Page 3 of Natasha
Chapter 1
It came as no surprise to Natasha that she didn't much like being a coward. The feeling of it hung heavily over her like thick smog on a hot summer morning in the city. For once, she was grateful for her family's no-nonsense approach to life. The older Ochenko women had put her to work immediately as a teacher in the family's small dance school. It was helpful to have a task, no matter how small, to stop her from dwelling too much on her run from the spotlight. Like Natasha's grandmother, her mother, Olya, was a beautiful dancer. Olya had only ever danced in small companies throughout the city, but what she lacked in prestige, she more than made up for with a personality big enough to fill any stage.
"What I was not given by God, I will make by my own hand," her mother had often sighed to her after another day of teaching at the dance school. Natasha had wordlessly nodded at her mother and continued with her own stretches, but more often than not, Olya had come to stand beside her daughter to inspect her form.
"Back straight, always," she would say, one hand lightly touching Natasha between her shoulder blades. "Heart steady."
Olya Ochenko possessed the passionate and all too focused demeanor of the obsessive ballerinas who pushed themselves to the brink of exhaustion. Natasha had always felt sorry for them for wanting to be more celebrated than their abilities allowed, though for all her talent, her own dance career had ended very nearly in the same manner as the women she had once pitied.
"Heart steady," she scoffed at herself with a slight shake of her head. A lot of good the mantra had done her when it was all on the line in what had been the most significant role of her career. Now, here she was, teaching children to walk en pointe with a fake smile plastered on her face while barely holding the memories of that fateful night at bay.
Stifling a groan, Natasha turned to face the classroom rapidly filling with an assortment of pre-teens. How had she gone from dazzling audiences of thousands in avant-garde costumes and makeup with her very own orchestra to wiping noses and sweeping the hardwood floors after her last student bounced out of her sight? Remembering was a dangerous game to play, even in the relative safety of her class. Life sprang into sharp focus on the rare occasions Natasha allowed herself to remember the feel of terror and anxiety that had crashed so hard and fast on her that she'd had no choice but to shatter. It wasn't safe to revisit memories of that night, or even her dance career, and safe was the name of the game for Natasha.
If she were honest, she couldn't count on what she would do next. She wasn't as steady as she pretended to be, but here among the barre and mirrors of her small class of twenty hopeful and bright-eyed students, she could pretend to be the ballerina who had commanded stages as awe-inspiring as the London's Royal Opera House and New York's beloved Broadway. Arming herself with a smile that she prayed reached her eyes, she glanced over the filling class, but then she froze. Her breath caught in her throat. He was here again.
The blond. Correction, the big blond.
He accompanied one of her most talented students, a slight girl of thirteen with big brown eyes and a broad smile that hid the powerful dancer capable of leaps that made even Natasha feel inspired to don her pointe shoes. Madeline danced with a joy that was contagious. She was the big blond's niece, but other than that, Natasha knew nothing else about the muscular man who graced her studio three times a week. He was broad-shouldered and well-muscled, something that even his loose sweats and zip-up hoodies couldn't hide. He had sparkling blue eyes that always seemed to find Natasha's green ones when she didn't anticipate it. Like the ocean or a bright summer day, which irritated her because the two images never failed to make her smile, which meant that an unbidden smile, a true smile, never failed to appear on her lips whenever the blond man looked her way. It was a chain reaction. Her smiles brought a grin to his lips that always made Natasha wonder what it would feel like to have his mouth against hers. His lips seemed out of place on such a muscular man, too sensuous for the angular jaw, high cheekbones, aquiline nose, and sun-kissed skin that made up his handsome face.
Natasha felt the smile on her face before she was aware of even having smiled, and she blushed at the blond's ability to elicit such a response from her.
Natasha lowered her eyes and shook her head at herself. She had once been courted by New York's most eligible bachelors; there had never been a shortage of beautiful male dancers and directors vying for her attention. She'd had a brief dalliance with a senator at the start of her career, and her mother's favorite story after too many cocktails was the British lord who had proposed to Natasha after seeing her rendition of Swan Lake in London. Yet here she was, blushing and smiling like some provincial girl. It was during moments like this that her new life seemed surreal.
The blond had a way of throwing everything around her in high contrast; even her own reflection seemed more vibrant, sharper than she had grown accustomed to seeing. And that meant that Natasha did her very best to avoid the blond like the plague.
