Page 66 of Not In Love

As if on cue, the music shifted to a bright, playful Bollywood classic surging to life over the speakers. Around her, people clapped and whistled, the energy rising like a wave.

Chaaru grinned and nudged her drink-hand upward slightly. "Showtime," she whispered.

Kash lifted her glass to her lips, tossed back the last of the sweet, tart drink, and set it down neatly on a side table.

She had only had weeks to prepare for tonight. But like riding a bike, the moves and the rhythm and the ease came back to her muscles as if she had been dancing all along. It helped that Char and Mona and she had stuck to a strict practice schedule every night for three weeks.

She let the music ripple through her, loosening the last tethers of fear, as she slipped through the gathering crowd. Her besties trailed behind her with excited smiles.

The floor ahead of the stage cleared, a small cluster of guests edging towards their seats at the tables.

Taking a small detour, Kash slipped out of her pants and jacket, and pulled on a glitzy, satin gold skirt that matched her tube top.

Cheers broke out as she and her friends climbed the few steps onto the stage, her heart thudding hard but steady. The fairy lights overhead turned the gold of her tube top and skirt into molten metal.

She felt free, alive, and so full of hope that it wouldn’t be strange if it shone out of her pores like glitter. She turned slightly, catching Diego’s dark gaze from across the crowd—fixed, unblinking, locked onto her like gravity itself.

The first notes of the music swelled around her. She threw an arm up high behind her and lost herself in the beat. Not before she managed to wink at the man watching her like she was the sun itself.

CHAPTER20

The woman at Diego’s side laughed lightly, tossing her hair over one shoulder, but he barely caught what she said. The strains of thumping bass reverberated through the polished floors.

The crowd shifted and settled, parting enough for the stage to come into view. And then Kash stepped onto it, along with her friends.

Diego straightened instinctively, his hand sliding off the wall, the polite words dying in his throat. For a second, he couldn’t process what he was seeing.

In a gauzy gold skirt and that gold tube top, standing tall and sure under focus lights, Kash looked like a movie star. Her golden-brown skin shimmered and her eyes danced with sheer joy.

He hadn't known she was dancing tonight. He hadn't even known she danced. Another tiny thing to know and cherish about her. A throb of something raw and electric punched through him as the music swelled.

The moment she moved, the moment she caught the rhythm and let it ripple through her, there was no one else in the world.

Not the woman beside him. Not the dozens of guests laughing and talking and snapping pictures.

Only her.

Kash danced like she was writing a story with her body, every step and turn an exhale of something too big to say aloud.

Her movements were clean, precise, but expansive, every flick of her wrist, every sway of her hips pulling the beat deeper into her flesh. She spun, dipped low, twisted up again, the gold of her top catching the lights and scattering them across the walls.

But it wasn’t the precise rhythm of her beats or the clean lines of her body as she twisted this way and that that wrecked him.

It was the joy, the fire in her eyes. The way her mouth curled into a real, reckless smile when she caught the edge of a fast turn. The way she let her body speak as the music dipped and soared around her.

And then, her gaze found him.

In the middle of the music, the lights, the crowd, Kash’s eyes locked onto his. And it wasn’t an accident or a casual glance.

It was deliberate.

This is for you,her eyes said.If you can read it, if you dare to claim it.

Diego’s heart slammed once, hard enough to steal his breath.

She wasn’t performing for the crowd.

She was dancing for him.

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