Page 93 of The Lies of Bryn van Doren

“Adams,” he greets on the fourth ring.

“How’s your plate? I need you to look into someone, and I need all you can get me in twenty-four hours.”

Brett Adams chuckles softly before replying, “Sounds like a dare. Who am I after?”

Jessica takes adeep breath as she steps foot into her apartment. Standing just beyond the door, she looks around, waiting for the tears to come. When they don’t, she nods to herself and makes her way into the middle of the living room. She stares at the couch but doesn’t sit on it. It feels like a lifetime ago when she regularly folded up the bed each morning, in a feeble attempt to create more space in the room. She can’t even clearly remember the last time she slept on the pull-out. Between the hospital, the loft, and the penthouse, it’s been a long time since her life has feltnormal.

Until she came home, she wasn’t sure what she intended to do with the place. Now there’s no doubt in her mind. She doesn’t want the apartment or most of the things in it. Looking around, she’s sure there’s nothing that won’t fit in a suitcase that she will miss. Clothes, Beth’s books, a few photos—those are the only things that hold any value to her. She decides to donate the rest.

If anyone will take it,she thinks, staring at the couch once more.

Without thinking twice about it, she goes rummaging for Beth’s big, old suitcase and starts to fill it. The rent is paid for the next three months; but after she leaves, she doesn’t have any intention of coming back, if she can help it. Where she’ll go, she’s not entirely sure—but this isn’t home anymore.

The penthouse?

It’s a possibility she considers only as long as it takes her to think of it. She discards it immediately. Generous as Khalohn has been, she has no intention of moving in with him. They’re in a good place, in spite of everything, and the last thing she wants is to mess it up by taking their relationship one step too far too soon. She’s been in his bed for more than a week, but she’s not naïve. She needs her own place just like she needs to figure out what she intends to do about a job. Mooching off her man isn’t something she intends to do.

An hour after she’s arrived, she’s filled the old suitcase with Beth’s belongings, and she’s stuffed a trash bag full of her clothes. When she looks around at what she’s accomplished, she feels the absence of Beth so profoundly, her chest hurts. She needs to get out of there. She wrestles with her load until she’s out on the street. Channeling her pain into her frustration, she stubbornly shoulders her burdens until she can flag down a cab. It’s when she slides into the backseat that she knows where she’s going.

Another hour later, she sits on the floor in the middle of unit 601 and lets her tears fall. They don’t last long, as if her body knows crying won’t offer her the solace she’s after. When she’s calmed down, she thinks twice about where she is—just a block away from Miah’s. Almost as soon as the realization settles, she’s grabbing her purse and heading for the door. Jessica doesn’t know what time it is, but it’s not a scheduled class she’s craving when she walks the short distance to the studio. More than anything, she just wants the space tomove.

Pulling open the front door to Miah Michael’s Dance Studio, she’s relieved when she spots the owner bent over the shoulder of the person sitting at the computer behind the front desk. They both look up at her entrance, but Jessica only has eyes for Miah. She straightens, and the way her eyes soften at the sight of Jessica, she guesses Kierra shared the news about Beth.

“Hi, honey,” she says, making her way out from behind the front desk.

“Miah, if you hug me, I’ll just start crying again—and I didn’t come here to cry.”

Miah’s step doesn’t even falter. “If you think you can come in here, for the first time after your loss, and I’mnotgoing to hug you, you’ve got another thing coming.”

She wraps her arms around Jessica, and she surrenders, bending a little to rest her chin against the woman’s shoulder. The tears come, but as Jessica embraces Miah, she closes her eyes tight in an effort to keep them from falling.

“Tell me what I can do, Jess.”

“Got an empty room I can borrow for a couple hours?”

She pulls away, moving her hands so they grip Jessica’s arms as she nods. “It’s a smaller space, and it’s booked up all afternoon, but it’s yours until then.”

“Perfect.”

“Come with me.”

Miah escorts her up the stairs to the studio at the end of the long stretch of the narrow hallway. Music from the other occupied spaces wafts through the crevices around the doors they pass. That feeling ofhometickles the back of her neck, sending a tremble down her spine.

“Dance it out, girl,” says Miah before leaving Jessica alone.

She drops her purse on the floor and stands staring at her reflection in the wall of mirrors before her. She hadn’t planned on finding herself in the dance studio when she got dressed that morning—but she’s dressed for it anyway, in a pair of cropped leggings, a sports bra, and a t-shirt of Beth’s she’d swapped with her own while she was packing. It’s too big, the material hanging loose around her body, but the worn, soft garment smells like her mother. She breathes in the scent and then reaches up to tighten her ponytail. Staring into her eyes, she sees the root of her pain looking back at her. The longer she stares, the greater the ache in her chest.

Dance it out, girl.

Jessica reaches for her phone and opens her music app. Without even thinking about it, she chooses the song she’d been dancing to in Khalohn’s gym a few days ago. As “Waves” by Dean Lewis starts to play, she turns up the volume as high as it’ll go. Closing her eyes, she listens to the entire song once, every muscle in her body relaxing as her mind takes her through the steps she started to piece together. When the song starts over again, she tosses her phone on the floor and backs into the middle of the room.

He sings the first word of the first verse, and her body starts to move. It’s not long before she’s completely lost in the music. An hour passes, and then another—the song playing over and over again as she channels every emotion bottled up inside of her, granting each one its own movement until she’s choreographed the extent of her pain.

The song starts again, and her back is to the door. Jessica is breathing so heavily she doesn’t hear it when it opens. As she begins to work her way through the dance, she can’t stop—even when she sees her audience. When she’s done, it’s not just Miah filling the doorway, but a small crowd of four other dancers she’s never met, all of whom take her by surprise when they break out in applause.

Jessica scrambles across the room, stopping the song from playing again before she sweeps a loose tendril of hair away from her sweaty face. She’s still breathing hard, at a loss for words as she meets Miah’s unwavering stare.

“Are you teaching that?” asks one of the female dancers as she casually enters the room. “I love that song.”

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