Chapter 10
Nicole’s POV
The rotation happened the way it always did – a shift in the music, partners stepping apart, hands releasing – and for exactly a few seconds I was standing alone in the middle of the floor.
I turned as my breath left my body and did not immediately return.
He was already extending his hand. The mask covered his brow to his cheekbone. Even with the mask I could still figure out who he was.
Four years, four years and my body recognized him before my mind had finished forming the thought.
My legs moved as my hand lifted.
“Good evening,” Tate said, and his voice was exactly the same – low and even, carrying precisely as far as he intended it to and no further.
“Good evening,” I said as we began to move.
The piece was Renard’s Third Waltz .I had played it since I was eleven years old. I knew every modulation, every turn. A few weeks ago I had played it in my kitchen while dinner was burning and Rosy stood on the chair beside the bench clapping along to the three-count with both palms, completely serious, deeply proud of herself.
My body knew the steps but the rest of me was somewhere else entirely – suspended at a cold distance, watching the scene below with the detached, helpless clarity of someone observing a disaster already in progress and understanding there is nothing left to do but wait for it to finish.
His hand was at my waist, my hand was on his shoulder. The contact was appropriate, correct, unremarkable to
flame. anyone watching but it felt like standing too close to an open
“You’re tense,” he said
“I’m fine,”
He didn’t push it, his eyes moved over my mask with the unhurried attention of someone accustomed to reading people.
He doesn’t know you, I reminded myself. The barrier has hid your scent, he has no reason to look for you because you died years ago.
The logic was sound but my palms were still soaked with cold sweat.
“Do you work with the institute?” he asked.
“I’m attached to the research division,” I said, which was true in a way.
He nodded once, accepting it. We turned through the corner, and I kept my chin level and my back straight and counted bars of music in order to ease my tension.
Forty-two bars remaining, Thirty-eight, Thirty-five.
“This piece,” he said, after a moment, “feels like something I should know.”
My breath snagged. “It’s performed fairly often.”
“No.” He was quiet for a second. “Something else. It’s familiar in a different way. Do you play?”
1/2
+25 Bonus
“When I have time,” I said. “Which isn’t often.”
“What keeps you busy?”
My research, my twins, my carefully constructed life that you cannot touch.
“Work,” I said.
He smiled, it was a surprise seeing him smile. I have only seen him smile during his meetings or with others but never with me, so this came as a surprise. Stop, I told myself. Stop knowing him so well.
Twenty bars. Fifteen. The music was building toward its closing cadence.
A small cluster of women in elaborate masks had drifted to the edge of the floor – guests, visitors, people who had recognized him.
Ten bars.
“Are you certain you don’t need to rest?” Tate asked.
“Quite certain,” I said.
Five.
–
Tate’s head had already begun to turn some instinct of his own, or simply the awareness of someone accustomed to being watched.
when the music finally resolved into its closing cadence. The phrase that always made Rosy press both palms dramatically over her ears and then immediately demand I play it again, even before the last note had fully died, they appeared – a flood of gorgeous gowns and glittering masks converging on him from the edges of the floor, laughing, bright, angling for his attention all at once. His head turned toward them. That was all I needed. I stepped back, inclined my head in the brief acknowledgment the choreography required, and walked.
The terrace was half empty, other guests taking in the air between dances, and I found a spot near the stone railing and stood with my hands flat on the cold surface and breathed.
He didn’t know you, I told myself again. He danced with a woman in a mask. He asked polite questions. He doesn’t know.
I pressed my palms harder against the stone until I could feel the cold all the way to my wrists.
I had known, walking in tonight, that there was a version of this where I saw him across a room. I had prepared for that. I had not prepared for his hand at my waist, or for five minutes of looking directly at his face, or for the specific way he said something familiar in a voice I had been trying to forget for years.
I regretted coming here, I straightened, smoothed the green fabric of my dress, and turned back toward the light.
P
Comments
Support
Share
2/2
+25 Bonus
