Page 54 of When We Break

“Sure, one night that will require weeks of work, and you know I won’t go to the city to rehearse with you. I willnotdo it. I live here. My business is here.”

“And your man is there,” he finishes for me.

“Yes. Frankly, my entire life is here, and if you’d move here, my life would be complete.”

He scoffs at that. We both know that Mik will never leave New York City.

“What if I come there for rehearsal?”

I blink, staring blindly out the window. “You’d do that?”

“This is important. We never got to say goodbye, malishka. We never had our final curtain call, our moment together.”

No, because we didn’t know that that last night would be the end of it. We had no way of knowing.

Water fills my eyes as I take a shaky breath.

“After more than a decade of work together, we deserve this. Webothdeserve it.”

“When do I have to let you know?”

“The sooner, the better. The performance will be in June.”

“Mik.” I shake my head. “We’d have to start rehearsals in just a few weeks.”

“That is why you need to let me know. I will hound you about it. It is happening.”

“You know I don’t like being handled, Mikhail.”

“Yes, you do. I have to go. And seriously, malishka, please consider it. We need it.”

He hangs up, and I lean on the countertop, still looking outside.

“You should do it.”

With a gasp, I whirl around and clutch my hand to my chest, then scowl down at Riley.

“You’re supposed to warn me of these things.”

“You were pretty deep in thought,” Beck says. He’s leaning against the wall across the room, his arms crossed over his chest, watching me.

“How much did you hear?”

“Most of it,” he admits, and I get back to work on breakfast.

“I hope you don’t mind that I took over your kitchen.”

“I don’t mind at all.” He crosses the room and leans on the island across from me, watching as I grate the last of the potato. “What are your hesitations when it comes to this? Let’s talk about it.”

Blowing out a breath, I pour some oil in a pan and set it on the stove. I light the burner, glad I have something to do with my hands while I talk.

“My ankle, for starters.”

“You mentioned that it’s healed.”

“Yeah, but like I told you last night, it’s not the same. I’ve done the stretches and exercises, but it’ll never be as strong as it was. When I jeté, it feels like it might twist out from under me. That makes me uncertain, and there’s no room for that in a performance.”

“Okay.” I feel him round the island so he’s facing me while I work at the stove. “What else?”

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