard slides to my waist. He takes both breasts in his hands and his mouth trails down to take a nipple in his mouth. “I missed these,” he says.
I wrap my arms around his neck, eyes closed, reveling in the feel of Blitz. His hair tickles my skin, and I catch the smell of him that is so familiar, pine and leather.
He removes the black vest as he works, kicking off his shoes. Then he kneels in front of me, reaching down for the Crocs I wear to the studio before I change into ballet slippers. He eases them off.
His hands grasp the leotard, which is at my waist now, and jerk everything down, tights and all. For a moment I’m bound at the knees, but Blitz lifts my leg to tug one side the rest of the way down.
Before he reaches for the other, though, he takes advantage of my parted thighs to bury his face there. His tongue slides along me, and I have to clutch the back of the sofa to keep my balance.
“Mmm,” he says. “There’s no place like home.”
He pulls the tights off my other leg and stands up. “Now I’ve got you where I want you.”
He lifts me up into his arms. “To the bedroom with us.”
His footsteps are silent as we move from the living room to the bed. He nudges aside the sheer drapes that surround it, and slides me onto the mattress. I watch him as he slides off his pants, shirt, and boxers.
Then he crawls between the silks over to me. “Think the bartender out there is tired of hearing you cry out?” he asks.
“I think the walls are pretty thick,” I say.
“Mmm,” he says. “Let’s test them.”
And as his mouth works back down my body, he does exactly that.
Chapter 18
It’s a relief to have Blitz back. The weekend means no dance classes, but Blitz decides we should dance somewhere other than Dreamcatcher on the days we don’t have Gabriella to see.
His manager’s assistant sends profile after profile of ballet instructors in San Antonio, plus others willing to travel. We sit cross-legged on the bed with his computer, reading over the qualifications of the teachers, but my heart isn’t really in it.
“This one could teach us ballet lifts,” Blitz says, turning the screen to me.
“We’ve been wanting to do that,” I say absently.
Blitz shuts the lid of the laptop. “Come here, baby,” he says. “This has been the worst week, hasn’t it?”
He pulls me into his arms, and we lie side by side on the enormous bed. Morning is long past, but we haven’t gone anywhere, just soaking in each other’s presence, lounging in soft thick robes and eating room service.
His fingers tangle through my hair. “I guess it’s not the worst week of your life, though,” he says. “Is it?”
I shake my head against his shoulder.
“You want to tell me about the worst?” he asks.
I’m not sure I do, but he waits so patiently that I find it is easy to release the memories to him.
“Denham and I didn’t have a lot of time together before it blew up,” I say. “That week was the worst week.”
The bad days flood back. August, really, was our month, the week before school started, when he taught me to drive, then the first weeks of school when we were messing around, and finally became lovers.
Late September was when it all fell apart.
Denham and I were like magnets, unable to pull away from each other. We joined clubs at school, and stayed for homework help, anything to spend less time at home. We would duck out early, buying ourselves time before we were expected home.
Denham had friends all over, and we borrowed their bedrooms, their cars, and finally discovered a broken-down travel trailer in the backyard of a neighbor, unlocked and unused.
It became our space.
The dark period of my life began when Denham confessed to me that we shared a father. We were in the trailer, cuddled up on the narrow bed with a blanket we’d brought and kept there.
I was talking about Andy, who had just turned four. He had asked for a black leather jacket so he could “be like his brother.”
“You’re so good with him,” I told Denham. “It’s like you really are his brother.”
His face contorted at that and a strangled sound came out of his throat.
“Denham? What’s wrong?” We were naked, as usual, and when I sat up, the blanket fell to my waist.
He glanced at my body, then covered me as if he couldn’t bear to look at me. “Livia, we can’t do this anymore.”
This made me sit up. “What do you mean? I love you. You love me! That is all that matters.”
“No,” he said, shifting away. “That’s not all that matters. Shit.”
He shoved the blanket away and set his feet on the floor. He sat hunched over, his head in his hands.
I curled around him, my cheek on his back. “What else matters?”
“Family,” he said. “Your parents have been good to me. And Andy. God, that little kid. Everything he knows is a lie.”
My heartbeat slammed in my ears. I had no idea what he could be talking about, but his voice was scaring me.
He stood up, forcing me to break away from him. A streetlamp on the corner formed pale lines across his skin from the blinds. I couldn’t make out his face.
“I treat Andy like a brother because he IS my brother, Livia. The reason I live with your family now is because your dad is my dad.”
I held the blanket to my chest, not sure I understood. The words were too much, spilling over like a pitcher that was too full. “What are you saying, Denham?”
He stepped close to me then and took my shoulders in his hands, gripping them like a vise. “I’m your brother, Livia. Your half-brother. Your father was with my mother. She had me. That’s why I’m here now.”
My body revolted. I started dry-heaving, clutching my belly, my breath coming in pants.
“Livia, I’m sorry. I should have stayed away. I should have.” Denham tried to hold me, but I curled in on myself. I was blindsided by pain. Everything hurt. My belly. My burning eyes. My heart felt ready to burst.
“Talk to me, Livia. Say you don’t hate me.”
But I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t talk at all. I huddled, trying to manage the trauma and the pain. It was horrible. He was my brother. And we did things. All the things. Everything.
I could still fee
l my body, swollen and slightly sore from this last time, just a few minutes ago.
He knew all along, and yet he did those things, over and over.
To his sister.
I flung him away. I didn’t even stop for my clothes, but wrapped myself tightly in the blanket and flew out of the trailer.
