Page 12 of Teach Me to Fly

I stay silent, watching the two of them with a strange sense of displacement. Like I’m the third wheel in this conversation.

My father glances back at the barre where her sweatshirt drapes across the rail. “That piece,” he starts, tilting his head like he’s pondering something he already knows the answer to. “Was that Swan Lake?”

Angelique’s lips twitch, just slightly. “It was,” she says, brushing her palms down the sides of her legs. “It’s the solo piece I was rehearsing at The Big Apple Ballet Company, before I quit.”

I shift where I stand, suddenly hyper-aware of the way her voice shakes around that name. The Big Apple Ballet is a company we all used to revere, one that she left without fanfare, apparently.

“Ah, yes. The Big Apple.” My father nods, considering her with those assessing eyes. “Why’d you leave?”

Her gaze drops to the floor, and for a second she seems to shrink into herself. Not visibly, though. She does it in a way most people wouldn’t notice, but I see it, and it makes me curious.

What’s going through her head right now? What memory did she just fall into?

“I had… different values,” she says at last, the words evasive, but loaded.

A beat passes between us while my father watches her for a moment longer. He surprises the hell out of me by doing the one thing I thought he never would.

“Well,” he says, straightening up. “How would you feel about joining Imperium?”

Her head jerks up, startled.

“To dance Swan Lake, with Reign,” he adds.

My chest goes tight.

What the fuck?

She blinks. “Excuse me?”

“We’ve been searching for something special. Something transformative.” He smiles. “I saw it in you today, Angelique. The grace, the hunger, the pain. You’d be the perfect Swan Queen.”

She looks at me then, briefly, like the suggestion physically touched her, and she’s not sure how to react. Her eyes shine with hope, fear, and maybe disbelief. And I know her well enough to know she’s calculating the cost.

Angelique exhales, slow and steady. “That’s… kind of you to offer, Charlie,” she says carefully. “But I don’t dance anymore. I quit when I left The Big Apple.”

My father chuckles, brushing the air like her words were a joke. “Is that so? Because from where I’m standing, you were dancing just now—and beautifully, might I add. That was a performance people would pay good money to see.”

She stiffens suddenly, her arms pressing closer to her body, her chin tilting down like she’s trying to disappear. And still, he keeps going.

“You know,” he says lightly, strolling a few steps deeper into the room. “Since you’re staying at our guesthouse, it would be a real gift to the company, to the town of Marlow, and to our family if you’d considered it. Just a short run, nothing overwhelming.”

My jaw tightens. Of course he’d twist it like that—wrap an offer in something that sounds generous but lands like a debt. It shouldn’t surprise me. It’s textbook Charlie Harrington—polite, persuasive, and perfectly timed tomake someone feel like saying no would be selfish. And Angelique… she’s too polite to push back, and he knows it.

Her eyes flash, barely, and then the panic sets in. Subtle, like a tremor in the earth before the ground gives way.

“I… suppose I could consider it,” she mumbles.

That’s not a yes, not really, but it’s enough for him.

“Brilliant,” he beams, already halfway out the door like everything is confirmed. “Reign will work out the details with you. I want this production to be extraordinary—and the two of you, together…” He claps a hand to my shoulder as he passes. “Brilliant.” And then he’s gone.

The silence he leaves in his wake is stifling. Angelique is staring at the floor, lips parted as if she’s still trying to understand what just happened.

“You should’ve said no,” I mutter, then turn and walk out before she can answer.

Because the truth is, I want nothing more than to dance with her. To lose myself in her movement, and to find meaning in the shapes our bodies make onstage. But only if it’s hers to give. Only if she’s dancing for herself. And what I saw just now—that wasn't a choice. That was cornering a bird already too broken to fly. And I’m not going to be the one who cages her.

Chapter 5

---