One Last Dance (22 page)

“Sophie,” Darren groaned. “Can we
get to the part where he didn’t confess his love?” He leaned to the side,
stretching an arm over his head.

“I confessed mine,” she replied
with a small sigh, avoiding Darren’s gaze. Her friend froze mid-stretch, his
eyes going wide.

“You did?”

She forced her gaze up to
Darren’s. The worry she saw there made her smile. “I love him, Dar. I wanted
him to know. If he’s going to make a decision about whether or not we’re worth
fighting for, he needs all the facts.”

Darren’s lips pursed, but he went
back to stretching. “Okay. Let’s say I don’t think you’re looney tunes. He
didn’t say he loved you back?”

“He said he cared about me.” She
bit her lip. It wasn’t the same thing, and the bleak expression on Darren’s
face, the thinning of his mouth and the tightening of the skin over his cheeks,
said he believed Henry was going to hurt her again. “And as far as non-verbal
communications go, he was pretty adamant about his feelings.”

“Sex is not love, Sophie. You
know that.” His words were spoken with a gentle inflection, but she still
flinched.

“I do know that. But I’m not just
talking about the fact that we had sex. I’m talking about
how
we had
sex.”

“I do not need to know your kinky
details, Soph.” Darren held up his hands. Sophie slapped at them.

“When he touched me... Dar, he
touches me like he loves me.”

Darren face lost some of its
tension, but his eyes still roamed hers with concern. “So, why do you still
look like you might possibly cry?”

He knew her too damn well. She
bit her lip. “I know he’s holding back. I don’t know what, but there always seems
to be something he’s keeping away from me.”

“Not the Nicole thing?”

Sophie shook her head. “No, not
the Nicole thing. I don’t know what. Just, things he seems determined to keep
close to the chest. He keeps me at arm’s length, emotionally. And I’m not sure
he’s willing to bring me closer. Or if he even wants to.”

Wouldn’t he have said he loved
her back last night, if he really wanted to? That was the thought that plagued
her. She’d said it, and he’d told her he needed to think. But the way he’d made
love to her, the intensity with which he’d looked at her each time she said the
words. Surely she wasn’t misreading all of that?

Darren hopped to his feet and
pulled her to hers as the first couple of students began to stream in. They
tossed Sophie and Darren waves and hellos and began to warm up themselves.

“What are you going to do?”
Darren asked softly, his hand still on hers. Sophie shrugged, her smile
slipping a little.

“Whatever happens, I’m glad I
told him. I’m glad he knows someone loves him. If...” She swallowed. “If he
doesn’t love me back, then at least I’ll know I didn’t leave anything on the
table. I won’t have any regrets.”

She spun away from him and
clapped her hands, drawing the class’s attention. “Let’s get started, shall
we?”

Darren’s eyes were solemn on her,
but as soon as he turned on the music, his teacher persona slid into place. She
was the task master, he was the joker. It was a nice balance between the two of
them and kept the classes from either degenerating into chaos or becoming boring
and stuffy.

Sophie tried to keep her
attention focused on the class, on Darren, on the dance steps, and not on
Henry. He would meet her half way, or he wouldn’t. She’d done everything that
she could think of to convince him they had something worth fighting for. Now,
the ball was in his court.

“Make sure your partner’s
attention doesn’t wander, class!” Darren’s voice was laced with a sharp edge of
irony that yanked Sophie out of her daze as he spun her around. “If your
partner’s not focused on you, you could both get hurt. It’s your job to keep
them engaged.”

“Sorry,” she mumbled, heat
flushing her cheeks.

Darren’s smiled crookedly as they
executed a complicated volcado. “Thinking about Henry?”

“I know I need to stop. If he’s
not willing to risk it, then I need to move on.” She exhaled a short breath at
the pain that clutched at her heart.

“I wouldn’t be in quite such a
hurry.” Darren’s eyes twinkled as they flicked over her shoulder, and then he
drew them both to a halt.

“Darren, what—”

Henry’s fingers brushed her
shoulder. She’d know the electricity in that touch anywhere. “May I cut in?”