The ground was cold and wet on my bare feet.
I ducked through the broken slats of the fence and crossed the small alley to get to our own backyard. I opened the gate to the fence and raced across the yard to the back door.
I wanted nothing more than to go to my room and be alone, but everyone was right inside. Mom, Dad, and Andy sat at the dinner table. Denham and I were supposed to be at a football game.
Dad saw me in the blanket, eyes on my bare legs and feet. The blanket slipped, exposing my bare shoulder.
“Oh my God,” he said. “Who did this to you?” He turned to Mom. “Call the police.”
“No!” I cried. “Just leave me alone!” I tried to run past, but Dad caught me.
“Baby,” he said. “Let us help you. What happened?”
Andy started to cry, and Mom picked him up.
I didn’t want to talk, but I did want the truth.
“Is Denham really your son?”
His face bloomed red. Mom clutched Andy, her eyes wide.
“Tell me!” I said to Dad. “Is he?”
“Where is that boy?” Dad roared.
“I won’t tell you until you answer me!” I shouted back. I had to know, but I could already see it. I could tell by Dad’s anger, his upset, Mom’s shock.
“Ray?” Mom managed to say. “Is that why he’s here?”
Dad turned to her, his mouth opening and closing as if he was trying to find the right words.
“Oh my God,” I said. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.” I broke away from Dad then, and that time he let me go.
“What has he done?” Mom said. “What has that evil child done to our little girl?”
She followed after me, but I was well ahead and closed the door and locked it. I threw the blanket aside and grabbed clothes as fast as I could. I should have gotten dressed. I’d made it obvious what happened. I didn’t think.
Mom knocked on my door, but I ignored her, dragging on jeans and a sweatshirt, then burying myself beneath the covers.
The doorknob jiggled, then stopped. I thought she’d given up. But then I heard a sharp bang against the metal. I realized she was in. She’d jimmied the lock.
“Come here,” Mom said, wrapping her arms around me. I stayed in my ball beneath the covers. “You’ll be all right. We’ll take care of it.”
A door slammed out in the house, then a car started.
They wouldn’t find him. Nobody knew about the trailer. Surely Denham would hide out there.
Unless he thought I would tell them where he was.
I rocked back and forth beneath the covers. Denham had friends. He’d find someplace to go.
But then I realized I’d lost him. Denham. My love. My sweet, sweet love.
My emotions crashed against each other. Betrayal, anger, devastation, loss. I loved him. But we were related. It couldn’t be. I couldn’t go after him. He was gone. I sobbed and sobbed into my pillow, my body curled around it, my mom’s hands on my back.
Then I heard Andy crying, softly saying, “Livia, Livia, Livia,” over and over again.
This got to me and I shoved the blanket aside enough that he could crawl in with me. His little arms went around my neck and clutched me like he was drowning. I rocked with him, our mother wrapping herself around us, until he fell asleep.
Eventually Mom took him to his bed. The house was eerily quiet. My hair spun wild and snarled around my face. My skin was hot and damp from crying and sweating beneath the blankets. I slid to the floor, my back against the bed.
My body was still tender from the last time Denham and I were together. The last time. It was over. A cry bubbled up from my chest, but there weren’t any tears left. I was too dehydrated, too tired.
Mom came back into the room and sat on the floor next to me. She took my hand and we just existed for a while as she hummed softly.
Finally, she asked, “Did he force you?”
I shook my head no.
“Did he hurt you in any way?”
I shook my head again, although my heart was certainly in unimaginable pain.
She sighed. “Okay, so how far did it go?”
I didn’t want to answer that. That it went every way, every distance, over and over again, night after night, stolen moment after stolen moment. That I loved him completely, and had given myself over to him totally.
“I’m going to assume pretty far,” she said. “We’ll need to get you to a doctor. God, you’re so young. Did you even know what was happening?”
I let go of her and covered my eyes with my hand. I couldn’t handle those questions. It was too much for one night. Way too much.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s get you in bed. There will be time enough to face all this tomorrow.”
She stood up and took my arm to lift me up as well. I lay on the bed fully dressed, but she still covered me with the blanket.
Mom was at the doorway when I finally found the voice to ask, “What will happen to Denham?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, Livia. But he won’t be coming back here.”
I buried my face in the pillow as she closed the door. I was wrong. There were more tears. So many more. A whole ocean of them, just out to tide, and now they spilled all over again.
~*´`*~
Blitz lazily strokes my hair as I finish this part of the story.
“I’m so sorry, Princess,” he says. “That is more than anyone could live through.”
I turn my face into his robe, letting the soft white cotton absorb any stray tears so that he won’t see them. I don’t want to cry about Denham in the presence of Blitz. My life is good now, perfect, full of love and dance and time with my daughter.
But the young version of me, the not-quite-fifteen-year-old with her first broken heart, traumatized and lied to, still hurts after all these years.
“Did your dad throw him out?” Blitz asks. “What happened?”
“Dad came back early in the morning,” I say. “He got Denham’s things together in garbage bags and shoved them in his car. He told us he took Denham back to his Aunt Didi. I’m guessing that he did, but his aunt must have called CPS because he ended up in foster care. At least that’s what he said.”
“I remember him saying that,” Blitz says. “That’s how he got the DNA test.” He exhales slowly. “Hell of a thing. And you had to live all those years thinking he was your brother.”
“None of us had any way to know otherwise. I guess Dad could have done the DNA test himself. I think it was available then.”
“Not easily,” Blitz says.
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 into pointe shoes, 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.