Page 73 of Dance for Me
Sadie turns to look at the main doors across the room, a smug smile blooming as they open. My eyes track where her stare is pinned, blood solidifying in its course as I make out the figure crossing the threshold.
“You used my past against me,” she sighs wistfully. “I thought you might like to see how that feels.” She walks away without another word, leaving me to stare as my ex-girlfriend steps forward to be greeted in a warm embrace by Harper.
I’ve crossed the expanse of audience seats before the two women can disentangle from what must be a fake show of affection. I know for a fact that VanessaloathesHarper. Not that she ever knew anything about her to justify the feeling, but that never stopped Vanessa from passing judgement. On anything.
She shouldn’t be here. She isn’t a member.She can’t be here. My coverdemandsthat she isn’t here. Though I know she barely listened to anything I talked about in the two years we weretogether, she definitely remembers what I do for a living, evident in the way her eyes now sweep over my costume.
She abruptly lets out a shrill laugh, waving one hand dramatically up and down my body, the other coming up to cover her mouth, doing nothing to smother the volume of her derision.
Harper, to her credit, doesn’t smile or show triumph. She merely looks between us, “Do you two know each other?”
Vanessa composes herself quickly, hands smoothing out the front of her pencil skirt. “You could say that. He used to lecture me about my profession, clean my apartment, and drag me to family events I had no interest in,” she answers, minimizing what should have been a meaningful relationship into one annoyed sentence.
Harper simply tilts her head to the side, waiting for the rest of the explanation.
“We used to date.” She shifts attention from Harper to me, and I feel the weight of that stare like a warning. “Though he seems to have taken his life in a different direction since then, haven’t you, Colton? My my, how the mighty have fallen.” Her scoff is an ugly thing, not even trying to hide her judgement about those who work at an establishment she begged and pleaded to gain a membership to.
Harper, however, just lifts a single eyebrow, seemingly out of the loop on Sadie’s method of torture.
“Is that why I was suddenly approved as a member?” Vanessa steps close to me, hand running over my tie as she presses closer, completely ignoring Harper. “Did you miss taking your clothes off for me, handsome? It was the only thing you were good for, after all.”
Her words should hurt, but the only pain I felt at the loss of her in my life was for the time I wasted. I should have realized sooner she would never be the love I wanted or needed.
“Vanessa,” I warn, hand gripping hers to still its movementdown my tie, wrenching it away. She sneers at me, never having liked being told no.
“So, what did you do to piss off your colleagues, to have fallen this low? It must have been bad,” she jabs at me, tactless as always. But I’m not looking at her. My focus is on Harper, waiting for some semblance of a reaction to the insults Vanessa is throwing around carelessly about a place and people she loves so much. “Oh, I know!” she exclaims, clapping her hands together. “Did you quit because you weren’t named narc of the?—”
“How about a drink?” Harper cuts her off, motioning to one of the bartenders who comes over carrying a menu, sweeping Vanessa into a conversation about vermouth and bitters. Harper turns back to me and takes a deep breath, eyes narrowed.
“Harper, I had no idea she would be here,” I whisper, hoping she believes that I had no part in getting her through the door.
“Take her to my office,” she hisses back. I try to argue, but she just holds up a hand. “It doesn’t matter why she is here. She is, and she is about two seconds from ruiningeverythingin an effort to embarrass you.Take her to my office. She can embarrass you just fine there. Now.” She turns away, leaving me alone as she rejoins Wade, who stepped back when he had the good sense to smell blood in the water.
36
HARPER
The door to my office hasn’t even fully shut before I turn to Wade. “Give me your knife.”
“No.” He crosses his arms over his wide expanse of chest, puffing up a little.
“Why not?” I ask, incredulous that he wouldn’t do me this teensy, tiny little favor. He bends at the waist, to look me dead on, arms still crossed.
“You can’t kill her.”
I smile sweetly, booping him on the nose, “Well, we both know that’s not true.”
“Harper,” he scolds, straightening back out.
“Fine, I swear. I won’t touch a hair on her bleached little head.” I make a crisscross over my chest before holding my hand out.
“Still no. It’s my favorite knife and you’ll hurt her,” he says calmly, turning on his heel to stride back to his post next to the bar. He calls his knifeher, but sure,I’mthe psychopath.
“Fine. I’m going out back for a smoke break,” I say, scurrying around him, bumping lightly with my hip as I go.
“You don’t smoke!” he hollers after me, watching me weavethrough the audience towards the back exit and valet stand for the garage.
“I won’t leave the garage, promise!” I call back, hoping it buys me a few extra minutes before he comes storming out to get me. He’s nervous to leave me without a shadow, even within the confines of theCirquegrounds. Better make those minutes count. After making a pit stop at the valet, I walk through the garage looking for spot eighty-five.
