Page 21 of Austen Persuaded

“I mean, just for a while. You’re a fantastic dancer, Annie, but I doubt teaching students is your true passion. I could be wrong though. Probably just a temp thing until you find something full time elsewhere …” Rafael trailed off, looking into the distance as though already making plans in his head.

“Raf, I’m reallyrusty—”

“Shush, I won’t hear it. You can do jetes and pointe work in your sleep. You’re not saying no.”

When I narrowed my eyes and pursed my lips, he sighed, and his shoulders slumped. “OK. Please, please don’t say no, Annie. You’d be doing me a favor, you know. At least think about it?”

I sighed and then nodded reluctantly.

“If it helps, I’ll keep an eye out for openings at the agency. So far it seems like a good place to work, though I’m still pretty new there,” Rainn offered. “I did make a friend in HR already though. Robin, remember him? He’s a runner too.”

My frustration mounting, I nonetheless pasted a smile on my face. As I started pushing my chair back from the table, I looked at each of them in turn. “Thank you, Rainn, all of you, actually. I know your hearts are in the right place. I’m just … ugh, I need some escapism, you know? After the week I’ve had, you know. I think I’m going to my room to read.”

They glanced at each other as though wondering whether they should protest. When their eyes met mine again, they all nodded with resigned expressions.

I laughed lightly before turning on my heel. “I’ll just be on the other side of that wall. Not leaving the country. Have fun with your nerd games, boys.”

As I shut my door, I breathed a sigh of relief. But before stepping away, I paused to listen to the voices that carried through the door.

“Is she OK? I’ve never seen her like that,” Joel said.

“Rough week, to put it mildly,” said Rainn. “But she’s tough.” For some reason, I felt a little bitter about that assessment.

I’m tough?

I’ve never had a choice.

What if I’m tired of being tough?

Finally, Rafael spoke, his voice a bit somber. “She isn’t OK now, but she will be. She needs time.” He could always see rightthrough me.

I’d made an effort today. Whatever day it was, maybe Thursday. Lunch eaten, face washed, a bit of laundry sorted, and … I was ready to go back to bed. I’d finished my book last night and hadn’t yet started another because, well, how do you follow Dickens? And what on earth could a person read when in a mood like this?

I just needed my bed. The soft covers, the bliss of being asleep, oblivious to everything and everyone.

Except when the dreams came. Then Ihadto wake up. To get out of bed. Or just to lie in bed and not think, not sleep, not feel anything but the soft covers.

The dreams of humiliation, of betrayal, of infidelity, of resentment, of all the things I felt because of Brandon, and some because of Viviana, and then the dreams in which I was small, insignificant, yet somehow always in my mother’s way … all of them haunting me and making me wake up in a cold sweat, sometimes with tears burning my eyes and blazing a path down my cheeks onto my already damp pillow or tangled sheets.

These were nothing, though, compared to the dreams of him.

Of Kylan Quinn, the man whose love I desperately needed to forget but somehow couldn’t,stillcouldn’t. Why was he still haunting me, years later? Why did it feel like every time I thought of him, my heart broke again and again, as fresh and raw as the first time?

And I just … shut down.

Was this all because of the stupid Instagram post? He might have come and gone already. And why would it matter anyway? It’s not like our paths would cross, and even if they did, so what? It was so far in the past. Four years was forever ago. Well, maybe not that long, but I’d dated many guys since then. Surely he’d been with many women too, if his Instagram photos were any indication.

I hadn’t allowed myself to open Instagram since the day I’d seen that photo. Not that I’d been on my phone all that much in the past week anyway, but when I had, I’d resisted clicking on the photo app. It would do me no good to learn any details about where he was, whether he was still in town, why he was here in the first place,whohe was with…

I felt a stab of pain in my chest and curled up into a ball under the covers. By now there must be a permanent imprint of my body on the mattress in the fetal position. Whynow, of all times, was Kylan the only thing I could think about? I had far more devastating things happen to me lately. Heck, I’d rather think about the womanizer Brandon. Yet I couldn’t. It turned out … he was nothing to me. Had he ever been? Had any of them? It was almost as though nothing had mattered—nothing had been real—since Kylan.

What? That’s insane. Am I going crazy?

Maybe I had a fever again. Could that happen after someone has already recovered?

Some indeterminate amount of time later, Rafael was peeling back the covers and pinching his nose. “Girl, I’m sorry, but you need to shower.”

I ignored that. I was holed up in my room with no responsibilities and nowhere to be. Why shower? But I sat up slowly, brushing some oily red strands behind my ears.

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