CLOSING NIGHT: Driven Dance Theater Romance Series, Book 2 (Standalone)

by Brianna Stark

  Kent nods and looks back at Patrick, and we all lift out of our seats. Patrick places two fifties on the bar.

  “No way, man.” Kent pulls out his wallet, and Branwen and I leave them to fight over the tab.

  Once we are all outside, I find myself staring at Patrick’s shoulders and hips, and the worn shade of his jeans. What brand are they, and have I ever seen them before? It’s an old habit, and he catches me. I blink away, and Branwen says, “How does Indian sound?”

  It takes me a moment to realize she is talking about food. I shake my head. “I’d better get going. I am totally worn out from everything, and I just want to go home and have a hot bath, if that’s okay?”

  Kent waves down a cab and opens the door.

  “You sure?” Branwen asks.

  “Yeah,” I say, kissing her on both cheeks. “Thanks again for everything.” She steps into the yellow cab, and Kent and I hug as she waves.

  “Patrick?” Kent cocks a brow.

  “No thanks, man, I’m good. You two have fun.” He nods, and Branwen blows us both a kiss.

  When the yellow cab roars off into the busy street, there’s a long, silent moment. Patrick slowly slides his fingers into his pockets and shifts my way. My focus hits the ground and then travels back up to him.

  We stand face to face.

  12

  Patrick scrubs his neck, watching me, as though he doesn’t know what to do with me. And I have a feeling I am looking at him in the same way.

  “So?” He lifts his shoulders.

  “So…”

  My eyes hit the ground, and my voice drifts off. When it sounds like he might be about to say something else, I look back at him, waiting for him to make a move.

  Pedestrians pass by us in a trance. A hostess steps out of a restaurant, and a car honks its horn three times in a row.

  “I’m going that way.” I nod in the direction of the metro to Brooklyn, brushing back a flyaway hair that’s caught in the wind.

  “Me too,” Patrick says, his feet planted firmly into the sidewalk. My shoulders drop as I stall, and Patrick rubs his jaw pensively. “I don’t have to, though, if that’s a problem.”

  “It’s fine,” I say, knowing he would be taking the metro, too, if he didn’t drive, just in the opposite direction. If we go to the subway together, we will part soon enough.

  We walk down the busy street in silence. Even though we are worlds apart, and in New York City, it feels as though we are the only people around.

  He follows me onto the platform once we arrive at the subway station.

  “You’re not going home, I guess.” I’m thinking of the phone number Sasha indiscreetly stashed in his pocket, and how many more of those numbers there probably are, considering his crazy good looks, confidence, and the explosion of his career.

  “No. I’m taking you home. We don’t have to talk. I just want to make sure you get there safely.” He doesn’t make eye contact. Just shoves his hands in his pockets and looks straight ahead.

  “I take the subway by myself at night all the time.” I stand my ground.

  “And I don’t like it.” He presses his lips together.

  It isn’t even late. Maybe eight o’clock. Granted, it is dark out, but still, we are in New York City, and people are around at every hour. I have never felt unsafe, even though my apartment is on a quieter Brooklyn street.

  We stand in silence, waiting for the train. It feels like forever before mine arrives. When it does, Patrick steps aside for me to walk ahead, and I lower myself into a vinyl seat. He slides in next to me, and even though we have known each other for years, when his knee brushes mine, it’s like I’m being branded. I flinch, and he adjusts. His gaze falls to my lap and twiddling thumbs. I clutch my fingers together and look out the window at the blur of tunnel walls rushing by.

  He stands up when it’s my stop and waits for me to walk by. His breath touches my neck as his eyes hit the floor. Our feet fall into a rhythm until we are at my building.

  “Thanks.” My voice is tight in my throat as I slide the key in the lock. Patrick doesn’t leave. I tilt my head. “I said thank you.” I reiterate my point.

  The lock unlatches, and the door swings open. He grips it at the top. “You’re not home safely yet,” he says, and I roll my eyes before proceeding to my suite on the second floor.

  We go through the same thing there. I slide my key in the lock, and he waits.

