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  My heart swells at his words. His honesty and his praise. The thing I have been searching for my whole life. But I know there’s a but coming, and he tells me with a single look in his eyes.

  “The other part of me wants to protect you. To keep you from that world. The dangers of it.”

  “It isn’t always dangerous,” I tell him in a gentle voice. “What happened to you wasn’t normal.”

  “You don’t understand.” He shakes his head. “You are young and beautiful. Magnetic. Your art has the potential to attract a huge following, Chloe. And with that comes the unknown. That world will suck you in. And I worry it also has the potential to destroy you.”

  I understand what he’s saying. I can see the fear in his eyes. That he wouldn’t be able to protect me. The way he thinks he needs to.

  He doesn’t understand that it isn’t protection I need from him. Not at all.

  “It doesn’t matter anyway,” I tell him. “By the end of the semester, it won’t even be an option for me.”

  He frowns, but doesn’t argue.

  And my chest tightens as another realization hits me hard and fast.

  That it isn’t just art I don’t have the time to explore anymore. It’s him too.

  There’s a giant hourglass above our hands. Depleting the time we have left together.

  I know how he sees me.

  I’m a student, and he’s a professor. I’m going to be dancing, wherever I get a position. Which could be anywhere. And he will still be here. Teaching. And allowing the darkness of his life to consume him.

  It causes a deep and unending ache to spring up inside of me. Knowing how little time we truly have left.

  I turn to him and kiss him. And the time for guidance is done. That isn’t what I need from him right now. And I tell him so as I straddle him and kiss his throat.

  “Mr. Vaughn?”

  “Yes, Chloe?” he murmurs against me.

  “I’d like you to fuck me again.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Keller

  When I pull up the calendar on my phone, I am surprised to see that there is only a month left until Christmas. Until the conclusion of the semester and the beginning of the end.

  Chloe’s final show. The one that I know will change her life irrevocably. Where I hope she will realize her true calling even if it’s the most difficult thing for me to accept.

  I won’t hold her back. I will help her in any way I can.

  But sometimes, I still question if the best way I can help her is to disappear completely from her life. She is bigger than this campus. Larger than the pointes she wears every day. She was born to shine.

  And I am holding her back. Like everything else in her life. Another chain.

  And yet it feels like freedom to me.

  A freedom I have not tasted in so long. She makes me want things I am no longer supposed to have. She makes me question every decision I have made over the last six years.

  The days with her go by too fast.

  Too loud.

  We are chaos, together.

  There is no time to think when all we do is feel.

  Tonight is the yoga sequence. The thing I have dreaded most since she asked me. The things she will make me feel tonight are different. Less like freedom and more like darkness.

  I resent her for it. Asking this of me.

  But I know that’s exactly why she did it. She knew I could not say no.

  Not to them. And maybe she doesn’t know this, but not to her either.

  So when the clock strikes six, I get into my car and drive down to the studio. Where Chloe is already waiting. Where they are all waiting.

  I park the car and grip the steering wheel as my gaze darts to the door.

  Chloe comes bounding out a moment later, a huge smile on her face.

  I wipe my hands down my sweater and hope that she’s coming to tell me it’s cancelled. That she doesn’t need me after all.

  She makes a gesture for me to get out instead.

  I move on autopilot, trying to play it cool. But she reads my face well, this girl.

  My dainty ballerina.

  She takes my hand in hers for the briefest of moments in the lot and brings it to her lips, offering up a gentle kiss.

  “It’s going to be great,” she tells me. “You’ll see.”

  I walk silently beside her. Into the building. And into my own personal hell.

  And there they are.

  The faces from that day. All staring back at me.

  Glimpses of blood and dust and smoke flash through my vision. The sound of tortured screams and sobbing. I close my eyes and Chloe touches my arm, bringing me back to reality.

  She introduces me so that I don’t have to speak. Though I am all too aware I need no introduction. I don’t see how they could ever forget me after what happened at my show.

  “Keller.”

  The voice of a woman breaks through the haze. I turn my attention to her and recognize her immediately. Her name is Amanda. And she lost both of her lower legs in the explosion.

  “That’s what Chloe said you’d prefer to be called now, is that okay?”

  I look to Chloe in appreciation and nod.

  “Yes.” I clear my throat. “That’s fine. How are you?”

  It’s a stupid question. But the only one I can think to ask.

  She smiles at me anyway, putting me at ease.

  “I’m great,” she answers.

  And there isn’t any anger reflected in her eyes. Not like I expected. No sadness. No pain. Nothing but genuine… happiness. Though I don’t understand how that can be.

  “Honestly,” she tells me, “I know it sounds hard to believe, but that day changed my life. For the better. I used to work eighty hours a week trying to climb the corporate ladder. Now I run an art program for children. And I appreciate every single moment of every day. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.”

