Page 2 of Baby One More Time

She shoots me a funny look and I lead her to our room, my hand finding hers to help her along and every cell in my body settling when I feel her skin next to mine.

It was at that moment that I knew that I found the one. The girl I was meant to be with for the rest of my life.

She was my penguin.

I shake myself out of my reverie as she scowls at me, grunting when a boy the same age as my daughter lunges at her, wrapping his arms around her middle. My own eyes widen when she smiles down at him and ruffles his hair. He turns to grin at me, missing one of his front teeth and his blue eyes glowing just like hers.

“Hey, mom! I can’t wait to meet everyone! I can’t believe you grew up here. Everyone seems so nice. Why did you leave?”

He chatters away and I hear it as background noise as my heart drops to the ground.

The woman I forced to leave me is married and has at least one child. I should have expected that since I moved on too and found a life of my own. But somehow, like an asshole, I always expected to hear that she never even dated after me.

What an ego I have! She’s a beautiful, special woman. There’s no way that some man didn’t see that and take her for his own.

And it’s my own fault since I told her to leave. Why wouldn’t she find a man who appreciated her?

CHAPTER 2

Serena

Ilisten to my son’s chatter and ignore the uncomfortable bus seats and the jouncing every time we hit a bump. He keeps talking but only half my mind is focused on him. The rest is focused on the one boy that I ever really loved.

Lucian Marino. Tall, dark, sexy and smoking hot. But I guess you can’t really call him a boy anymore.

There’s a girl sitting with him and she’s got his whiskey-brown eyes and dark hair. She’s flopped back in the seat while he talks to her softly. Her arms are crossed over her skinny chest and she’s glaring off into space.

I grin to myself.

I remember those days with my own parents. They hated how I acted when I was little like that. I was a brat, there’s no doubt. The only time I was ever happy was when I was dancing. Those lessons were the only times I really felt like I belonged. Like the world made sense.

After my parents divorced, Mom and I moved here to Pine Grove. Dad stayed in Seattle and every summer I went to spend a month with him. That and every other Christmas break was all the time he could spare for me. Even that went away when he married the woman who he was seeing when he was married to my mother. She didn’t like me and of course I didn’t like her. She broke my parents up.

Or that’s what I believed at the time. My parents were never really what you’d call happy. They probably should have divorced a long time before that but instead he waited until he found a woman he was willing to cheat with. Not exactly father of the year material there.

But when I moved here I met Lucian Marino and everything changed. My mom was working as a secretary for the school district in one of the grade schools and she was happier than I’d ever seen her.

And I had Lucian. My best friend. The boy who showed me the way to my class my first day of school, holding my hand while I breathlessly followed him, my heart twitching to life in my chest.

We were best friends until senior year and then…we were something more. We fell in love and I gave myself completely to the boy who was everything to me. He was my first in so many ways.

Six months later we graduated and he told me that he needed some space to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. He told me to take the scholarship to the dance school that wanted me and keep in touch.

Keep in touch!

I can’t even believe he said that to me today. What the hell? We were everything to each other and then he told me to leave and keep in touch?!

So I did the only thing I could and I left, dragging my broken heart with me.

That was the last time I spoke to him. I took a bus out of town and I swear I saw him standing, leaning against a tree, his broad shoulders drooping.

I stood up trying to see him but he was out of sight in seconds and I still don’t know if it was him. Tears streamed down my face for miles after that. Until I fell asleep, exhausted. Until I reached New York and buried myself in all the work it took to be a successful dancer.

Years of studying and I went on tour with the ballet company. I made prima ballerina after two years with the company.

And then I met Giorgio. My husband and the man I currently hate more than even my father or Lucian.

Gorgeous Giorgio, the gorgeous dancer with the smoldering sapphire eyes and dark hair that fell into his eyes like a little boy. I thought I loved him but after a year when I got pregnant and couldn’t dance anymore it was like I didn’t exist anymore for him. I went from his Corazon to some forgotten woman at home eating dinner by herself and checking the time until she finally puts the dinner in the fridge and goes to bed on her own.

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