Page 49 of Lights, Camera, Love

The laid-back beats of ‘Girls’ by The Kid LAROI flow through my earbuds as I head down the street towards DanceLab, having had to park a few blocks away thanks to a public protest. When I arrive, I halt and do a double take at the grey-haired man hovering outside the building, his dark sunglasses and LA Lakers cap facing away from me.

I pull the speakers out of my ears and inch up the concrete steps. It can’t be …

Gabriel spins around. The instant our gazes clash, he throws up a hand, his suede jacket slipping up his arm and exposing a diamond-encrusted watch. ‘I’m not stalking you, Evie, I promise,’ he says. ‘I saw that you were teaching tonight, and I … I wanted to talk to you.’

My heart thuds against my windpipe as I eye him up and down.

How does he even know where I teach? It’s on the DanceLab website, but the thought of this international icon googling me feels borderline preposterous.

I glance around for any phone cameras pointed at us, but my famous father has seemingly, so far, gone unnoticed in his cap and glasses.

He steps forward. ‘Darling, I came to apologise—’

‘ Darling? ’

‘Evie,’ he corrects, his cheeks colouring.

I gape at him, a gust of early evening air whipping against my bare midriff, sending a chill through my body.

‘I’m sorry,’ Gabriel says, the unexpected words nearly toppling me over.

‘I’ve been such a coward,’ he adds in a rush.

‘For much, much too long. There are so many things I have wanted to say to you, and here I am, in your city, and once again, I … I feel like I’ve been a gutless fool.

The other day, I tried to explain, to apologise, but then you …

you walked out of the restaurant, and I assumed you’d had enough of me. ’

‘That’s not why I walked out,’ I counter in a throttled tone.

His brow dips as he shakes his head. ‘I didn’t say anything right that day; I was just so damn nervous.

I have built an entire career out of saying other people’s clever words, but when it comes to thinking up my own, I’m a failure; always have been.

’ He shifts on his velvet loafers. ‘Look, I don’t expect you to welcome me into your life with open arms or to even want anything to do with me.

But before I go back home, I need to tell you that I …

’ His throat rises and falls. ‘I want to know you, Evie. I want to know my daughter.’

My chest, my lungs, my stomach, the parts of me that make words—everything has turned to water. Is this really happening? It feels as if I’ve stumbled into an alternate universe, or at least onto the set of one of my childhood dreams.

Gabriel repeats what he just said. He wants to know me. He wants us to have a relationship.

Tears surface behind my eyes as a war breaks out between my heart and my head over how to respond to this man who has waited until now to say these things. But isn’t it better to be diabolically late than to never arrive at all?

A crowd of emotions squeezes my throat, and words I can’t seem to stop come tumbling out. ‘I want to know you, too,’ I say with a gasp. ‘I’ve wanted to know you my entire life.’

Gabriel’s eyes glisten, and he goes to say more, but I get in first.

‘Nothing will change the last twenty-seven years and what you and I have lost,’ I continue, thinking this out as I go.

‘I’m … I’m not sure that I’ll ever know what really happened between you and my mum around the time I was born.

And I know that she’s not perfect—no one is—but she raised me, she loved me, and she was there for me.

Which is always going to be more than I can say for you. ’

His lips press tight. ‘That’s fair, Evie. You’re right.’

‘But I don’t want to live trapped in the past.’ I try to hold eye contact, but his face is blurred by the tears on my eyelashes.

‘I believe that people make mistakes and that they can learn from them and do better. I don’t want to push you away just because I’m scared of getting hurt again, and I want to see the good in you, not the bad.

But if you want to earn my trust, if you want to earn a place in my life, I …

I need to protect myself and set some boundaries. ’

Gabriel nods, a pained look tensing his face.

I hold up a shaking finger. ‘You get one chance,’ I say, slowly and clearly, so there can be no mistaking me.

‘This door is only going to be open once. If you turn your back on me again; if you make me feel like I don’t matter to you?

The door will close. And it will never open again. Do you understand?’

His lips quiver as he nods, and I feel a small, cautious, utterly disbelieving smile tug at my mouth, despite my tears.

A noise that sounds like trapped emotion escapes his throat.

He steps forward and wraps his solid arms around me, a waft of designer cologne engulfing my nose as I stiffly rest my palms on his back.

