Break

“We had sex zero or a million times. The important part is to forget everything else that happened.”

“You really think Katerina will let it go?”

“She has no fucking choice in the matter. We have her by the goddamned balls.”

“You think so?”

“I know so. The woman has been my enemy since day one. I’ve studied her strategy.”

“Is that why you’re with me, Dash? To keep your enemies close?”

Dash throws down his slice and takes a serious sip of his wine. “I should ask you the same question, Sam. Is being with me appealing because it allows you to get back at your mom?”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Dash. Nothing can help me get back at her. Mother is an impenetrable fortress. She’s got walls so high no one’s ever seen the other side of them.”

Dashiell refills my wine glass and hands me another slice of loaded pizza. I take a bite, not holding back, not feeling anything other than hunger. I don’t know why I can eat with Dashiell but eating with my family is like jumping hurdles.

“Do you know how to get back at her? The one thing that will crush her the most?” Dashiell asks me.

“Get fat?” I say between bites.

Ever since I was little, I had the feeling that Mother would disown me if I went beyond a certain weight, like she had some physical threshold in pounds for her conditional love. A little chub on my gut and I’d be thrown into a Russian orphanage.

“Let go.”

“I’ve tried. She won’t let me.”

“I mean it, Sam. You have to stop caring. It’s the one thing she absolutely cannot do. Katerina holds onto everything. Her youth, her star status, her name, her body. She controls your whole life. If you let go, stop caring, it will crush her. You’ll take all of her power away with that one little move.”

“You say ‘little’ like it’s nothing, but it’s all I’ve ever known. Mother has managed my career and my life, every aspect of it, since the day I was old enough to get into the studio. She’s counted every calorie, lobbied for every role, vetted every partner and every choreographer, written every interview I’ve given. I can’t separate my true self from the crap she’s projected onto me.”

“Sounds like it’s time to get a new manager,” Dash says, crossing his arms and looking at me with a flame of defiance dancing behind his dark eyes.

“Know any candidates?”

“You’re looking at one.”

I burst out laughing and nearly spill my wine, but when I look up at Dash, the smile falls from my face. He’s dead serious. Dashiell Cunningham? Running my ballet career?

“I was thinking I could quit dancing altogether,” I say, fingering the edge of the steel-gray down quilt on his bed.

“Natayla!” Dashiell storms toward me and catches my chin in his hand. He yanks my face until I’m looking up into his. Those flinty eyes dart and pierce through mine, and I feel like I’ve been struck through with a thunderbolt. “I don’t ever want to hear you say that again!”

“Fuck you!” I say, fighting off his hands. “So I can go from one control freak to the next? So you can get off on controlling me too?” I slap his hands away and attempt to storm from his room.

Lucky, I live a few paces from his front door. And, despite Dashiell having controlling tendencies, I’ve never been afraid of him. He wouldn’t hurt me, that I know. He’s an intense person, and his feelings run high when it comes to me or Katerina Koslova.

Dashiell grabs my arms and yanks me back, shoving me against his closed door and caging me in with his body. I turn my face away so I don’t have to see the ferocity in his.

“I won’t stand by and watch you be your mother’s plaything any longer, Sam! I want you eating. I want you dancing. The only way you’re going to learn to love yourself is by taking care of you. I’ll manage your career, and I’ll stay out of your personal life if that’s what you want. I need you healthy. I could give a fuck about parading around as your boyfriend or lover.”

I don’t know why tears sting my eyes when he says that. He’s telling me he cares, but all I hear is that he doesn’t want to be my boyfriend, and it confirms my greatest fear—that I’m unlovable. Unloved. I’m a pretty thing to look at, but once the patina wears off, I’m an empty old jug, a nobody. I’m nothing.

“Fine,” I grit out. I bite my lip to keep from spitting in his face, from scratching his eyes, from kissing his lips until mine are bruised and swollen from his desire. “Good night. I’ll see myself out.”

Dashiell releases me and puts his hands up in surrender.