I don’t sleep much at Milena’s.
I mean, her place is beautiful—ultra-modern, floor-to-ceiling windows, a private elevator that opens straight into the penthouse. It smells like jasmine, has silk throw blankets…well, everywhere…and I think every surface in the kitchen is imported marble.
There’s both an espresso machine and a wine fridge in the bathroom of the guest room I’m staying in, both in comfortable reach of the bathtub.
Yeah.
But I still feel like I’m interloping on someone else’s life.
Milena’s been nothing but amazing since I called her, holding back tears, and asked if I could stay with her. First, she comforted me as I cried into her shoulder.
Then she offered to have Nico killed via a Bratva hit.
But she hasn’t asked any questions or made any comments about what happened between him and me, and I haven’t told her a single detail.
I can’t.
I’m not ready to face that yet. I don’t know if I’ll ever be.
Milena hasn’t pushed it. She’s just made space for me in that amazing way she has. But even with her kindness, and her offer to stay as long as I want, it feels like I’m just floating along, waiting.
I hate it.
I keep replaying that scene in Nico’s apartment. The words that broke it all. The silence that followed. And the horror in his eyes when he dropped to his knees.
I wanted to forgive him.
God, I wanted to.
But the truth—that everything I gave him, everything I surrendered to him, was built on a lie—shattered something in me.
I keep telling myself I did the right thing.
But the ache in my chest feels more like grief than victory, and no amount of punishing self-imposed extra rehearsal time has been able to quiet it.
That said, I still find myself staying late after everyone else leaves, day after day.
I stretch in silence, alone on the stage, the tips of my pointe shoes whispering against the scuffed Marley floor.
Then, I start to dance.
The music’s in my head, but it’s so deeply ingrained it might as well be playing over speakers. I hear every note, leaping, pirouetting; my body moving as if pulled by invisible threads as I dance until the memories of Nico taking me in his arms, capturing my lips with his, or just looking into my eyes burn from my mind.
Except that never really happens.
It’s impossible.
Instead, I just dance until I’m gasping from sheer exhaustion, and I slide to my knees, panting, my hair pasted against my temples.
From the wings, someone claps. Startled, I whirl.
Dove stands in the shadows, watching me with her arms folded. Her silver-pink hair falls in loose waves over one shoulder, the ends glowing in the low light like strands of silk. She’s wearing a cropped sweatshirt over leggings and scuffed sneakers, but somehow still looks so fucking cool, like she could walk onto the cover of a fashion magazine totally as-is.
Dove is the physical manifestation of my imposter syndrome—there, I said it. Maybe not out loud, but I can admit it to myself.
She’s gorgeous, a little mysterious, ridiculously cool, and wildly talented. Like, “best dancer in the company” talented.
Her also being my understudy for Swan Lake, a role she got literally on the day she joined the company, has been a constant source of anxiety for me. Not because she’s gunning for my role, she isn’t, but it feels like if I so much as blink wrong, she’d ready to step in, and she’d be perfect.
She always is.
Dove only joined the company a few months ago, and no one really knows much about her except for the fact that her father is Cesare Marchetti, don of the Marchetti Mafia family, and that she’s recently back in New York after being overseas somewhere for the last few years.
Naturally, the rumor mill has been running wild with that limited information.
Some people claim she was dancing somewhere in Europe. Others say she was at a high end, ultra-discreet drug rehab facility in Switzerland.
I’m guessing it was neither.
But Dove doesn’t volunteer anything about herself, and no one ever dares to ask.
She’s nice enough, in a distant sort of way. Polite. Clearly incredibly smart. But she keeps to herself. We’re not close, but I like her.
…Even if she intimidates the shit out of me.
“You’re very talented,” she says, her voice calm and quiet as she tucks a strand of her silvery-pink hair behind her ear.
I blink. “Um…thanks.”
She doesn’t say it like a compliment. That’s not to say that she says it like a sarcastic barb; it’s not like that at all. It’s just that she says it like it’s an obvious statement of fact. Like gravity.
Dove steps a little closer to me, but not that close. She always keeps a little space around her—either to give other people space, or because she herself needs it.
It’s…hard to tell with her.
“Can I make an observation?” she asks.
“Sure,” I say, tucking a damp strand of hair behind my ear.
She smiles wryly. “You don’t need more late-night rehearsals.”
I blink. “What?”