Darren clapped his hands. “Class,
let’s all direct our attention to Sophie and our special guest for the day, Mr.
Henry Medina.”

Sophie shot Darren a glare, but
he just grinned wider. Henry extended his hand. “I’d hate to disappoint your
class,” he said softly out of the corner of his mouth.

His dimple flashed at her and
Sophie relented with a sigh, slipping her hand into his. And just like last
night at the party, they moved together with a passion and grace that she had
never felt before. When Henry lifted her against him, she didn’t tense, and
when he tilted her suddenly backwards, she didn’t worry about falling.

Here, he had never let her down.

He spun her out, brought her
back. She kicked up her leg and he caught it, bending her back. Once again, the
hoots and hollers surrounded them. Henry grinned down at her. Sophie couldn’t
stop the smile that curved her lips in reply.

“Will you come with me? Now?” His
voice was low as he righted her. Sophie’s heart jumped into her mouth and
refused to return to its place in her chest no matter how many times to
swallowed.

“Go,” Darren shooed them both
with a flick of his fingers. “I can handle the studio today.”

Electric anxiety burned in her
belly. “Okay.” It came out as a croak. They were finally going to have the
talk, the one that could spell the end of their relationship.

She was glad when Henry tucked
her fingers into the crook of his arm and led her out the front door. Pinned between
his arm and his body, he wouldn’t be able to tell how badly she was trembling.

***

She’d thought—dreaded—that he
would begin talking the minute he got her in the car. But they drove in silence
for what felt like an hour. In reality, it was little more than ten minutes.

They didn’t head toward his
apartment, which would have given her hope. Instead, he headed to the Upper
West Side. There, among the upscale buildings, he pulled up beside a tall,
blank metal security fence. Sophie couldn’t see over it to what was on the
other side.

“Where are we?”

Henry didn’t answer. He merely
got out of the car and went around to open her door. His face was hard and
grim, dark eyes flat, mouth a thin line. Sophie’s heart beat hard in her chest.

“Henry?”

He led her to the fence without a
word, his hand on the small of her back. Several padlocks secured the gate.
Henry bent over them, a ring of keys jingling musically in his hands.

Sophie stared at the back of his
neck, the dark hair curling there. Her fingers knotted into a ball. She was
anxious and, frankly, a little afraid. She wanted to reach out and touch him,
feel the connection that she always felt when they were skin to skin. But his
face was so bleak. He would just shrug her off, and she wasn’t sure her poor,
pirouetting heart could take that.

When the last padlock was undone,
he pushed open the gate and ushered her inside, closing it behind them. Sophie
jerked to a halt, frowning at the sight before her.

There was nothing. Just an empty
dirty lot. This was a prime location on the Upper West Side. A building here
could bring Medina Properties a lot of money. But it was empty, and clearly had
been for awhile. There was no sign of impending construction. The dirt was
packed down, and grass had grown in uneven patches.

No graffiti or other signs of
vandalism or homeless inhabitants littered the lot, surprisingly. Though, she
supposed Henry’s company paid for top notch security.

“Why did you bring me here,
Henry?”

He shoved his hands into his
pockets, his gaze intent on the empty lot. “This is where I grew up,” he said
finally, his voice a harsh whisper.

Sophie stumbled back a step in
surprise, her wide eyes scanning the barren plot. She hadn’t expected anything
like that to come out of Henry’s mouth. “W-what?”

“When my father moved my mother
from Argentina, he brought her here.” He poked at the straggly grass with the
toe of his polished Oxford. “It was a very nice building, and a very nice
apartment. We lived here until I was six.”

“That’s when your mother died.”
It wasn’t a question. Sophie only had to look at the nearly tortured expression
on Henry’s face to guess that whatever he was struggling with, it had something
to do with the mother he obviously still mourned, all these years later.

He turned, his dark eyes meeting
hers, and the anguish there took her breath away. “That’s when my mother
committed suicide.”

Sophie pressed her hand to her
mouth. “Oh, Henry.” She covered the few steps between them in an instant and
touched his hunched shoulder gently. “I’m so sorry.”

“She was miserable here. She’d
given up her acting when she left Argentina, and my father was a very busy man.
She was alone.” His voice was almost a whisper when he spoke these last words.