After a few breathless heartbeats, I begin to relax against him, and for the first time in my life, I let myself believe it.

I let myself believe that my father genuinely cares about me.

We break apart, and he swipes the skin beneath his eyes with his knuckles. Over his shoulder, I spot two women in hot-pink yoga pants powerwalking in our direction.

‘When are you going back to LA?’ I ask, still sounding choked. I take hold of Gabriel’s elbow to turn him away from the women’s view.

His rough hand gives mine a couple of pats.

‘That depends on you, Evie. Of course, I need to get back to Harper before long, but I’d sure like to try a meal with you again before I go, if you would let me.

Or a walk, a coffee … whatever you like.

’ In a small, nervous, almost childlike voice, he adds, ‘Do you have time?’

Hearing him ask me this, and with so much uncertainty in his tone, leaves me in a daze.

‘How about … how about lunch tomorrow?’ I finally manage. ‘At my place.’

He’ll be in for a rude shock at how small and unimpressive my apartment is, but that’s me, that’s my life. If he truly wants to know me, he can start there.

Gabriel’s eyes spark beneath his heavy brows. ‘I’d sure like that.’

After I’ve given him my address and assured him it’ll only be the two of us—I don’t want to start an international incident by reuniting him with Mum just yet—I mutter a stunned goodbye and turn to head inside the studio.

‘Oh, and Evie?’ my father blurts as I go.

I stop. ‘Yes?’

‘I also want to talk to you about this movie you’ve been working on with Village Pictures. I think I can help.’

‘Really?’ I’ll take any drop of good news about Moving , even if it’s from Gabriel Dean.

He tilts his head. ‘You know, your boyfriend came to see me.’

A warm sensation spreads through my chest, followed by a sharp jab. ‘He’s not my boyfriend. And yeah, he told me.’

Kye called me yesterday, full of remorse and apologies about bombarding my father on his film set, but truthfully, I didn’t mind.

He knows what it’s like to feel rejected by a parent, and I get that this makes him overprotective.

I’ve also never had anyone stand up for me like that before, other than my mum, and I won’t lie; I kind of loved how it felt.

Thinking about Kye resurrects the memories that haunt the walls of my heart.

He’s become distant ever since he visited his brother, and I still have no idea if Austin has confessed his feelings to him.

Yesterday, on the phone, Kye said that he wants to see me—that he misses me—and his voice had a husky, affectionate tinge. But he didn’t say when.

There’s a terrible feeling swimming through my gut that I can’t shake.

Something’s wrong.

‘If I’m honest, he was a little rude and very direct, given we don’t know each other,’ Gabriel says, jerking me out of my thoughts. The irked expression on my father’s face could only be inspired by one person.

I can’t help but let out a little snort. ‘Yeah, that’s Groucho.’

The next day, my father delivers the good news over chicken stir-fry on my tiny balcony while my mum is on shift: Buzz has been let go over ‘creative differences’. I’m sure Martina can’t wait to chat about it—she’s been trying to reach me.

Gabriel pulled some strings with a friend of his, the Australian director Olivia Floros, to get her to take over the project.

He believes she is the ideal match for Moving .

We may have to shoot a few extra scenes here and there, but Olivia says she’ll make most of her changes in the edit suite, and Gabriel seems to think she’ll nail it.

By the time Thursday rolls around, my father has made two more visits to my place before flying back to LA to be with his pregnant fiancée. Still shell-shocked over having spent time with him, I gladly lose myself in the music and movement of my hip-hop class.

‘Now, toe, heel, toe, heel, pivot backwards!’ I call out to my regulars through the mirror. ‘Lift and drop that right foot down—haha, you guys are rocking it. Now, shimmy backwards and glide it. Put a little body-roll into it if you like!’

Grinning, I drop into a body-wave, then spin on my sneaker heels. I turn to face the back of the room, and boom —right on the beat, my gaze smashes into Kye’s. Every vertebra in my spine seizes up.

He’s leaning against the doorframe in grey jeans and a white T-shirt with an olive-green shirt unbuttoned over the top. His dark, long-lashed eyes are fixed on mine.

‘Kye,’ I breathe. Even though he couldn’t possibly hear me over the Doechii track blasting through the speakers, a ghost of a smile warms his face. My cheeks heat as I spin back to face the mirror and call out the next round of moves, trying to rebuild my melted kneecaps.

He’s here.