She didn't even know his name, a feat that had been painstakingly carried out, given the small nature of the dance school. She knew that her mother and grandmother knew his name, which led to an even bigger reason Natasha avoided the man. She knew that if she expressed the smallest bit of interest in him, the two older women would stop at nothing until she was sitting across from him in a restaurant that served far too small portions while a waiter offered them overpriced wine by candlelight.
The blond's comfortable sweats and sneakers would vanish, replaced by a tasteful suit, maybe a tie, and his corn silk blond hair, which always fell haphazardly over his forehead, would be styled and combed perfectly. If there was anything her mother and grandmother loved equally, it was a sharply dressed man, which was what they would form the blond into before allowing her to get close to him.
Natasha didn't need fancy suits or expensive dinners; she liked him just as he was. And that was the crux of it, the catch 22 of showing interest in the man who accompanied Madeline to her lessons. He didn't appear sloppy in the casual sweats that he wore. Somehow, the soft cotton of his shirt, the athletic cut of his sweats, the unzipped sweatshirt hoodies that he jammed his hands into as he waited for Madeline all seemed to fit him like a glove. Armani and Gucci tailors could be brought to their knees at how beautifully the simple garments fit the blond's seemingly perfect physique. Thick, muscular thighs, a trim torso that tapered from wide muscular shoulders, and equally sculpted biceps that stretched the sleeves of his shirts just so set Natasha's heart beating a tiny bit faster.
Simply put, the blond was beautiful. Gorgeous, even.
Natasha wouldn't allow the matriarchs of her family to meddle in his simple beauty. It was better to observe him from afar, from the corners of her eyes, in the reflections of the mirrors that lined the walls, or in brief glances as she bid Madeline goodnight.
Natasha smoothed her hands over her hips and down the sides of her leotard. Flexing her feet, she limbered her ankles out by briefly rising en pointe. She liked to do it from time to time to stay warm between classes, and she loved how wide her students' eyes became when she did so with seemingly no thought, appearing to float as effortlessly as a butterfly. So she did so now and even gave a small turn, one leg raised behind her as she came to a stop and grasped the barre in front of her, lowering her nose to it with a small exhale. Even after everything, she felt at peace when her hands touched the wood of the barre. It was her anchor when her mind became too loud. The smooth wood under her fingers was a gentle reminder to breathe and move forward.
"Heart steady," Natasha huffed to herself, eyes still closed as she flexed her fingers on the barre.
A cough by her side made Natasha's eyes pop open. She looked and felt her blood go cold in her veins. It was the blond, hands in his pockets and his eyes on her reflection in the mirror in front of them. Abruptly, Natasha let go of the barre and lowered herself off her toes. Her hands went behind her back, and she schooled her features into a calm expression, one that did not bely how nervous she suddenly was at the blond's proximity.
"That was beautiful," he said.
Natasha's calm facade slipped at the words. Her mouth dropped open. She knew her cheeks were pink from the blush she felt creeping across her skin. "Oh." She closed her mouth and nodded slightly at him. "Thank you."
"I, ah, I'm here with Maddy." The blond rubbed a hand over his face and jammed his hands into the pockets of his sweatshirt. "I just, I wanted, well, I saw you just now, and I had to... I had to say something. Finally."
"Madeline is a very talented student." The words burst out of Natasha before she could stop herself and she cursed her suddenly tongue-tied state. "I mean, she's a very hard-working girl."
"Thanks for saying so." He grinned at her.
"Of course." Natasha gave him a slight smile, her eyes darting to the clock ticking over the door, and she cleared her throat. "I should begin class. My grandmother will have me cleaning the entire school with a toothbrush if I'm even a minute late."
"Russian discipline at its finest," the blond joked, but as soon as the words fell from his lips, he winced. "I mean, well, it's just that she seems very old school and I've heard about her, you know, in the Soviet Union…" He stopped speaking then and looked at his feet with a huff. "I'm going to stop speaking now. Sorry, that came out all wrong," he apologized.
Natasha giggled, the sound surprising the both of them, and she clapped a nervous hand over her lips. "You're more right than you know," she said, her grin hidden behind her fingers. "You're observant that my grandmother has a penchant for the way things were, despite her midnight run to freedom. No need to apologize."
He nodded and took a step back. "I'll let you get on with it. Thanks for not thinking I'm a complete idiot."