“You don’t need to keep running your solos. You don’t need more hours at the barre. And you definitely don’t need more sessions with your overpriced physio.” Her lips twitch. “I mean, unless you’re into financial masochism.”
I let out a half-laugh, startled.
Dove arches a brow. “What you need is to look in the mirror and see just how good you are.”
I open my mouth, but she cuts me off with an elegantly raised hand—polite but firm.
“I’m not blowing smoke up your ass. I’ve been here long enough to see that Madame Kuzmina’s not exactly known for her warm and fuzzy nature, and she’s not dumb or sentimental.”
She pauses, smirking.
“If you weren’t the best, Naomi, she wouldn’t have made me your understudy. She would’ve straight up given the part to me.”
From anyone else, this might sound arrogant, or like a veiled threat. But from her, it just sounds honest.
Matter of fact.
Like she’s giving a weather report.
Dove doesn’t smile, exactly. But her expression softens a little.
“You don’t need to hear from me how good you are. You need to believe it yourself.”
She turns to leave, then glances back over her shoulder.
“Know your worth, Naomi,” she says.
Then she’s gone, just as quietly as she arrived.
I start moving again, half-heartedly. My body remembers the steps even if my mind doesn’t, but my focus is shot, and Dove’s words linger on me like a ghost.
Know your worth.
I’m still trying to puzzle that one out when I sense that unmistakable presence. That shift in the air, like gravity tilting off kilter.
I turn to stare into the darkness of the auditorium, my breath caught in my chest.
A figure slowly makes his way down one of the aisles, past the rows of empty seats toward the stage.
Toward me.
I don’t have to see his face to know who it is. My very skin remembers the energy of his nearness. The fine hairs on the backs of my arms prickle and reach for him.
The scent of leather, smoke, and masculine cleanness sweeps over me as Nico materializes out of the darkness. My pulse skips, my heart sliding up into my throat and my body stiffening as he climbs onto stage and stands at the edge of it, facing me.
Wordlessly watching me, drinking me in.
He’s in his usual dark jeans and black t-shirt, stretched over his firm chest and sculpted shoulders. His piercing blue eyes cut through the dimness between us like a blade, slicing into me, flaying me open.
Laying me bare, like always.
He takes a slow breath and starts to move toward me. I feel the air vibrate between us, the heat of the lights growing warmer as my skin flushes.
My breath catches quietly, my eyes going wide and lifting to his as he stops right in front of me.
God, I’ve missed him.
Everything I’ve been feeling comes rushing to the surface all at once. I want to hold him, and kiss him, and never stop kissing him.
But I don’t even know what we are anymore.
…What we ever were.
He swallows once.
“You’re everything to me, Naomi.”
My mouth goes dry. My heart twists in my chest as my brain short-circuits.
“And you, Naomi,” he murmurs, “Were never meant to be a pawn.” He shakes his head. “You’re the fucking queen, baby.”
His jaw flexes. He reaches behind him, pulls something out of his waistband, and extends it toward me carefully, like it’s made of glass.
I gasp.
It’s an old, tattered libretto for Swan Lake.
Not just any copy. I know from the way this one’s corners are bent and from the handwriting in faded blue ink on the cover.
It’s my mother’s.
I blink hard, my throat tightening up so fast it’s painful.
“I—I thought this was gone,” I breathe.
“It was,” he says quietly. “I got it back.”
I look up at him. His expression doesn’t waver.
“Your demons won’t be bothering you anymore,” he murmurs quietly.
There’s just enough finality in his tone to make it clear what he means. When I look down and see the flecks of red on his knuckles, it’s even clearer.
The air goes still around us as I take the score gently from him.
“Whatever you think of me,” he says quietly, “whatever you think of the things I’ve done—just know this.”
His eyes turn a piercing, luminous crystal blue.
“I love you, Naomi.”
Just like that.
No fanfare. No teasing. No games.
Just words that drop like a heavy stone into water, sending ripples to the shore.
He nods his chin once. Then he turns as if to leave.
“Nico…”
He freezes the second my fingers wrap around his wrist gently to stop him.
He turns back to me, and the look in his eyes is enough to break me.
“I love you, too.”
I barely get the words out before he surges into me, wrenching me tightly into his arms, grabbing my jaw possessively and kissing me furiously. I kiss him back fiercely, desperately, all the ache I’ve been holding in for days releasing like a dam crashing down.