  “I think I’m good now.” Feeling like a bitch, I slam my eyes shut. Fuck it, this is ridiculous. If I had manners, I would at least invite him in for a drink. He just took an hour out of his evening to escort me home when he could have been banging Ben Chamber’s hot assistant. But when I look over my shoulder he is already walking down my hallway. Gone. Just like that.

  Okay. I step into my apartment and close the door before going for the decanter of whisky. There’s one or two shots left in the bottom, and I lift it to my lips, but the burn doesn’t help. It’s not at all homeopathic. I pick up my phone and dial Patrick’s number. He answers after one ring.

  “This is fucked up.” I cringe. “I don’t know how to act around you. I don’t know what normal is.”

  There’s a long silence.

  “We are past the point of being normal.” His voice is strained. Firm.

  He’s right. I rub my hands over my face. “Do you want to come up for a drink?” I hold my breath, not believing myself. I’ve been working so hard at getting over him. “Wait!” I blurt, before he has a chance to hang up. “Forget it. I don’t have anything to drink here.” I clutch the phone to my ear.

  “I’ll stop at the store.” He hangs up.

  “Okay,” I chirp as a gut reaction.

  I dig my palms into the kitchen counter. I can’t remember the last time Patrick was here. It dawns on me that I’ve blocked it out, because the last time Patrick was here, he helped me move before he took off to Los Angeles. We might have had a fight. And we might have had sex on the floor before I unpacked. Shit.

  I stare at the rug.

  The rug is giving me the eye. It’s saying, Londyn, don’t come crying to me after.

  I look at the object next to it: a very expensive Isamu Nogushi coffee table that Kent gave me as a gift when the company’s budget first skyrocketed. I would never dream of having sex on that table. I slide the table into the center of the rug and brush my hands together as I stare at it.

  The buzzer rings, and I freeze. My heart is pounding. I take a deep breath, walk to the door, unlatch the lock, and open it.

  “Hey.” I blink up at him.

  “Hey.” His eyes drive into mine.

  I fall back against the door, which conveniently holds it open, and he brushes past me. The scent of crisp air surrounds him. He places a brown paper bag on my small kitchen counter and reaches into the top shelf for two glasses.

  He pours us a drink.

  “What do you want to listen to?” I nervously ask.

  His presence is all around me. He rounds the corner of my tiny kitchen and is in the living room within a few steps. He’s too large for my home. At once, my perfectly designed place—with the odd antique and the minimalistic yet colorful paintings bought off a painter friend before she made it—look small compared to Patrick. He takes a seat on my angular couch, not fitting in quite the right way as his knees bend out well past the seat. He’s just too much. I sit down on the other end and cross my legs.

  “Have you heard the new Café Pacifica album?” He flips through his phone.

  “Not yet.” I swallow, anticipating smooth, easy, relaxing grooves and nothing too agitated like his music.

  “It was good to see Branwen and Kent.” He places his phone in the docking station on a nearby shelf.

  “Yeah.” I take the last sip of my drink. I wish I had taken the plunge and splurged on that Scandinavian chair I’ve been eying. Then I wouldn’t be on this couch right now.

  “This is awkward, isn’t it?” I sigh, and his eyes silently lock wi
th mine. “I need a refill.” I sit up, step into the open-concept kitchen counter, and twist open the bottle. So maybe I am feeling a little… stressed.

  “How’s it going for you?” Patrick arches a brow, and I give him a blank stare. “The whole have-sex-for-one-night-and-get-me-out-of-your-system-for-good theory, is it working?”

  I choke on my drink.

  “Yeah, it’s not really working for me either.” He smirks.

  My eyes flash to the rug, and his eyes move there too before catching mine. Oh god, he’s remembering what we did on that rug two years ago. I run my fingers through my hair and re-cross my legs. I adjust my posture on my uncomfortable couch and pull my shoulders back with a sniff.

  Patrick takes another sip of his drink.

  “So if your theory hasn’t worked thus far, where does that leave us?” He places his glass on my coffee table and leans back against the hard couch.

  I pull my gaze from his. “You haven’t even tried.” My weak words surprise me. He looks confused by my comment too. “You didn’t call me—well… okay… you called me once—you stopped coming by the studio, you just… gave up.”

