Page 7

Elias didn’t look at me like that.
Didn’t look at me like a prize or a prop.
If anything, he looked at me like a problem he wanted to solve—and maybe break open in the process.
Which, honestly? Was way more tempting than I wanted to admit.
The thought lingered as I dug my paddle into the water, muscles in my arms burning pleasantly. It felt good to move differently after spending hours locked in the brutal precision of rehearsal.
My feet, abused and blistered from pointe shoes, floated weightless in the kayak, and I almost sighed from the relief.
No pressure.
No burning arches.
No Madame Odette barking counts over a metronome.
Just me, the sky, and the endless dark water stretching out like a road to nowhere.
We floated farther from the launch, letting the harbor swallow us up.
Jessa cracked open another Red Bull, the sound sharp in the humid night.
“You ever think we’re maybe a little too reckless?” she asked, smirking.
“All the time,” I said. “Still doesn’t stop me.”
But just as the words left my mouth, the water shifted—fast. A sudden, powerful current sucked at the bottom of my kayak, spinning me sideways.
I dug my paddle in instinctively, trying to correct, but the nose of the boat caught something—a hidden sandbar or debris—and jerked violently. The kayak pitched hard, the harbor tilting in a sickening roll of black and silver. For one heart-stopping second, I thought I was going in.
My body reacted before my mind could catch up, knees bracing, muscles locking tight. I fought the pull, using every ounce of strength left in my battered legs and arms to stay upright.
The adrenaline hit so fast it was like a slap—hot and dizzying.
Jessa shouted something—warning or encouragement, I couldn’t tell—but my heartbeat drowned everything else out.
Thump-thump-thump.
Like a drum in my ears. Like the echo of the stage floor beneath my pointe shoes.
For a moment, true fear slithered through me—cold and real and sharp. The harbor wasn’t a joke.
If I tipped, if I went under at the wrong time, if a freighter rolled through and churned up the water ... I could disappear. Swallowed whole by the dark.
But the fear wasn’t clean. It twisted with something hotter, something heady.
The same electric jolt I felt the second before a leap—the knowledge that I might crash and burn spectacularly, but God, the flight would be worth it.
I gritted my teeth and forced the kayak to right itself, dragging my paddle hard against the current. The boat wobbled. Teetered. Then, slowly, steadied.
I gasped, chest heaving, the salt air burning in my lungs.
My feet throbbed inside my sneakers, angry reminders of the hours spent in brutal, unrelenting pointe work earlier today.
Blisters, bruises, calluses—I wore them like medals.
But right now? Floating here, fighting against something bigger than me?