My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 504

Chapter 504

“Exactly.”

His accent wrapped around every word, “You dance from here,” he tapped his temple,.”You need to dance from here,” he pressed a hand over his chest, “Again.”

I wanted to throw myself into the fountain. Instead I walked back to my starting mark. The music floated softly from the portable speaker resting beside the garden steps.

No famous score.

No familiar melody.

A pianist had written it two weeks ago from pages of notes I’d scribbled down during nights I couldn’t sleep.

It wasn’t perfect.

Neither was I.

The first notes drifted through the air. I closed my eyes. Four counts, then I moved. My feet knew where to go before my mind did.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath. When I opened them again, I wasn’t standing in a beautiful garden anymore.

I was standing in my childhood home.

My body folded inward. My shoulders curled. My arms wrapped around myself so tightly my fingers dug into my skin.

Small.

I made myself smaller.

One careful step backward another. My head turned sharply over my shoulder, listening, waiting.

My hands lifted halfway before dropping again like a child wanting comfort but already knowing it wasn’t coming.

My feet moved quickly across the marble, short, uneven, almost running, almost hiding. I spun once the turn stopped too early.

My balance broke.

I caught myself before falling.

It only lasted a second. My hand reached into an empty space, nothing met it. I reached again, still nothing.

The movement repeated, again, again, again. Every time slower, every time weaker. Until my arm finally fell back to my side.

I turned as if I had heard someone call my name. No one was there. I smiled anyway. The smile broke before it ever reached my eyes.

My chest tightened. I wrapped my own arms around myself because there was no one else to do it.

One slow turn, another, the world blurred, the trees disappeared, the fountain disappeared. Everything disappeared except a pair of impossible brown eyes that existed only inside my memory.

The final spin stopped suddenly. My balance cracked. One knee hit the marble. I stayed there, looking at the empty space in front of me, knowing nobody was coming.

The last part of the music began.

I pushed myself back to my feet. Every movement became slower now like my body weighed twice as much. My arms lifted carefully, not reaching anymore.

Remembering.

I looked upward. The morning sun slipped through the branches overhead. For one heartbeat, I could almost see my mother sitting in the front row, smiling, clapping, calling me her little prima ballerina.