  Patrick slides his butt closer to mine so our thighs are touching. He unfolds my hands, which are held tightly together, with his. “Are you saying you want me to try?”

  “No.” I pull my grip from his before pressing my face into my hands and looking back up at him. “Yes?” My brow wrinkles.

  Londyn. The white carpet sends me a warning.

  “Londyn?” Patrick’s voice calls me back to him. I’m torn between the past and the present, and I really hope the present will win.

  He studies me for a long time as we search each other’s eyes for a non-existent answer. Finally, his gaze drops to my lips as our noses drift together, and his eyelashes flutter against mine as my lips slowly open.

  “Let me try.” Breath brushes over my lips before his mouth closes over mine.

  I press my hand to his chest, and his eyelids slowly open.

  “I made a mistake, and I’m sorry.” He presses his lips to my lips and slides his thumbs down my back, scooping me onto his lap. It’s apparent how much he wants me to forget the past. And I do too. Hell, do I ever. “And I want to spend every day making it up to you.” He flexes underneath me as liquid electronica beats set the rhythm.

  “You left me, Patrick. We were engaged. And while you were going to parties in LA and hanging out with the enemy, I was here, grieving alone. Crushed. It took me a long time to get over it.”

  Patrick’s eyes widen as he nods.

  “You’re right, babe, I shouldn’t have left. Even though you played it tough, your father had just passed. It was a horrible and selfish time to leave you.” His words make me squirm. He’s right. I needed him more than I let on. I needed to believe that someone was there for me. But his career took priority.

  “You had an opportunity you thought you should take.”

  “There would have been other opportunities.” His hands fall to his sides. “I should have stayed with you.”

  I lift off of him, nearly falling back into the coffee table, when he catches me. My mind is reeling, because he has never brought up my involvement in the rift that occurred between us, and it’s unclear if he knows I played my own part in our downfall. But that’s not the point.

  He steadies me, his fingers stroking back a strand of my hair.

  “And yet ultimately, it didn’t seem to bother you at the time.” There’s a scowl tugging at my lips. It is deniable and undeniable. I force away the tears, so tired of fighting my emotions and fears.

  The images of the New York socialite Elle Vanderhyde, the woman who severed our lives, come flooding back to me in gory detail. The snippets of words she fed us, from the first meeting she had with Patrick about funding the production of his independent album before any record label would have given him the time of day, to the promises she made about taking it viral through the social media platform that facilitated her a self-made celebrity.

  Patrick came home that night looking dark. Worn and torn. It was pouring rain and his long hair was plastered to his face. We’d buried my dad only weeks before. Patrick had been so frustrated with his music career for months and was devastated over the lack of opportunity to get it off the ground. He couldn’t move past the freebie gigs at clubs and the underpaid compositions for a downtown dance company, which didn’t pay the bills. His parents were pressuring him to go back to school. He was ready to throw in the towel, give it all up—and it was killing me, because he was talented. I knew that if he quit, he would always regret it. He would always carry around that dark heavy cloud that was pushing down on him that night and had been growing for a while.

  “Elle thinks she can finance an album and make it a huge success through her contacts.” He sat down on the couch and stared at the floor.

  “That’s great.” I watched for his next move, thinking it odd that he wouldn’t make eye contact that night. When he did, his eyes were pained when he should have been happy. Elle had been trying to get close to Patrick for some time, inviting him to all the high-profile city events and making it clear I was not invited. The first few times she said that she only had two tickets, we believed her, but it became a regular thing.

  “She asked about you. She said she thought your designs were sexy, and that they would make a big wave in Paris.”

  “Sexy? That’s not a horrible thing to say.” I was trying to make light of the situation, but Paris? I forced a grin as I leaned into my hip, making a pot of green tea in our studio apartment. I hadn’t been able to smile easily since the heart attack that claimed Dad’s life at sixty-two, even though we hadn’t been close since that day he drove me to kindergarten. It was the start of chain smoking, whisky, and Americanos. I was stitching together something for myself to wear on my vintage sewing machine that night, which was still draped off the table and resting under the machine plate.