  Another man steps up beside her, and I’m certain that he’s going to be the one. The one who lashes out at me. Who tells me how it really is. Who blames me for what happened as I blame myself.

  But he doesn’t. He shares some similar words of how his life has changed. And how he’s learned to live with those changes.

  After twenty minutes, I’ve spoken to everyone in the group. And not one of them said the words I’d been expecting.

  I’m still trying to come to terms with that when Chloe and the yoga instructor take their places at the front of the room and start rattling off instructions for everyone.

  The room is a flurry of activity. Of life, where I was so certain that none could ever live.

  I feel like a ghost here. An invisible spectator amongst the crowd. I don’t know what I’m doing here. But I’m certain that I don’t belong.

  I don’t have time to consider it further. Because Chloe is pulling me along, shoving another palate into my hands and giving me instructions.

  I follow the instructions as I watch them move. Holding various positions that would seem impossible to most, but that they have conquered through sheer strength and will. Chloe remains beside me, and there’s a brief question in my mind why she isn’t doing anything. But I listen to her voice and use it as an anchor. Telling me when to add paint. Keeping my hand calm and steady with her presence alone.

  The time passes quickly, and soon the entire sequence is over. My eyes move over the paper along with all of the others in the room as they evacuate the white space.

  It’s perfect.

  It’s brilliant.

  It’s life, on canvas.

  And then Chloe’s tapping me on the arm and handing me something else. A fresh palate.

  “Your turn,” she says.

  I glance down at the paint and then back to her. To the direction of her hand, which is pointing at a blank space on the wall. A space reserved for me.

  “No.”

  She frowns and shifts uncomfor
tably. And I am all too aware of all of their eyes on me. The expectations and the pressure.

  She shouldn’t have done this.

  She shouldn’t be asking this of me.

  “They want a piece to remain in the studio,” she tells me quietly. “Please, Mr. Vaughn.”

  The word no is on my lips again. But then Amanda moves in front of me with both of her prosthetics on.

  “You can’t let him win,” she tells me. “You can’t let him stop you from creating, Keller. Just because that night ended badly, it doesn’t mean that your life is over. That isn’t fair to you. Or to us. The people who still love and admire your work.”

  My pulse is racing. My breathing stilted.

  I can’t say no to her. To them.

  And Chloe knew that. I’m irrationally angry at her. For putting me in this position. For making me do this.

  I take the palate in my hands and move up to the blank space on the wall. And I paint. Scorched earth in hues of red, burnt orange, and black. And a hundred phoenixes rising from the darkness into the sky above.

  A cliché that only my rusty hands would think to provide.

  And yet, there is a round of applause when I finish.

  One I do not deserve. One I do not want.

  Because it wasn’t supposed to be this way. It hasn’t been this way in my head for the last six years. And this girl beside me is trying to change me. Trying to change everything.

  To make me want things that aren’t mine to want anymore. And suddenly it’s clear to me. Clear what it is I need to do.

  “I have to go,” I tell her.

  She gives me a soft smile, oblivious to the dark thoughts in my mind.

  “Thank you for doing this,” she tells me. “Thank you for coming.”

  “No, Chloe.” I reach down and touch her hand with mine. “Thank you.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chloe

  I’m going over my ideas for the final piece of my projects when my phone lights up with a text.

  From Mr. Vaughn.

  He never texts me. A nervous flutter moves through me when I read it and see he wants me to meet him during my lunch break.

  Also unusual.

  Risky. But I like it.

  I’m hoping that he isn’t mad. That I didn’t push him too far out of his comfort zone last night. But I feel like it was the right thing to do.

  I watched him paint. I watched him create.

  And I know - just like all of the other people in that room - it was what he was born to do. Amanda was right. He can’t let that day forge the path for the rest of his life. Just like I can’t allow my father to forge mine.

  I’ve decided to tell him today.

  That I’m going to stay. That I’m changing my major to art and I’ll use my entire inheritance to pay for it if I have to. The one thing my father can’t dictate is what I do with the money my mother left me when she died.

  And I choose to follow my heart.

  I choose Art.

  And Mr. Vaughn.

  ***

  There’s a smile on my face when I step inside the classroom and see him at his desk.

  I can’t help it.

  He makes me feel excited.

  About life. About Art. About everything.

  “Chloe,” he greets me. “Come here.”

  I do.

  And he pulls me into his lap and kisses me. Hard.

  He seems to have forgotten the fact that we’re in his classroom. And that his class starts in twenty minutes. If anyone were to show up early, they could see us.

  “Shouldn’t we go to your office?” I try to murmur between kisses.

  “No.”

  He grabs my legs and positions them so that I’m straddling him. He’s hard beneath me.

