Dancing in the Dark

“Yes. You can. You can do whatever you want, sweetheart. We’re not kids anymore. We don’t need anybody’s permission to be together.” He gathered her closer in his arms. “Nothing’s changed. Not a thing, in all these years.”

“You’re wrong.” Wendy slapped her hands against Seth’s chest and pulled back in his arms. “Everything’s changed. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

“Wendy? Wendy! Oh, there you are. I’ve been calling and call—” Gina’s eyes widened. She looked from one flushed face to the other. “Oh. I’m sorry. I had no idea... Look, why don’t you two just—I mean, I’ll drive home and you two can...”

“That’s all right, Gina.” Seth’s voice was cool. “Wendy and I were just catching up on old times. Isn’t that right, Wendy?”

Wendy lifted her chin. “Good night, Seth.”

She waited for him to say goodbye but he didn’t. He just went on looking at her while her throat constricted and her heart beat faster and faster, and then he took a step toward her, as if they were alone in the universe instead of standing on a street corner with an audience of one.

“This isn’t finished,” he said quietly.

“It was finished years ago.”

“I used to think about the kind of woman you’d grow up to be.”

“This is all very interesting, Seth, but my mother and I—”

“Your mother’s on her way to her car.”

“All the more reason for me to say good-night.”

“Not yet,” he said gruffly. “Not until we get things settled.”

“We’ll never settle anything this way. And I don’t want to quarrel whenever we see each other.” Wendy tried a tentative smile. “Can’t we just be friends?”

“Friends?” He caught her by the wrist, moved closer until they were a breath apart, until she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes. “We have too much history just to be friends. When we talked in the diner, you handed me some garbage about knowing it was over between us. I prettied it up with how we’d only been kids. And you know what? Not a damn bit of it was the truth.”

“Does it really matter, after all these years?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it matters. I was a kid, head over heels in love, so crazy about you that I was happy to wait for you until there was nothing to keep us apart. No coaches. No crowds. No you flying off to Colorado and me staying behind. I used to daydream about it, you know? The time we’d finally be together.”

He was right, and that made it even worse. He’d never demanded anything of her except her love, and what had she given him in return? Oh God, if he knew the truth...

“Seth.” Her eyes swam with tears. “Please. Let’s just say goodbye.”

“Winning that damned medal was all you talked about, all you lived for, but I figured okay, I could understand it. I could deal with it because we had a future all planned. That was what I hung on to. What it would be like when you married me, when we settled down and had kids.”

The pain that shot through her at his words was almost unbearable. Wendy clamped her lips together, certain she was going to tell him her awful secret...certain when she did he’d hate her even more than he had for the last nine years.

Instead, she wrenched her arm free. She’d had years to prepare for this moment and she’d been doing fine until she’d been foolish enough to let him kiss her.

“That’s exactly why I broke off with you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That future you had all planned.” She took a deep breath, dug her hands into her pockets to stop their shaking. “I lay in that hospital bed in Oslo, staring at the ceiling. You know how they say your life flashes in front of you when you’re dying? Well, what flashed in front of me was the future I wasn’t going to have.”

She dragged another breath into her lungs. The winter night was turning as frigid as the look in Seth’s eyes. She could almost feel her heart turning to ice, too.

“And that was when it came to me. The future I wasn’t going to have had nothing to do with the one you wanted. Settling down. A house in the country. Kids.” She heard her voice quaver and she curled her hands into fists, felt the sharp bite of her fingernails into her palms. “Those dreams were yours, not mine. I wanted to ski until I was too old to pick up a pair of poles. And...and I didn’t know how to tell you that.”

She saw his face go white. Don’t stop, she told herself fiercely, just keep going. She didn’t want to do this but it needed doing. He didn’t want to believe they had no future, but she knew better. How else to convince him except like this?

“What saved me then was determination. I swore that if I lived, I’d find a way to compete again. I knew you’d try to talk me out of it, and I decided to do what I had to do, for my own survival. It was better to break things off cleanly than to let them drag on. If I hurt you in the process, Seth, I’m sorry.”

She watched the color come back to his face, watched his eyes and mouth harden.

“So what you’re telling me,” he said, “is that there never was a future for us.”

“It isn’t that simple.”

“The hell it isn’t. It’s as simple as a dumb kid spinning dreams for a girl who never shared them.”

“I didn’t know, not until the accident.”

“Sure you did. That’s why it didn’t mean a damn to you when we spent weeks apart, while you were off skiing in some tournament your old man said you needed to win.”

“My father has nothing to do with this.”

“He has everything to do with it!” Seth’s eyes narrowed, and the fury she saw burning in their depths stole her breath away. “Amazing, isn’t it? There were two men in your life. Me and your father. Each of us saw a future with you in the starring role. The difference is that I wanted you for yourself. He wanted you so he could live out his own dream through you.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“He still wants that. This damned risky surgery—”

“Don’t start that again! It’s my choice. My life.”

“Yeah. It is. And it’s a good thing you figured it out before I trapped you here, in a dull existence you never wanted.”

“No. Oh, Seth, I didn’t mean—”

She put her hand on his arm. He pulled back as if she’d burned him.

“Hey, no problem. In fact, I’m glad it’s all come out. Jo accused me of still carrying a torch for you. She said that was the real reason I was ending our relationship, and you know what? Maybe she was right.”

“Seth. Please—”

“Seeing you again set me back. Stupid, but everybody knows that old habits are hard to change.” His mouth narrowed. “I got it right the other day at the Burger Barn when I said we were just kids. We didn’t know the difference between love and sex.”

“That’s not...”

“Not what?” His words were sharp and quick.

Wendy shook her head. Not true, she’d almost said, but what was the point? He was hurting her because she’d hurt him. Until this moment, she hadn’t realized just how badly.

“Never mind. It doesn’t matter. I think we’ve said enough, don’t you?”

She didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, she began to walk away as quickly as she could manage.

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Seth saw her limp, and his heart began to ache at the sight. Not all wounds were visible. Sometimes the ones nobody could see were the most painful of all.

He went after her.

“I’m not done,” he said gruffly.

“Yes, you are,” she said without stopping. “We have nothing more to say to each other.”

“I think you’ll want to hear this.”

What Wendy wanted was to find a place where she could curl into a ball and weep, but there wasn’t a way in the world she’d ever let him know that. She turned around, head high, and looked at him.

“What more could you have to say that I’d want to hear?”

That you’re still in my blood.

The words were right there, on the tip of his tongue, but Seth didn’t say them. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be, not after the things she’d told him tonight. Still, the sight of her pale face, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears, made him long to draw her into his arms.

“Wendy.” He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to end like this.”

“No.” Her voice trembled. “Neither did I.”

“Listen.” He ran a hand through his hair, searching for words. “About this surgery—”

“Please, Seth. Not again!”

“Wait.” He reached out and clasped her hand. She hadn’t put her gloves on; her fingers were icy against his. “If you decide, really decide that you want it—that you want it, not your father—”

“He has nothing to do with it. What will it take to convince you?”

Seth gave a quick, uncertain smile. “That’s just it. I don’t know what it will take. But when you’re sure you know what you want, let me know.”

“Let you know?” Wendy tugged her hand away. “Why would I do that?”

“For old time’s sake, okay?” He took a step back. “Until then, babe, I’ll see you around.”

Babe? Babe? So much for feeling she’d wounded him. The word, his arrogance, even the way he turned and strolled off infuriated Wendy. She wanted to go after him, grab him by the scruff of his neck and shake him until what few brains he had rattled in his head.