Break

I keep drinking the shake and deny him when he beckons me. “I can’t dance like that, Dash.’

“Sam, come on. You can dance fucking anything you want,” he counters.

I stand, take his hand, and he yanks me in hard and close. Our hips touch and he rotates his pelvis into mine, bringing one hand to the small of my back.

“Feel any better?” he whispers into my ear.

I nod in response, and when I look up at him, our lips are close enough to graze.

“I’m sorry I fucked up, Sam.”

I nod, and we continue doing a sexy sort of grind that reminds me how much I like being close to his body.

“How does dancing make you feel?” he asks me.

I close my eyes. “Free.”

“If you don’t nourish yourself, you can’t dance. In order to be free, you have to eat,” he says, retrieving the protein shake from where I left it on the floor and handing it to me.

I tip it to my lips and swallow the rest of it.

“You’re sexiest when you’re fed. So if you don’t eat, I’m going to force-feed you. This is part of loving yourself. If you treat your body with neglect, you can’t keep dancing; it’s not sustainable.”

The music picks up, and Dashiell grabs my hand and starts doing the side-glide I liked so much, slowly so I can mimic and follow. I do it by his side, and in a few tries, I figure it out. We go back and forth across the floor until we’re both laughing.

“Do you know this one?” Dash leaps to the floor, balances on his hands, and performs the helicopter break move.

I laugh, then crouch and give it a try. I don’t have that kind of hand strength, so I collapse on the floor in a fit of giggles.

“I feel free when I’m with you,” Dashiell says, suddenly serious. “I always have. You were the first person who made me feel like I didn’t have to fit in to be redeemable, that I didn’t have to be the greatest dancer to be valuable. You liked me for who I was and not what you could get out of the relationship.”

His dark eyes search mine and it brings me back to the very first day in the cafeteria when I recognized the hunger in him that matched the hunger in me. That need is still there, though it’s morphed a bit as we’ve grown into adults.

“I wish you could be that generous with yourself,” he says.

I look down at the floor to keep from crying.

“I don’t want to play without you in the game, so don’t ever think about getting off this ride without telling me because I want to be wherever you are.” He reaches his fist out to me for a fist-bump and we knock knuckles. “I’m in your corner, Sam. Whenever you want to get back on, say the word and I’m there.”

We walk out of the studio together, hand in hand, and turn off the lights.

The following morning, I make it through my first two ballet classes—almost. During adagio, I pass out front and center. I wake up with water on my face where the teacher has moved me to the side of the studio and laid me out by the dancer’s bags.

I ate this morning, but weeks of bad habits have finally caught up with me.

Bronson is gently patting my cheeks when a furious Dash storms into the room. Bronson and my teacher take a step back instinctively while I watch Dashiell approach in the mirror and cower from the verbal lashing I know is coming.

But Dash kneels and holds his palm to my forehead. I wince in regret and mentally berate myself for thinking a latte alone could get me through the morning.

When he’s decided I’m stable, Dash lifts me to standing and helps me from the studio. I walk with my head down and try to assemble the litany of excuses I use when he scolds me.

To my surprise, Dash leads me into the public bathroom instead of the parking lot. “Let’s do this again, shall we? How many times will it take for you to get it right?” He lifts me onto the counter, sets down his backpack, and begins to rummage through it. “I’ve started packing an extra kit now. The bagful of revival items.” He pulls an energy bar and another of the protein drinks he gave me last night, which he shakes before twisting the cap.

His angry, aggressive body language is kind of hot.

“Tell me this, Sam. Do you think your mother’s ugly habits have rubbed off on you? Are you in a full-fledged eating disorder and we need to get you into treatment? Because this is what your behavior is telling me.”

He hands me the shake, which I tip back and swallow appreciatively. “No. I love eating. It’s the stress, and my instincts always tell me not to eat. That’s how I was raised, how I was conditioned.”