  “She said her family fund would finance my album.”

  “Really?” My heart stopped. Dad could have funded Patrick’s album in a heartbeat, but he’d left everything to the assistant who became his wife. He had Mom convinced at the time of their divorce that he was going under, that his biggest asset was the house, and that he was doing her a favor by giving her title minus the debt. Meanwhile, he was a multi-million-dollar landowner in secret. I didn’t want his money anyway.

  “With one request.” His eyes gazed into the distance.

  “What?” I cocked a brow. I hadn’t yet put two and two together.

  He cleared his throat. “She wants you to move.”

  I stopped what I was doing in the kitchen and looked at him.

  “To Paris.” He swallowed. “But I made it clear it was a deal killer.”

  “What about the album?” I chirped.

  “She wants to help me with it here, or maybe in LA. You know her.” He said the last part casually, but he looked uncomfortable.

  I just stared at him.

  “I said no, of course. I told her you would never leave New York.” Patrick was looking at me in the same way I had been looking at him.

  “Or you.” I tilted my head, watching him. We were to get married that spring. It was all planned out and only two months away, even if everyone thought we were crazy.

  The lines on his face were shadowed, even though he was shy of thirty. His hair was dangling off his slumped shoulders. The word that came to mind was disappointment.

  “She has a lot of nerve.”

  “Tell me about it.” Patrick sighed.

  Maybe it hadn’t seemed like a big deal to her. Elle, sipping on a dirty martini, would have thought it a perfect business arrangement. She wouldn’t have gotten our commitment. She didn’t get love. She didn’t believe in it. Elle was self-professed never going to get married; it said so right on her blog: ‘uncommitted.’ She would not fall in love. Elle cared about having a good time and being loved by everyone—not one person. But she definitely had
her eye on Patrick. Then again, who didn’t?

  “Are you attracted to her?” All my insecurities were triggered as I sipped my green tea.

  “Who?” Patrick wrinkled his brow.

  “Elle. Who else?” I eyed him.

  “No.” Patrick swallowed. “Coug. She told me to let her know if we changed our mind. But I was firm about our wedding plans this spring and told her we would not live across the Atlantic from one another, not even for a few months, especially not now.” He eyed me.

  “Patrick, you can’t put your career on hold because Dad chose now to have a massive heart attack. You know we were never close. He was practically a stranger to me.”

  Yet I felt like I was drowning.

  I sipped on my tea, in thought.

  It crossed my mind that Patrick might actually want this. Maybe he was just saying he didn’t want me to go to Paris to make me feel better. Other than New York, Paris was the one place on the globe I could see myself. I trusted Patrick, but I couldn’t help but feel threatened by Elle. If I dared take a position in Paris even for a few months, the woman was ready and waiting to encroach. I knew in my gut that even if Patrick resisted her, she would do everything in her power to tear us apart.

  Patrick didn’t touch his tea. He looked straight down at his glass the whole time with the same dark expression. I remember wishing I knew what he was thinking. Was he pissed at Elle, at life, at his art? Or was he resentful that our relationship was holding him back? Being able to fund his first label was exactly the thing he needed to push his career forward.

  He looked up at me, and I looked back at him, waiting for what he would say.

  “I’m meeting my father tomorrow. He’s talking about loaning me money to get that degree.”

  My heart sank. “Oh, okay…” What could I say?

  “I love you, and I want to marry you this spring,” he said, and I watched with longing as he stripped off his jeans and pulled the sheets over his broad chest in our studio apartment. No wonder Elle wanted a piece of him.

  I slipped out of my clothes—finds from the flea market—and under the sheets, feeling his taught skin against mine. Our legs tangled as he nuzzled into me with his wet locks of hair. His whole body was damp from the rain, and my fingertips caught on his skin as his tongue parted my lips. He reached his cool fingers between my legs, I moaned into his mouth, and he propped me open to slide inside of me as his hair dropped water down my neck and made temporary stains on the sheets. Our eyes held contact. They were absorbed in this deep, dark knowing that was silently there between us as we held onto each other tightly.