Page 19 of Dirty Dancer

CHAPTER 8

EMERSYN

Ichecked my stage makeup in the mirror before glancing at the time on the wall. Tonight marked our last weekend on the road. We’d close the tour for eight weeks, take a break and go home.

Excitement unfurled in my belly. I couldn’t wait to be back in Braxton Harbor and at the clubhouse. Even as the anticipation surged through my veins, I forced my breathing to regulate. We were close, but we still had these last three shows to get through.

Freddie lounged in a chair on the other side of my dressing room. Head back, his eyes were half-slits like he was dozing. I stole a look at him.

“Stop worrying, Boo-Boo,” he said without shifting his position. “I had a bad night. It happens.”

I stuck my tongue at him. “I could just be looking at you cause you’re all sexy and sweet.”

“Sweet?” That earned me a real snort, but the corners of his mouth curved. He gave a gentle rolling motion with his hand. “You may proceed to look at me for as long as you like.”

Not rolling my eyes took everything cause I was touching up the liner. It needed to be dramatic and I didn’t want it to melt off after the first set. Smiling, however, I could do. “Do you need to talk about it?”

Neither of us ever wanted to talk about the bad dreams. I still got them too. The nightmares came and went, dark memories that crept out of the rotted floorboards of the past. Didn’t matter how often we tore them up, something could trigger them.

A smell.

A sound.

A touch.

Shivers chased up my spine and I gave myself a little shake. No, I neverwantedto talk about it. Need, however, was a pesky little beast.

Sighing, Freddie sat up and clasped his hands together loosely. His blond hair had gotten longer on the tour. It fell in waves, like those poets from the old movies and it always reminded me of Renaissance paintings.

Instead of looking at me, he was staring down at his hands so I gave him space as I straightened and studied my appearance. The body suit was one of the new costumes we’d ordered and it would stand out against the chorus. The past few weeks with Sully had me changing a number of my routines.

Tonight, we were going to show off a company wide number since these last three showings were all for charity. They’d reached out to Liam who brought it to me. The organization raised money and awareness for the survivors of human trafficking.

Despite the worry in his eyes, Liam put the choice and the call in my hands. My answer was an immediate yes, but I ranit past all of them first because it meant one more week on the road past when we’d planned to stop, because we needed the rehearsal time.

“I think it’s some of the stories we heard from the director yesterday,” Freddie admitted in a quiet voice. “I know she didn’t know about me. How could she?” He spread his hands out and exhaled a long sigh.

I debated between pivoting to face him or just letting him talk. When he lifted his head and his gaze locked on mine in the mirror, however, it decided me.

“At the same time, she could have been describing some of my childhood. The parts I remember anyway.” He grimaced, but he didn’t look away from me when I faced him. “Most of it is shadows and monsters. Pain. Pain and enduring. There was nothing to do but endure because complaining and sobbing just made more pain. Then came the drugs.”

Now he looked at his hands again. He flattened them out, his fingers were rock steady. That—that was a good sign.

“I thought I was fine,” he continued. “The people she was talking about, they weren’t me and I hated it for them. I’d cheerfully cut up everyone involved with hurting them. No one gets to do that to kids or anyone else. No one should.”

Agreed.

“I was angry. Anger is good. Anger is healthy.” A faint smile flickered over his face, one I understood on such a primitive level. “Anger is a feeling I can embrace, cause it’s not… sadness or despair or crushing guilt.”

The desire to wrap myself around him and shield him from the rest of the world burned through me, but I had to keep myself in place. Touch could trigger Freddie right now, particularly when he was being so vulnerable.

“So I thought, sucks for them and I was feeling kind of proud to be a part of this—helping them.” Now he slumped back, elbowon the arm of the chair and two fingers against the side of his head as he stared up at me. “Then I went to sleep.”

The struggle playing out across his face was so real. It hurt to see him hurting.

“I don’t know if I was just picturing myself in all the different stories she told or if those things happened to me too. I mean, they could have. I know there was a lot. The drugs used to keep it all away.”

No they didn’t.

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