Page 36 of Love In The Air

He blinked, hand going to his chest in shock. “How dare me?”

“Yes, you embarrassed me in front of our boss. Why? To show me up? Prove your better than me? Why, Chance?”

“I was looking out for you,” he shook his head with a frown. “That combo is dangerous. I know Jen and Meg want this show to be talked about, but not because one of the performers had to be hospitalized.”

“You don’t know that would happen. I’m good at what I do, Chance.” The rage was chipping away at her smile. Pretense becoming harder and harder to keep up the more she spoke. “I’m a great aerialist.”

“You’re phenomenal, Iz. But even a seasoned performer would have trouble with that move.”

“I can do it!” she insisted.

“You shouldn’t have to,” he countered. “The act is great the way it is.”

“But it could be better.”

She could be better.

Chance stared at her, a sympathetic smile curling his lips as if he knew the thought that popped into her head.

“You’re amazing just as you are, Iz. You don’t need to keep proving yourself to people.”

Iz shifted on her feet, discomfort warring with the rage in her gut. She didn’t like that he could so easily read her. When had she let her guard down around this man? And why? Why was it Chance of all people who seemed to see into her soul, know the very things that scared her most?

“Things can always be better,” he continued, his voice soft, using that comforting tone he always used in the dark of night after he’d sated her body for the third time. “That’s why we keep at them. But it doesn’t mean we kill ourselves by overreaching.”

“I’m not overreaching. You’re overreacting.”

His smile slipped, frustration marring the lines on his face as his stare hardened. “I’m trying to protect you.”

“I never asked you to!” She never asked for any of this. "You always think you know what’s best for everyone Chance, but you don’t. You can’t control everything and everyone around you. I’m an adult, so strop treating me like a child who doesn’t know what’s best for herself.”

Her breath seized in her lungs, walls closing in. Palms becoming clammy, sweating through the sticky spray she’d applied earlier. Her heart beat a furious pace in her chest. Everything felt too tight, too loud, too bright. Things had been going so well, but now she felt like she was standing on the precipice, staring down into a dark inky void. One wrong step and she’d fall down, down into the darkness waiting below.

“I know you are, and I know I can be a little…bullheaded at times.” Chance stepped forward, grabbing her hands in his. “But it’s what you do for the people you love.”

Iz’s heart stopped. Damn thing skipped a beat, or twenty, before roaring back into overdrive. Panic had her pulling her hands from his. He had not just said that to her in the middle of a fight! What was wrong with him?

“Take it back,” she growled.

“What?”

“Take it back. You don’t love me.”

He quirked a brow. “I don’t?”

The panic continued to rise, drowning her as she attempted to swim through the overwhelming sea of emotions she was feeling right now. Shock, joy, fear, hope…

That last one was the killer. Hope was such a bitch of an emotion. It made you dream of things that were out of your control. Working to ace a test, get a job, nail a move. Those things were in her power. But having someone love her and stay with her, for always? How did she control that?

“No. we hate each other.”

He laughed. “Pretty sure we don’t anymore. In fact, I don’t think we ever did.”

She’d argue with that, but right now her brain was such a mess of jumbled thoughts and feelings she didn’t even know if she could form a coherent sentence. She had to get out of here before she did something stupid, like return Chance’s confession.

“Look, this wasn’t what I signed up for. We were just having fun.”

His arms crossed over his chest, brow furrowing as he stared at her. “Yeah, well, things happen. It’s still fun, but now there're feelings involved. So what?”

---