“She had you.”

Henry flinched as if she’d struck
him. “I was a very boisterous child. Very demanding. I never gave her a
moment’s peace.” He spoke as if by rote, and ice filled Sophie’s veins. Those
didn’t sound like Henry’s words. It sounded as if he was repeating what someone
else had said. Jorge?

“Henry –”

“I... It became too much. She
took a handful of pills and then just... didn’t wake up.” He stared into the
air as if he could still see the apartment building there. Sophie thought he
probably could.

She circled in front of him and
slid her arms around his waist, squeezing. “That’s a horrible thing for you to
have experienced, especially as a young child. But Henry, surely you know that
it wasn’t your fault? Not at all.”

He still didn’t meet her gaze.

“After the funeral, my father
bought the whole building, evicted everyone, and had it torn down. He refuses
to allow anything to be built on this spot.”

Sophie laid her cheek against
Henry’s chest, listened to his heartbeat, her eyes resting on a patch of lush,
green grass. She was more than a little surprised by Jorge’s actions. They
seemed like behavior of a man who’d genuinely loved his wife. For all he cared
about Medina Properties and his legacy, to have such a lucrative piece of land
sitting undeveloped... he must have loved Catalina.

Was his vile, bitter attitude today
all because he’d lost his love? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Henry said he’d been very
busy before her death, leaving her alone with a young child. Guilt and
bitterness could eat away at a person, if you let it. Sophie knew that well.

Maybe his obsession with his
“legacy” and seeing Henry’s future secure was some sort of attempt to honor his
dead wife’s memory. If it was, he’d forgotten to take Henry’s happiness into
account. Though she didn’t know much about Catalina Flores Medina, she’d bet
everything she had that the woman would have wanted to see her son happy.

Whatever her own struggles, she
had clearly loved Henry. That love had marked him, just as surely as her death
had. It had helped make him the man he was today. Without the ghost of his
mother’s love, Sophie doubted he would have made it through growing up with
Jorge.

You’re killing me, Henry.

Don’t say that Sophie, you
don’t know how much those words hurt me.

“Henry, what I said on the phone.
I—I had no idea. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it, I was hurt and I didn’t know.”

Sophie looked up into his face,
that strong jaw was tense, his eyes a flat black. She touched his cheek. He
pulled his hand from the recesses of his pocket, lifted his clenched fist
between them.

His fingers unfurled, revealing
the wilted, bent, bruised blossom of a white poppy. Sophie blinked. Surely,
this wasn’t one of the flowers she’d been bringing to him last week, when
Nicole had sent her running? She’d thrown those in the trash.

“I picked it out of the trash,”
Henry said softly, as if reading her mind. His eyes met hers, glistening. With
unshed tears? His free hand came up to cup her cheek. “I’m afraid, mia bella
regazza. I’m terrified that my life, with its demands and complications, that
I
—with
my demands and complications and sheer blindness—will bruise and crush you.
Like I’ve done this flower. You...” He cleared his throat, which was thick with
emotion. “Sophie, you mean so much to me, and I couldn’t bear it if I broke
you.”

Like he’d broken his mother. He
didn’t need to say it, the words were there in the anguish in his eyes. Sophie
plucked the flower from his palm and brought it to her nose. Despite its
bedraggled appearance, it still smelled faintly sweet. She smiled up at him,
stroking his lapel.

“I am a woman, Henry Medina. Not
a delicate flower. I have been through some terrible trials already in my life,
and have not been broken. Bent, perhaps. But not broken.” She tucked the flower
into his button hole, patting gently. “I was bruised when we met, Henry. And
you helped me. Don’t you see? You make me stronger, not weaker.”

“I’ve hurt you.” His hand went to
her waist, squeezed.

Sophie nodded in acknowledgement.
“You have. And yet, here I am. I’m not willing to walk away from what we have
just because I might get hurt. Are you going to walk away just because you
might hurt me?”

He studied her face, eyes roving
over her lips and chin and forehead, as if he was memorizing every line of her
skin. Her heart flipped. Was he going to send her away? Maybe if she pointed
out how much that would hurt...