Page 42 of Guarded Hearts
The hardest question to answer. Long, complicated explanations sat on my tongue but wouldn’t come out in English. “I couldn’t help it.”
“Well,” Alyssa said, “I’ll make it really easy for you. I amfine. You can go back into the club and forget I’m out here. You’ve been exceptional at forgetting about me for the last week, so this should be a breeze.”
“Did you get back together with Ricky?” The question burned my soul.
“What?” She frowned and scanned the area around us before meeting my gaze. “Why would you ask me that?”
“In the car, on the way to the hospital, you said he wanted you back.” I ran a frustrated hand through my hair and then buried both hands in my pockets. I wanted to touch her, so badly.
Her face morphed from confused to surprised. “Oh my God. You’re jealous? You gave me the silent treatment for a week because you’re jealous?” She covered her face with her hands and bent at the waist.
“No, no, no.” I’d stepped away from our relationship because Mia had asked me to. The little voice in the back of my head chided me for not being honest. Her comment about Ricky had sent me spiraling, and I’d rotated away from her without fully examining why.
“Yes, yes, yes.” She glared. “Go back to the club. I’m not doing this. I don’t have the energy to do this.”
“To do what? Talk to me?”
She pointed her finger at my chest. “We’re not talking. We’re fighting. I’m so unbelievably angry at you for making me feel like shit this week because you thought there was a chance, a pretty fucking slim one, I might add, that I’d take Ricky back.”
“A slim chance?” I’d been right. She had considered his offer.
“Yeah, slim. Because at the time, I thought things were going pretty well with us. But you keep talking, and his chances keep rising.” With her hand, she sliced into the air as if creating rungs on an invisible ladder.
“You ordered a ride?” A preppy-looking white guy hung out the window of a black sedan, eyeing Alyssa.
“Yeah,” she said, glancing at me over her shoulder. “Just a sec.” She turned back to me. “Go back inside. We’re done.”
“Alyssa.” I took a step toward the car as she opened the rear door.
“Don’t.” She had the door open, and she rotated to face me, tears in her eyes. “Don’t say my name like I’m the one breaking your heart. That’s not what happened. I didn’t do this.Youdid.”
Before I could say anything else, she was in the car, and they were speeding away.
I stared at the vehicle at a loss. She was right. I had done this. And I wasn’t completely sure why. Yes, Mia had asked, but it was my jealousy that kept me from talking to Alyssa, from explaining to her how I was feeling.
I ran a hand down my face. No woman had gotten this close, this deep under my skin. Not since Zoya, and even then, our relationship had been so different. I’d loved her, loved her so much, was certain I would have been happy with her for the rest of my life. But she’d died, and I’d built a fortress around my heart. One loss I could survive, but two? Nothing in my life would ever befineagain.
My preoccupation with Alyssa had been safe. I would never have acted on my feelings because she was a dancer. Each tour should have been a different cohort, without any risk of true attachment.
But she’d returned for a second tour and set a match to the gasoline of my obsession. How did you put out a fire that raged so hot?
At the edge of my vision, a petite figure appeared near my shoulder. The fire-engine red hair gave her away.Amy.
“She’s gone?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“She’s miserable, too, you know. I liked it better when she was happy. When the tour first started, she was so unhappy.” She turned glassy eyes up to me. Drunk. Probably going to be more honest than I’d like. “I’d known her before from auditions and stuff and from the last tour, so I knew she wasn’t usually catty and kinda mean. She was balanced on the edge—continue being kind and thoughtful and getting screwed over by men or become hard and jaded and not give a shit at all. Then you two started dancing together, and it was like this light lit in her.” She snapped her fingers.
The ache in my chest intensified at her words. “She’s a good swing dancer.”
Amy smirked. “Oh, I’m sure she is. An excellent choreographer too.” She held my gaze. “I’m not going to tell anyone. I know what our contract says. I know Mia is in a tough spot, having just fired Jazz because of our contract, and if she were to find out for sure about you and Alyssa, well, that’d be bad. I had a boyfriend who did employment law. I get it.”
“There’s nothing—”
“Going on. Yeah.” Amy’s lips tipped into a partial smile. “Alyssa said that too. Maybe that’s true now. But I don’t think it was true before. Listen, I’m going back inside. We’ll probably be away for at least another hour. If you wanted to work your issues out with Alyssa, there won’t be many people around.”
I nodded but didn’t respond. As her heels clicked back toward the entrance, I took out my phone and ordered a ride. The smart thing forour jobs, maybe even for Alyssa, was to let her go. I didn’t know what I was capable of giving her beyond the tour, beyond Mia’s wedding.