  And even though there’s a voice whispering in my head that we need to be careful, my traitorous body is grinding down on top of him.

  His lips come to my throat and kiss the sensitive skin there, his hands pawing at my breasts through my shirt.

  I’m about to beg him once more to take me into his office when I blink open my eyes and find another pair staring at me from the doorway.

  Isabel.

  Completely speechless.

  I freeze and grab Keller’s hands. He swivels his gaze in the direction I’m looking too, only there’s not any real shock on his face.

  Something is burning inside of my chest. Like acid.

  Like betrayal.

  I scurry off his lap and silently plead for him to come up with some sort of excuse though the logical part of my brain knows it’s already too late.

  “I can explain,” I tell her. “It’s not what it looked like.”

  Keller sighs beside me and Isabel shakes her head.

  “It’s exactly what it looks like,” he tells her.

  I turn and face him, my heart beating too hard in my chest.

  “Did you know she was coming?” I accuse him. “Did you know she would see us? You did this on purpose?”

  He doesn’t answer me. Which is all the answer I need.

  Instead he rises up and meets Isabel’s gaze.

  “I think you should accompany me to the dean’s office,” she says in a barely controlled voice. “Mr. Vaughn.”

  “No,” I force the word out, but they both ignore me.

  He’s already walking across the room. And somehow, I just know I won’t see him again.

  Because he did this on purpose.

  “Mr. Dacosta will want to speak with you as well, Chloe,” Isabel tells me. “Make sure you have your phone on you.”

  “Keller,” I choke out.

  He turns back to me, but doesn’t utter a word. He isn’t even looking at me. He’s looking through me.

  And then, in another second, he is gone.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chloe

  There’s a well-known stereotype that artists are tortured souls.

  I guess in a way it’s true.

  But if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the short span of my life, it’s that you can either take that pain and use it or let it wreck you.

  I think in some ways, pain can make the most beautiful art.

  The dysfunction. The chaos.

  The emotion that you pour into the images themselves.

  In my case, it’s the emotion I pour into the movements.

  My final piece is going to be a solo act. A choreographed story of my transformation. From dancer to artist. From mental imprisonment to freedom.

  From love to heartbreak.

  It’s not a stretch at all to say that I loved him.

  Not when I’ve loved him since the first time I saw him. And before that, from the first time I glimpsed his art. A piece of his soul.

  I’m trying to forget the way he left me. I’m trying to forget that it sometimes hurts to breathe.

  And today when I walk into my father’s office, I’m trying to remember the one thing that he taught me best. To follow my own heart.

  In hindsight, I can see what he meant by those words. Not to be like him.

  To have courage.

  And that’s what I’m doing now, when I set my pointes on my father’s desk. A symbolic gesture. One that causes a fire to spark in his eyes.

  “What is this?” he demands.

  “I’m not her,” I tell him. “And I’m never going to be her.”

  It’s the only explanation that I can give him. The only one he will understand.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Keller

  My beautiful ballerina.

  My actions have devastated her.

  I try to tell myself that it is for the best. I try to find something meaningful to do with my time.

  I will never get another teaching position now.

  Mr. Dacosta tells me that Chloe will not admit to any sort of relationship with me, though I already admitted it myself. I signed my
resignation, and the deed is done.

  That is no loss to me.

  My heart was never in it. But my hands are idle and so is my mind. And something else.

  An ache in my chest. For a girl too young for me. A girl who still has an entire life to experience and learn.

  I keep reminding myself of that. That it could never work between us. That she deserves better than me. But that girl still feels like she’s mine.

  And the thought of someone else - anyone else - taking what she has to offer burns me. The idea of her lighting up for another man when she talks about her ideas is detrimental to my sanity. And the thought of another man making art with her, that’s the worst.

  That’s the one thing that is ours.

  The thread that holds us together. Despite our differences in age and life experience we understand each other on that level. And that doesn’t come easily. It is a gift so rare I doubt it comes along more than once in a lifetime.

  It is this reason that keeps me hesitant. That has me searching out real estate around the city, even though my nights are spent looking for career paths somewhere else.

  I am split in half. Just like she said.

  There are the things that Rellek wants. And then there is the logic of Keller Vaughn. Two very different halves of the same whole.

  It isn’t until Amanda shows up at my door that I make my decision. When she shows me the additions that Chloe has made to the yoga studio. The art that is a continuation of my own.

  A mural of transformation.

  Amanda could never see the message that lies within. But I can.

  That message is for me.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chloe

  It is the night of the student gala.

  The night I have been working towards for the last two months. Everything is riding on this night. My foray into the art scene.

  I know there are often local gallery owners at these events. And I want to make a good impression.

  Not only do I want that, but I need it.

  Beneath my black dress, I’m already wearing my dance attire. But I can’t stop my hands from shaking.