Take the Chance (Top Shelf Romance #9) - Brittainy Cherry Page 0,161

mattered.

0% probability.

A burden had just been lifted. Eighteen years and more. My life could carry on as it had. On track. Law school, clerkship, federal prosecutor, District Attorney…

I waited for the relief to hit me.

It never did.

I shook myself from the memory. It felt like a bad dream that had been on hold for ten months, and now was picking up where it left off.

Jackson was shaking his head, and his gaze dropped to Olivia. Mine followed. To my little girl, because why did I need a piece of paper to tell me what I felt in my heart? In my goddamn soul?

Olivia looked up at me from her pile of blocks on the floor and smiled. “Bye-bye!”

Act Two

Forever (adv.): for all future time

Now (adv.): at present time

Chapter 18

Darlene

I wiped a rivulet of sweat off my brow, and then planted my hands on my hips to catch my breath. Ryan, my partner, was bellowing beside me, and I fought a wave of irritation. He had mistimed three cues during the run-through—nearly head-butting me, again—and with the show a week away, his clumsiness wasn’t just annoying, it was going to make the rest of us look bad.

We already look bad.

I hated to even think it, but the show completely lacked inspiration and in my humble opinion, Anne-Marie, the lead dancer, was wooden and mechanical. Worse, she was the kind of person who thought she no longer had anything left to learn in dance, or life in general. The kind of person who began almost every sentence with “I know.”

Greg and Paula had watched from foldout chairs at the head of the practice room at the Dance Academy. They shifted in their seats like they were sitting on splinters. There should have been a palpable air of excitement this close to opening night. Instead, the six of us dancers were like humming electrical posts, filling the room with nervous tension.

The director and stage manager put their heads together for a moment. Anne-Marie tossed her blonde ponytail over her shoulder.

“Well?” she demanded. “Are you going to give us notes, or what?”

Greg and Paula murmured and nodded, having come to some sort of agreement.

“It’s…good,” the director said. “It’s coming together well. But it’s short, even for a showcase.”

“We timed it at twenty-seven minutes,” Paula said. “Thirty would be better.”

“We need one more act to fill out the time,” Greg said. “Darlene.”

My head shot up. “What?”

“We’d like you to perform your audition piece. As a solo.”

My glance immediately shot to Anne-Marie who audibly gasped.

“We’re a week out,” she said. “You can’t just change the whole show.”

“We’re not changing the whole show,” Greg said. “We need one more act. A time filler, really.”

Oh, is that what I am? I wanted to say. Truthfully, between the menace that was my partner, and the cold shoulders from the rest of the troupe, the words I quit, were teetering from my lips. But I was trying to be professional and not quit something just because it wasn’t what I’d hoped. And I wasn’t about to leave them in a lurch so close to opening night.

“Darlene?” Greg asked. “Can you?”

“Umm,” I glanced at Anne-Marie who was glaring poison-tipped daggers at me. “Are you sure?”

“We’ll put it between Entendre and Autumn Leaves.”

“Okay, I guess I could do that.”

“This is ridiculous,” Anne-Marie said. “Who cares if we’re three minutes short?”

Greg pretended not to have heard her. “Take your positions for the finale of Entendre, and then Darlene—”

“Rehearsal is over,” Anne-Marie said. “I have somewhere else to be.”

She flounced to the wall to grab her stuff and headed out. The other dancers shuffled their feet until Greg dismissed them too.

“Right, time’s up. We’ll have the music cues set up for tomorrow’s rehearsal then,” Greg said stiffly, trying to hold on to his authority. “Will you be ready?” he asked me, and I saw the spark of nerves dancing behind his eyes.

“Sure, no problem,” I said. “I’ll just stay here for a little bit and put in some extra time.”

And try to turn my improv into a routine.

Greg eased a sigh. “Good. That’s fine then.”

He left and Paula sidled up to me. “Anne-Marie really wanted to be the only soloist.”

“I noticed.”

“Thank you for stepping up.”

I smiled. “Doesn’t suck to have a solo on a résumé.”

“Yeah, well, we need it. The show needs it. A spark. Having just watched the whole run-through.” She bit off her words with a sigh. “Anyway, thanks.”

“No problem.”

After everyone had gone, I stood in the center of the room, and